This is a great read. Lewis explains, in a book that's largely easy to follow and really engaging, the market inefficiencies in major league baseball and the way the Oakland A's exploited them under the management of Billy Beane. Lewis talks to a lot of people in fleshing out his account, and the stories they have to tell are great.

As a casual baseball fan and a person with only a passing familiarity with economics and statistics, I found the book easy and engaging. There are a handful of places where my brain shorts out a little, sometimes because Lewis has wrapped a tangent around himself, a little, and sometimes because he occasionally shifts verb tenses in ways that are a little strange, but he tells a great story, full of smart and interesting people, and now that the book's been out for six years, it's even more interesting to read knowing what's happened in the meantime to the teams and players he discusses. Well worth it - even if you don't care about the statistics or the money, the stories are enough all by themselves. ( )

Baseball, like life, is an inherently unfair game where the team that spends more money will win, yet somehow the 2002 Oakland Athletics managed to beat the New York Yankees, despite the Yankees having a payroll three times that of the Athletics. How was this possible? Micheal Lewis sets out to answer this question in Moneyball by analyzing Billy Beane's strategy for acquiring players and facing the impossible challenge of building a winning baseball team on a budget under 30 million dollars. The analysis is mostly based upon the 2002 season as well as a few individual players, with the reader learning just what Billy Beane values in a player as he doesn't have the money to buy home runs or steals. The result is an amazingly detailed explanation of ceartain stats, such as on base percentage, that while not traditionally valued, are just as important as more convetional stats like the home run. This level of detail can either be extremely intresting, if you have a passion for baseball, or very boring, if you have no intrest in the game, but either way this book serves as a valuable lesson in how to manage a business when your competitors have budgets that triple your own.

my beau laughs at me because he says this is a book on statistics. i say it's about baseball. strangely, you don't have to be a fan of either to love reading this great story of how david kicks goliath in the pants. ( )

It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it, just how much time and money and energy and brain power have been invested in professional sports over the past hundred years or so, and none more than major-league baseball. Tracking and evaluating individual and team statistics has become an entire industry, and it’s an established enough industry that it can support heated debates about methodology and best practices. Moneyball is a fascinating peek into that world. It examines some of the arguments and grudges that have sprung up over the years among analysts and baseball insiders, and it somehow manages to do it in a way that will pique the interest of even non–baseball fans.

In 2002, the Oakland Athletics had the second lowest payroll in baseball, yet they managed to acquire more wins than all but one other team. According to conventional baseball wisdom, this was an impossible feat. So how did they do it? Michael Lewis answers this question by telling the story of A’s general manager Billy Beane.

Beane, drawing on very unconventional analysis by a baseball scholar named Bill James, believed that winning games depended far less than commonly believed on things like hitters’ batting average and fielders’ number of errors and relief pitchers’ saves. Instead, the most telling indicators of success were things like a batter’s ability to get on base with or without a hit and a pitcher’s strikeout percentage. Through the course of the 2002 season, Beane’s scrappy team won game after game while acquiring players everyone else thought were worthless and emphasizing strategies most other teams scoffed at. It seemed Beane was being proven right.

Of course, not everyone agreed. The 2002 A’s were an anomaly, some argued. But the numbers speak for themselves. Even readers with little or no interest in baseball will be intrigued by Lewis’s ability to describe and analyze statistical trends. Billy Bean comes off looking like a heroic David fighting against the Goliath of major-league baseball’s institutions. Traditional baseball scouts and others who hold fast to supposedly time-tested “truths” about America’s favorite game come across as naïve at best and downright foolish at worst. Through it all, the background stories of players—some whom no one but the most ardent baseball fans have ever heard of—add a delightful element of human interest, and the team’s ultimate success gives the book an almost epic hero’s-journey feel.

One word of caution: baseball is a dangerous sport to become interested in. With 162 games per season, not including the playoffs, loyally following even one team is a time-consuming enterprise. If you’re a baseball fan already, Moneyball will make you watch and think about games differently. If you’re not a fan, reading this book just might make you one. ( )

Michael Lewis is a brilliant observer of human beings and writes eloquently on a variety of topics. In this book, although not necessarily intentionally, he offers insight into one crucial feature of leadership—that it matters what you measure. By chronically the efforts of one baseball team, the Oakland As, which, with paltry investment in players and low-ticket sales became a consistent top producer to a large extent by analyzing data that others tended to ignore. Instead of measuring home runs, batting averages, and other statistics that appear important but do not necessarily produce wins, they discovered that on base percentage was the winning statistic that produced real results and hired players with that in mind. Their success defied the prevailing wisdom and challenged sacred assumptions. The key takeaway from the book is that often we miss the most important factors that cause success in organizational life. Finding it is the key.

