Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I found this a tremendously entertaining read. The section on Bill James is just fantastic, articulating the way sport can be used to think about so much more than just sport. Lewis then goes on to demonstrate how this is done by making this book about more than just baseball. To my mind, it's about overcoming entrenched ways of thinking, how even in the most objective of fields equal opportunity is elusive, and how we shouldn't assume that just because they spend big money, organisations are interested in or even capable of high performance. If baseball, with its tables and statistics and player markets, isn't a meritocracy, then maybe nothing is.

Structurally, the book is beautifully put together, with brilliant pacing, themes that run show more throughout the book and divergences that always last just the right amount of pages. The writing is clear with a level of wit and emotion perfectly suited to popular non fiction. Having said that, as popular non fiction it tends to put forward a particular perspective, rather than present the evidence and help the reader weigh it. I did some research (ie. looked at Wikipedia) and found that some of the criticism of the book pointed to the importance of some scout-identified players to the success of the Oakland As; the lesson of the book is probably closer to "baseball teams haven't thought deeply enough about this" than "THEY'RE DOING IT ALL WRONG!" show less

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 show more 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. show less

Moneyball is way more entertaining than it has any right to be. It follows the story of the low-budget Oakland A's and their unorthodox general manager Billy Beane as they use statistics and the scientific method to succeed against teams with much larger payrolls.Lewis is a very entertaining writer, at times laugh out loud funny, who has turned what could have been a very dry subject into a real page turner. I read this in one day, which is unusual for me with non-fiction.

What a terrific book! I expected the book to more or less correspond to the movie (which I also enjoyed), but there's a lot of depth to the story that really wasn't covered in the movie version (understandably).

I particularly enjoyed the in-depth stories of the various players that the Oakland A's recruited that literally no one else wanted. Their backstories were fascinating. They were told they would never make it in baseball for one reason or other, and they probably never would have if it wasn't for the A's relentless pursuit of a way to win within their budgetary constraints.

I am a baseball fan, and I do think it helps to have some knowledge of the game to truly appreciate this book. It probably would be dull for those who don't show more understand the basics of the game. But Lewis does his usual extraordinary job of making the story widely accessible even though it talks about business and mathematics.

One of my favorite (but also most disheartening) parts of the book was the afterward. Apparently, after Moneyball was published, the baseball insiders tore Billy Beane to pieces, accusing him of all sorts of things. He went against baseball orthodoxy, and then had the gall to allow the story of his team's achievements to be published in a book. The afterward basically rips apart the vultures. Good for Michael Lewis for defending Beane, his book, and those who cooperated with bringing us this fascinating story. He certainly has the last laugh because literally every baseball team uses analytics today and those insiders who jeered Beane should be embarrassed and ashamed.

Definitely a don't miss read for baseball fans. In fact, this book makes me wonder what other great baseball writing I may be missing. show less

Not since the glorification of the closer - curse you, Tony La Rossa - has any one or two men so fundamentally changed the nature of baseball. [[Bill James]] put together a statistical analyses of the game and published them in a little-known, self-published annual periodical. Billy Beane read them, and then applied them to the wistful, broke Oakland A's. The season that followed saw the team in the playoff contention and also saw them break the consecutive games won record, winning 20 in a row (Typically, the record books list the 1916 New York Giants holding the record at 26, but the team had a tie game in the middle of that run - so, asterisk.) Beane was courted to take over the Red Sox after that season, but turned more money down show more to stay in Oakland.

James is an interesting character - he penned a great true crime book [The Man from the Train: Discovering America's Most Elusive Serial Killer] - and his mind sifts data like no other. But Beane is the real color in this book, and the team of broken toys he used to put together a 103-win season, using James' work.

If you love baseball, read this book - you'll understand so much better the nature of the modern game. If you love statistics, read this book - few other people have ever taken data so far in any arena.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended show less