Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

by Michael Lewis

book data

3,967 ratings, 4.22 average rating, 591 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		40%
4		43%
3		14%
2		1%
1		0%

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published

April 13th 2004 (first published 2003) by W. W. Norton & Company

binding

Paperback, 320 pages

isbn

0393324818 (isbn13: 9780393324815)

description

Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a ...more

[close] Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.

Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe

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12/17/07

Patrick rated it:

Read in April, 2004

recommends it for: baseball fans

If you're a baseball fan, you'll really appreciate this book. It is more or less a primer on the way the emphasis on statistics has come to prominence in many circles around the sport, and provides insight into some of the seemingly more arcane terms around the sport, such as OBP, OPS, VORP, etc. It's really quite valuable in that regard.

It has also come to represent the term for the organizations that embrace this approach to scouting, although that assessment is not entirely accura...more

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03/09/09

Tony Gleeson rated it:

Read in March, 2009

If you're a modern baseball fan or a self-described "student of the game," this is a must-read textbook on the recent important "re-think" of how to build and run a major league baseball team in an era of exploding costs. Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane arguably revolutionized the game by introducing a new kind of analysis (I'd suggest following this up with "Building the Monster," a study of how a bigger-market team uses these principles to better advantage...more

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04/30/08

Caroline rated it:

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: Baseball fans of any level; Joe Morgan

A couple cons:

The writing’s a little heavy-handed in places, which might just be a hazard of writing about baseball. Ex: “The batter’s box was a cage designed to crush his spirit.”

Plus, as a poet, I always feel guilty reading books like this when I could/should be reading Proust or Shakespeare…

But:

Overall, I really enjoyed Moneyball, and I’m glad I read it. Even though it’s focused on the emergence of new baseball-thinking, Moneyba...more

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04/22/08

Shane rated it:

bookshelves: non-fiction, owned-and-read

Read in July, 2008

Moneyball is a book that shook the world of professional baseball, but not necessarily in the way it should have. Let me explain...

Moneyball is framed around the story of Billy Beane, a hot prospect who never panned out in the majors, who became general manager of the Oakland A's in 1997. Since that time, the A's, while consistently having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, have been one of the best teams in the game. How is this possible? The book details how Beane and a few tr...more Moneyball is a book that shook the world of professional baseball, but not necessarily in the way it should have. Let me explain...

Moneyball is framed around the story of Billy Beane, a hot prospect who never panned out in the majors, who became general manager of the Oakland A's in 1997. Since that time, the A's, while consistently having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, have been one of the best teams in the game. How is this possible? The book details how Beane and a few trusted associates began looking at the game in a different way. Instead of trusting scouting intuition and traditional baseball thinking, the A's began focusing on particular assets of players that were being undervalued by other teams. In this way, they were able to build winning teams using players that were overlooked or discarded by wealthier or less skilled organizations.

While straightforward statistical analysis is interesting enough to me (see my review of Baseball Between The Numbers), where Moneyball shines is it's more detailed investigations into the development of statistical analysis in baseball, and some of the individual players who made up the A's successful 2002 squad. It is these investigations that give the Beane storyline depth and character, and add credence to the statistical analysis strategies the A's employed.

I also appreciated the way Lewis outlines the response FROM the baseball community to the release of Moneyball, which is included in the later paperback edition. This even more firmly establishes the view that most baseball organizations are wasteful and subjective in their approach to analyzing the game they spend hundreds of millions to play. However, Moneyball also explains how teams such as the Toronto Blue Jays and, more impressively due to their two World Series wins in 3 years, Boston Red Sox have hired statistically-minded and data-crunching GM's to run their organizations - showing that the future will perhaps indeed have on base and slugging percantage be our primary focus rather than batting average and RBIs.

Not if Joe Morgan has anything to do with it, though.(less)

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08/22/07

Anika Palm rated it:

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone who thinks baseball statistics interfere with enjoyment of the game.

I've always found baseball fascinating, but have rarely admitted it publicly. That's because the revelation always seemed to be followed by someone trying to engage me in a conversation about the game. And that conversation would always, always end up revolving around statistics I neither cared about nor cared to learn.