I included this book in my book: The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. www.100bestbiz.com. ( )

This is an insanely good book, and I am not a big fan of baseball (I watch parts of perhaps 5 games a year). The book is about a true revolution in how baseball is managed and thus played, perhaps the first revolution in decades. It introduces the wider population to Bill James and his theories, sabermetrics, and using new statistics about player performance to mix winning with managing the economics of the salary cap and player compensation. The book is captivating, well written, and its setup around the life of Billy Beane is emotionally wringing enough to plant the seeds of sorrow and momentum that later turn into victorious happiness for the reader. It's so rare for a book to spark what truly has become a religious war in baseball. This is a must read for any student of business or data or performance of any institution (colleges, who are picking students, to be athletes, scholars, and future financial contributors, are a great example). ( )

The book that caused all the contraversy - an insightful and entertaining look at a new way of building a winner. Baseball is so hidebound that the revolutionaries come from Harvard and Yale! ( )

Disappointing book for me. It has been years since I read Liar's Poker and The New New Thing, but I still remember the stories. To enjoy Moneyball, you probably have to be interested in and already know a lot about baseball before opening the book. ( )

This isn’t, at heart, a book about baseball. On the surface it’s about the how the Oakland A’s, who should be the equivalent of the kid in the old Charles Atlas adverts getting sand kicked in their faces, live with the big financial bullies of the league. How they compete in the only major American sport that doesn’t have a salary cap to provide a level playing field. The difference is this kid didn’t send off to get the muscles, he simply got smart instead. This book is about how being smarter than your opponents can work. Even if you’ve got zero interest in baseball, it’s an absorbing, intelligent read.

There are two real threads to this book. The first is the rise in sabermetrics, which tried to take the elements of luck and judgement out of baseball statistics and actually measure a player’s performance – for example, fielders being judged on how few errors they made when an error was obviously a subjective call. And the second is how Oakland’s general manager Billy Beane, originally a can’t miss prospect who missed, determined that the conventional methods of building a team were wrong and set about some unorthodox methods of constructing that team.

The threads intertwine as Beane, with the help of his assistant Paul DePodesta, uses the sabermetric system, rather than the conventional league approved ones, to analyse the truly important underrated stats and pick up cost effective players who performed well in these categories. In short, he takes advantage of crucial data that other teams ignore in favour of the more gaudy stats. It’s fascinating to see Beane rebuild the organisation using these stats as a basis. He fires the scouts, who look only at what they want to see - who looks good and athletic, who pitches the fastest, who runs the swiftest. These scouts, who’ve been trained by convention and accepted wisdom, are all booted in favour of those who’ll look beyond the appearances and to actual performances. And with the help of his new scouts and sabermetrics Beane takes the equivalent of rescue dogs from Battersea Dogs Home and transforms them into stars. And if they don’t work out, or work out too well he trades them to his advantage. And as the book clearly shows the methods are wildly successful – the A’s consistently have one of the league’s lowest payrolls yet consistently make the playoffs.

Beane’s a fascinating central character, a GM whose own experiences of being the can’t miss prospect who missed lead him to question the whole system of talent evaluation. He’s an intriguing mixture of gambler, thinker and horse trader, even not watching his own team’s games because it might bring cloud his judgement on players. It’s clearly his failure to make it that drives him to prove how wrong the league is when it comes to selecting players, and use that failure to outsmart the rest of the league. Michael Lewis clearly conveys the passion that drives him and the pleasure he derives from building his team. He doesn’t shy from portraying Beane’s ruthlessness either, mixing the fairytale pickups of Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteburg with Mike Magnante, who’s cut immediately before a game his wife and children had turned up to watch, effectively ending his career four days short of receiving his full pension benefits.

By the end of the book a couple of other teams have started to cotton on and follow Oakland’s methods, rather than dismissing them as a freak situation. Only a few though, the majority of baseball still cling to their received wisdom. When you finish reading this book the new afterword will give you the impression that the powers that be in Major League Baseball are like the Spanish Inquisition trying to silence anyone who tells them the world isn’t flat or the centre of the universe, suppressing and ignoring knowledge that might improve them and their teams.

