The smart money's on this tablet.

How is shopping for a tablet like building a baseball team? Hang on through this extended metaphor and you’ll see.

Back when the Oakland A’s were good and “Moneyball” was why, a lot of people misunderstood the concept. They thought it was about a particular stat, or even the role of statistics in general. It wasn’t. All those complex sabermetrics were in service of a strategy: to get more for your money, buy what the market undervalues and avoid what the market overvalues.

A’s general manager Billy Beane and his geek squad were able to pin down the things that made a winning team, and the things that the market just thought made a winning team. It’s classic arbitrage: exploiting the differences in values (money vs. team wins) of the same commodities (walks, say, or pitcher wins).

It’s the smart approach to shopping for anything, from cars to houses to gadgets. Like tablets. As a feature, a retina display is like home-run power. Nobody denies that home runs are valuable. But they’re also flashy, easy to understand, readymade for the highlight reel. So home run hitters - and tablets with retina-like displays - would tend to be overvalued by the market.

There are other ways to score runs. There are other ways to enjoy a tablet. A lineup of home run hitters who rarely get on base otherwise isn’t going to win you the pennant. A full HD display that you have to hold a few inches from your face to get maximum benefit from isn’t worth mediocre performance in other areas.

This Acer Aspire Switch doesn’t have a crazy hi-def display. It’s not a home run hitter. It won’t command home-run-hitter money on the free agent market.

But it does boast a lot of less-valued features that help it win games. Its 4GB RAM is like plate discipline: when it swings, it connects. Its solid state drive is like defensive prowess. The 128GB of storage space on that drive is a high on-base percentage. And its Intel Core M Dual-core 2GHz processor is effective baserunning - it may not lead the league in stolen bases, but it’s fast and doesn’t make dumb outs. Its array of USB and Micro USB ports is positional versatility.

If you want to throw your money away, go sign yourself a slugger who does everything terribly except sometimes hit the ball real far. If you’re looking for those little things that win games, here’s a bargain on your secret weapon. Take advantage of the gap between the market value and the effective value, just like Billy Beane did. But hurry up before your rivals figure it out, too. One look at today’s standings will tell you how that worked out for the Oakland A’s.