Not because Math Is Haaaaaard, but because I always had a niggling suspicion that baseball-nerd numbers really weren't that important. Lewis proved me half right; som...more

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08/03/07

Keith rated it:

bookshelves: recentpast

“There was, for starters, the tendency of everyone who actually played the game to generalize wildly from his own experience. People always thought their own experience was typical when it wasn’t.”

“The point about Lenny, at least to Billy, was clear: Lenny didn’t let his mind screw him up. The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones. Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not all tha...more “There was, for starters, the tendency of everyone who actually played the game to generalize wildly from his own experience. People always thought their own experience was typical when it wasn’t.”

“The point about Lenny, at least to Billy, was clear: Lenny didn’t let his mind screw him up. The physical gifts required to play pro ball were, in some ways, less extraordinary than the mental ones. Only a psychological freak could approach a 100-mph fastball aimed not all that far from his head with total confidence. ‘Lenny was perfectly designed, emotionally, to play the game of baseball,’ said Billy. ‘He was able to instantly forget any failure and draw strength from every success. He had no concept of failure. And he had no idea of where he was. And I was the opposite.”

“You didn’t need to know Billy Beane at all—you only needed to read his stats—to sense that he left every on-deck circle in trouble. That he had developed neither discipline nor composure. That he had never learned to lay off a bad pitch. That he was easily fooled. That, fooled so often, he came to expect that he would be fooled. That he hit with fear. That his fear masqueraded as aggression. That the aggression enabled him to exit the batter’s box as quickly as possible.”

“Billy wasn’t one to waste a lot of time worrying about whether he was motivated by a desire to succeed or the pursuit of truth. To his way of thinking the question was academic, since the pursuit of truth was, suddenly, the key to success.”

“There are a certain kind of writer whose motives are ultimately mysterious. The writer born into a family of writers; the writer whose work is an attempt to make sense of some private trauma; the writer who from the age of four is able and willing to stay in his room and make up stories: each of these creatures is a stereotype. What he writes may be good, but why he writes isn’t something you particularly want to hear more about.”

“‘Every form of strength is also a form of weakness,’ he once wrote. ‘Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.’”

“What mattered was James’s ability to light a torch in a dark chamber and throw a new light on a dusty problem. He made you think. There was something bracing about the way he did it—his passion, his humor, his intolerance of stupidity, his preference for leaving an honest mess for others to clean up rather than a tidy lie for them to admire—that inspired others to join the cause. That cause was bigger than fielding statistics. The cause was the systematic search for new baseball knowledge.”(less)

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02/26/09

Nancy rated it:

Read in February, 2009

I know next to nothing about baseball, and less than that about statistics, but this book about applying new statistical thinking in baseball to the selection of a winning team (the Oakland A's) was absolutely riveting reading for me. Michael Lewis is just that good.

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09/06/08

Jason rated it:

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Jason by: Jon Balmer

I fucking hate watching sports.
Hate it.
Then how is it that this book, about applying pertinent statistical analyis to creating baseball teams and playing basesball, so captivated me? It's a testament to a) the skill of the author, Michael Lewis, but also b) the unequivocal appeal of the underlying story: how hard it is to change the status quo (and how one can succeed despite that) and the man Lewis profiles, Billy Beane.
A fantastic narrative for fans of spectator sports or fo...more

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08/15/08

Brian rated it:

Read in November, 2008

I love how this book opens your eyes to the culture and knowledge of baseball scouting and management. Realizing the inherent flaws in the prevalent approach to the game, you feel that your perspective on baseball players and teams definitely improves after reading this. In this edition, the enjoyable afterword sums up the absurd silliness and insular attitudes of baseball people and their aversion to statistical analysis. I even want the Tigers front office to be knowledgeable about this kind o...more

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06/16/09

Jason Mcclenney rated it:

Read in June, 2009

Major league baseball is not fair. There is no salary cap like there is in the nfl, nba, and nhl. Therefore, one would assume that the teams with the most money to spend would be the best teams. This book is about a team that was able to succeed while having one of the lowest payrolls. The Oakland A's were able to succeed in baseball by using statistics to pick which players would be the most productive. Smart guys that had never actually played baseball were able to determine which players woul...more Major league baseball is not fair. There is no salary cap like there is in the nfl, nba, and nhl. Therefore, one would assume that the teams with the most money to spend would be the best teams. This book is about a team that was able to succeed while having one of the lowest payrolls. The Oakland A's were able to succeed in baseball by using statistics to pick which players would be the most productive. Smart guys that had never actually played baseball were able to determine which players would be the most effective.