It’s a great story which Michael Lewis tells fluently and clearly, meaning the baseball stats and often complex trades are rendered clearly to outsiders. It fires what Beane and DePodesta are dong through a business perspective, showing clearly how the often hollow business mantra of more efficiency, fresh perspective and exploiting previously unknown holes in the market can work even applied outside the traditional business arena. It focuses an already great story through a prism of fresh perspective, although naturally it’s an occasionally harsh perspective on Beane treating his players as commodity. Each chapter focuses on some aspect of Beane’s thinking and the background to it, meaning the methods he uses are vividly and clearly illustrated, even to those with little or no interest in baseball.

In the end the book is best summed up by a rare example Lewis gives from a game. A television analyst is explaining exactly why Oakland always fail in the playoffs, whilst in the background the team are actually doing what he’s saying. Naturally his lecture goes unquestioned, even in the light of hard evidence from the game. If there’s one favour a sports fan can get from Moneyball it’s to realise how little sportscasters engage their brains when ‘analysing’. In fact, how little most teams seem to be using their brain, instead favouring received knowledge.

This is a book that can be read, digested and enjoyed even by non-baseball fans, hell even by non-sports fans. In that respect, Moneyball is simply one of the greatest sports books ever published. ( )

I grew up watching and listening to baseball. And I live in the SF Bay Area. So, Moneyball was a great fit for me. I love that a whole new view of statistics altered the game so much.

Great read and a must for any baseball fan. ( )

Terrific.

Being a British naturalised Kiwi, I could not possibly know (or, to be honest, care) less about baseball. Nonetheless, I found this to be a fascinating book, and have been recommending it to everyone I meet. It contains a fundamental truth of investing that anyone could use, useful precisely because most people (like the low-scoring reviewers on this site) think they know best.
If every armchair sports fans thinks they know better than the others, it stands to reason that most of them are wrong.

The fact that the Oakland A's never won the world series is absolutely not the point. If the market was functioning efficiently, on their budget, they should never have got within cooey of it: The buying power of behemoths like the Mets should have ensured that. What is remarkable - and what is important - is that the A's consistently, massively, exceeded their own expectations.

Sport is a business. I mean that figuratively as well as literally: profit can be measured in dollar terms but also in percentage of wins to losses. Fans seem to forget that. In business, consistently exceeding expectations is an even better thing than winning the World Series, because it necessarily means you've made MONEY. If you're the favourite and you win the World Series, you have only met expectations, and you may even have made a loss.

If baseball were a perfect market, it wouldn't be possible to exceed expectations over a long period. Over a few games, maybe - that could be a fluke. Over two seasons, it almost certainly couldn't be. That means two things: (a) conventional wisdom about the value of certain baseball players and certain attributes is wrong; and (b) The Oakland A's have worked out what is right, or at any rate their model is better than the conventional wisdom.

This is the sort of thing Billy Beane should have kept as quiet about as possible. Michael Lewis' book ought to be a Eureka moment for every baseball manager: if it is, then the market mis-pricing will disappear, everyone will acquire players on the strength of the new valuation methodology and the Oakland A's will gradually fall down the rankings to where they should have been in the first place, given their budget. I dare say that has already started to happen.

What it ought to do is open eyes of managers from other codes, and indeed other businesses: The key is in having sufficient data. If you have enough good quality data (like baseball does) then if your analysis of it is better than your competitors, then as long as your approach is disciplined and consistent, you will, over time, turn a virtually risk free profit. It's called arbitrage.

I haven't even got onto the fact that Michael Lewis is one of the most insightful and witty writers writing in business at the moment, and this book is a pleasure to read from start to finish, notwithstanding my ignorance of its subject. I have read a number of business titles recently, and compared to the rest of the pack Lewis is, if you'll excuse the pun, a major leaguer amongst amateurs.

Highly, highly recommended. ( )

Another great book from Michael Lewis, this features the baseball statistician as tragic hero. Incredibly interesting, even for someone not really into baseball. ( )

The story of Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, delves into the baseball culture of statistical analysis and scientific reason that grew around the likes of Bill James. It’s really a lively written book that makes be admire the A’s as a team of misfits, while at the same time Beane’s megalomania and treatment of players as investments somewhat disturbs me. I also notice this story has a lot to do with the Mets – Beane himself the Mets prospect who failed, Lenny Dykstra who succeeded in his place, Art Howe the figurehead manager of the A’s that Beane was able to pawn off on to the Mets. In fact the Mets often appear to be at the short end of many of Beane’s deals. How unfortunate. Still you can’t blame Beane for the Mets stupidity. Nice stories about Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford as well. I’d like to see a rebuttal from the baseball traditionalist’s point of view (obviously many successful teams have been built using the accepted methods), but overall I’m sold on Jamesian baseball analysis.

