From Joshua Green’s Businessweek profile of Boston Red Sox savior John Henry, a thumbnail sketch of the owner who initially married a Moneyball mentality to a big-market budget and has since overseen the franchise as its remade itself as a relatively austere and even more analytical organization:

“For so prominent a figure, Henry is a bit of a mystery. He limits contact with the press and, when he does communicate, prefers e-mail. In person, he’s so reserved that it often appears as if he’s working out a difficult algebraic formula in his head. Which is what he may, in fact, be doing. ‘He’s the most mathematically talented person I’ve ever met,’ says Lucchino, the team’s co-owner and chief executive officer. ‘I think that element of the game very much appeals to him. And he’s a competitive guy. He wants to win. He wants to measure his success. When you put it all together, he’s got more dimensions than most baseball owners.’

As different as he may seem, Henry captures baseball’s current era. A mathematical whiz who made a fortune as a pioneering trader of commodities futures, he’s part of a wave of owners from the financial world that’s sweeping professional sports. In baseball, this includes Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg, a former Goldman Sachs partner, and Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, founder of the investment firm Crescent Capital Group. All are keenly attuned to the statistical revolution that has upended the game and compete as vigorously against each other as anyone on Wall Street. Last year, Henry shut down his commodities trading firm to concentrate on his many other endeavors. In addition to the Globe (where I’m a contributor), he and his partners own the English Premier League soccer team Liverpool and a stake in Nascar’s Roush Fenway Racing team. But just as his trading algorithms did, baseball has furnished him with the most spectacular payoffs.

Henry provides an especially good lens into how the game is changing and why the Red Sox appear poised for further success. It isn’t just that financial types are applying their smarts to baseball, it’s that baseball success has come to hinge less on signing expensive stars, as George Steinbrenner’s Yankees once did, and much more on making smarter bets than the competition on which young players will emerge as the next stars. Winning in baseball is becoming a lot like winning in futures trading.”