I have always enjoyed statistics. I liked math as a kid and I loved reading the statistics on the back of my sports cards. Of course, fantasy football came along and my love of stats reached a new level. I became engrossed in the stats I would find on the internet. It's fun to compare players and decide which ones are best for your team. That's exactly what the managers of the Oakland A's were doing, except their team was no fantasy. They looked past the simple stats and uncovered which stats were truly important. The traditional baseball scouts and managers were just guessing at which players would be most productive. With their complex statistical analysis, the A's were able to field a winning team with productive players that were overlooked by those teams using traditional analysis. Therefore, they didn't have to pay a lot of money for these players.

I enjoyed the statistics talk but I was also able to identify with the personal stories of some of the managers and players in the book. The general manager of the A's, Billy Beane, was a former baseball player who didn't have much success in the major league. But, he was viewed as one of the most talented high school players ever. He had huge potential, but he couldn't overcome his insecurities to succeed. He thought too much, instead of just playing baseball with the amazing talent he had.

Reducing the game of baseball to numbers may seem rather unromantic, but I found it to be fascinating. Ultimately, everything in the universe can be explained through numbers. We, as humans, don't want to see that. We want to read a great story. Well, Moneyball isn't just about the stats. The author tells a story about people that were underestimated or had failed somehow in their lives. They were underdogs, but they found success. It's what makes sports endearing to us.(less)

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05/02/09

Chris rated it:

bookshelves: baseball, fast-fun-and-fabulous

Lewis' writing is so engaging and enjoyable that I think I would read anything by him -- I don't care about football at all, but I think I'll pick up Blind Side, but because I'm sure it will be fascinating and fun (though I'll wait until late October). I'll be repeating about every blurb on the back of the book, but even if you don't care about baseball, this will be thoroughly enjoyable. Lewis captures the grand sweep of the game and business of baseball, while also sketching out some of the ...more

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04/17/09

Ben rated it:

Read in April, 2009

To most people, this book is about stats, how some stats are inadequate, and moreover, how important stats are ignored. But that's not why I like this book. The real story for me is how people with fewer means succeed. It is more than an undercurrent in the book, and it is sadly ignored by most readers. The Oakland A's took baseball's detritus--fat guys, skinny guys, short guys--and composed championship-caliber teams with them. Moneyball to me isn't about the stats, it's about making the best o...more

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04/04/09

James rated it:

Read in April, 2009

recommends it for: Baseball fans

If there can be books that change industries, this is one of them. In fascinating fascinating journalistic narrative, Lewis describes how Billy Beane used Sabremetrics and other tools developed by writer Bill James to build the best baseball teams in the MLB with one of the lowest player budgets. Year after year, the Oakland A's represent excellence in the AL West with a player budget that is perhaps 20% of the New York Yankees. They have more wins and fewer runs given up than the Yankees. ...more

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01/09/09

Andrew rated it:

Read in January, 2009

*personal review

Very interesting book with a fresh perspective on baseball without adhering too much to the formula of his previous Liar's Poker book. I was afraid his book would be similar and try to draw too many parallels with his prevailing topic of investment banking and the finance industry. He makes a few mentions of traders, but more as an analogy than a gratuitous need to recycle old material.

It follows the Oakland A's GM Billy Beane first highlighting his pres...more

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04/28/09

H rated it:

Read in April, 2009

I picked this book up because it is frequently booktalked at the high school I worked at this spring, and I thought my husband would be interested in it. I found myself desperate for something to read and picked it up and got SUCKED IN. I like baseball, but don't know much about it, but it didn't matter. This story of how a few people in Oakland got the radical idea to re-think how a baseball team should be assembled, and who questioned how conventional wisdom and statistics fail at predictin...more

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01/24/09

Eric rated it:

Read in November, 2008

Written in the reigning nonfiction style of breezy, cocktail-party-factoid, prose, Lewis's Moneyball nevertheless proves more substantial than its intellectual cousins (I'm thinking specifically of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Blink) because its far less ambitious. Instead of trying to explain Everything In The World, Lewis digs deeply into the sabermetric revolution in baseball and emerges with complex characters and a full narrative.