“The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.” (p. 158) ( )

To say that Michael Lewis's "Moneyball" fits only the category of sports literature would be misleading. The book is a tale of baseball, definitely, but also of economics and psychology. Lewis takes the reader into the front office of the Oakland A's where General Manager Billy Beane uses funds that are insufficient at best to somehow pull together a baseball team that somehow frequently ends up near or in the playoffs. Economic wheeling and dealing as applied to the business of baseball takes center stage here, combining with the psychology of old school versus new school corporate managing and scouting. Baseball yuppies face off against one-time pros, Chad Bradford masters his delivery, and Scott Hatteburg redeems himself at first base. This book is ridiculously entertaining and suspenseful. For the avid baseball fan, this book is an absolute must. For those interested in economics and in psychology, this book is also a must. "Moneyball" is one of the most unique and one of the greatest specimens of baseball nonfiction.

The beauty of Moneyball is Michael Lewis' ability to communicate an excellent baseball story that satisfies hard-nosed Sabermetricians, but do in a way that doesn't alienate non-numbers oriented baseball fans. The story of how Billy Beane got to where he is today (as GM of the Oakland As) is quite compelling, and clearly of key importance to the main question Lewis sets out to answer -- how the Oakland As manage to be successful despite their (relative) lack of salary. The politics of Sabermetrics aside, this is a terrific read and a book all baseball enthusiasts should read at least once (if not once a season). ( )

Excellent look at how small market teams can compete. Also a very interesting look at Billy Beane. ( )

fascinating read. If you commute to work get a copy of the unabridged audio CD read by Scott Britt. I found that I was stopping the CD to jot notes that I could use for projects at my work. Like all books on behavioral economics/econometrics it is just one of the many that have come out in the last 5 years attempting to show that we can do better by being more numerate. Most important for me was that the books contents lead me to other fruitful lines of inquiry....Game Theory, esp. The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod ( )

Moneyball by Michael Lewis is not your typical sports book. Indeed, as I read the back of the book now, I notice that it’s classified as Sports/Business. I’m a sports fan, but haven’t ever gotten into sports books. I watch enough sports (my wife is quick to point that out) so I couldn’t see really doubling up and reading about it too. I’ve read a few bicycling books including the fantastic The Rider by Tim Krabbe. I also read and enjoyed Seabiscuit. (I caught a bit of the horse racing bug when I lived down in San Diego and took a shine to the Del Mar Fairgrounds.)

Moneyball is another fringe sports book, and is more business, numbers and statistics than sports. That, in a nutshell, is the plot of the book. Lewis follows the Oakland A’s Billy Beane as he brings rational, fact-based decision making to baseball. Now, let me preface the rest of my review by saying that I like numbers and statistics. Segmenting a database? Sounds fun to me! Running baseball statistics through a regression analysis? I’m intrigued! Now I’m not saying that you need to like numbers to enjoy Moneyball, but I think it helps.

Read my full review at the Used Books Blog:
http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/moneyba... ( )

Can't believe it took me so long to read this. Excellent examples of using better metrics to gain a competitive advantage and arrive at better strategic decisions. Lots of examples of portfolio thinking; resource-constrained optimization rather than greedy algorithms based on flawed assumptions.

A book that makes you rethink everything you've ever believed about baseball and measuring a player's success. (It also may leave you thinking, "Yeah, this makes sense, but does it really matter?")

Ultimately I finished the book believing that the A's approach works, but only so far. (Which the beloved Billy Beane himself admits when saying, "My sh*t doesn't work in the playoffs.") What they really need is the "Moneyball" approach and about $25 million extra in their payroll to bring in (or hold onto) All-Star caliber players that would give them the final pieces they need. (Moneyball has gotten the A's five playoff appearances, but no World Series.)

Not the earth shattering book I'd heard it was, but if you are a baseball fan you SHOULD read it. ( )

A great book for a baseball fan that is interested in the game beyond what happens during those nine innings. ( )

MoneyBall, by Michael Lewis, was about a paradigm shift in baseball revolving around accurate evaluations of players worth, and the market inefficiencies created by the subjective valuation that was occuring in most of the league as the Oakland A's bought out all of the undervalued players from both the majors and the minor leagues. I found it particularly interesting as a discussion of applied markets theory.

Despite not really caring about baseball, and being from Atlanta, I actually followed the A's until the person doing the statistical work was sent to a different team, because it was so cool.

http://www.mumbly.co.uk/moneyball.htm... ( )