Why Moneyball is irrelevant

Stop pushing Billy Beane on us. Already subjected to endless praise of Moneyball, the book (which, in all honesty, was more of a flourish on the work that was already done by Bill James), Brad Pitt has launched a Moneyball project that is scheduled to be released in the fall. It looks well done - kind of like a Social Network, for a different audience (read: no audience in particular). However, is it really a worthwhile project to look into? Is it still relevant in the modern world? A look at modern baseball statistics, and modern World Series, might prove different.
There's no denying that, at the time of Moneyball's original publication, the Oakland A's, the Billy Beane-led subject of the book, were actually performing remarkably well. Of course, it could be due to some amount of luck in the trio of great pitchers (Hudson, Mulder, Zito), all of whom eventually left. But since 2003, the book's publication date, here's a list of the World Series winners and their yearly salaries:
2004 - Red Sox - 127.3 million (second highest)
2005 - White Sox - 75 million (13)
2006 - Cardinals - 89 million (11)
2007 - Red Sox - 143 million (2)
2008 - Phillies - 98 million (12)
2009 - Yankees - 201 million (1)
2010 - Giants - 98.6 million (9)
Meaning, no team finished that won the World Series since Billy Beane's "revolution" were in the bottom half in salary. Since then, the White Sox and the Phillies, the two lowest ranked teams in terms of relative salary, have become financial giants (especially the Phillies' recent pitching acquisitions). Meanwhile, how have Billy Beane's A's fared? They have payed pretty much a consistent $55-59 million since 2003, which usually lands them in the bottom half, if not the bottom 10. And in 2010, with a payroll of 51 million, they were third to lowest in payroll. Meanwhile, they have been to the playoffs once since the publication of Moneyball (in what is arguably the weakest division in baseball). 2010, when they finished .500, was the first time they had gotten back to that mark since 2006. And remember, even in the height of Moneyball hype, they did not win a playoff series.
The point being? Maybe money does win championships. It's not everything - if it was, the Yankees would win every year (then again, pitching also wins championships). And the Moneyball-era A's team did win a lot of regular season games. But they didn't win anything when it counted. It's soon becoming clear that, despite Moneyball's belated entrance into Hollywood, Billy Beane is no longer relevant in baseball.