Like Gladwell's books, Moneyball suf...more

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05/30/09

Kai Lukoff rated it:

Read in April, 2009

"I understood about one in four words of Moneyball, and it's still the best and most engrossing sports book I've read for years. If you know anything about baseball, you will enjoy it four times as much as I did, which means that you might explode."
Nick Hornby, The Believer

How did it ever take me so long to get to this? The Oakland A's are my team + I followed them fervently in the early 00s, the era that Moneyball describes = explosion.

In addition to sp...more

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02/09/09

RB Love rated it:

Read in January, 2008

This is a book about baseball, yeah, but more about baseball theories, philosophies, statistics and negotiations. Still not interested, okay, trust me. Billy Beane is an unlikely hero. An odd underdog in that he had everything as a young athlete, talent, physical gifts, a strong work ethic, he was a student of the game, shoot, he's even good looking - but he just didn't amount to much as a baseball player. Well, he turned his shortcomings into strengths by studying the very question which he...more This is a book about baseball, yeah, but more about baseball theories, philosophies, statistics and negotiations. Still not interested, okay, trust me. Billy Beane is an unlikely hero. An odd underdog in that he had everything as a young athlete, talent, physical gifts, a strong work ethic, he was a student of the game, shoot, he's even good looking - but he just didn't amount to much as a baseball player. Well, he turned his shortcomings into strengths by studying the very question which he embodied.
Why do some guys with great talent fail while other guys with less succeed? And moreover, how can you find the guys with this certain something as a talent scout so that you can capitalize?
Michael Lewis, who is a genius at finding depth and substance within our competitive cultures many varied metaphors, treats these questions as the philosophical debate at Moneyball's core.
Subjectivism versus the analysis of pure numbers is colored through Lewis' comparison, of old school, baseball talent scouts and how they made decisions and a cluster of odd characters behind computers and crunching numbers in their mother's basements. Turns out, as Billy Beane has proven over the last decade or so, the geeks with the pencils win, every time.
"...If this sounded compellng when baseball players were paid $150k a year it sounded 100 times more so when they were paid $15 million a year." p. 72.
The Mental Game of Baseball, by Karl Kuehl and Harvey Dorfman is referenced.
On Base % is what is all important to Beane and his supporters.
Beane refers to baseball managers as "middle management" to Art Howe as being a figure head.
A fellow named Bill James, self-published an annual report he called Baseball Abstracts from 1977 to 1980. He was an ornery cuss, sure of himself and of how misinformed and blind lifelong baseball men were. "It is a wonderful thing to know that you are right and the world is wrong. Would God that I might have that feeling again before I die." Bill James, p. 96. His independent analysis spawned equations like on base % + slugging % and Runs Created = (hits + walks) X Total Bases/(at bats + walks). Consulting companies called Sabermetrics and STATS Inc. came from Bill James. He had celebrity followers of his writings in Norman Mailer William Goldman and the guy who played "Squiggy" on Laverne & Shirley. Dan Okrent, a disciple of James, developed something called "Rotisserie Baseball" from the fall out of statistics from James works. Rotisserie Baseball is now known universally as Fantasy Baseball. James said of the Atlanta Braves and TNT owner that "Ted Turner seems never to have been tempted by moderation, by dignity or restraint". (p. 74)
STATS Inc. sold to Fox News Sports in 1999 for $45 million.
Humorous story on page 89 about analyst Mike Gimbel, reminiscent of James Thurber's, "Greatest Man in the World" short story.
To get inside and read first hand accounts of Billy Beane's negotiation skills, his strategizing, his movements on draft day, for Swisher, for an unknown named Youkilis, for Ray Durham, all during that year's draft is high drama and rich stuff.
Other nice quotations;
"Every form of strength is also a weakness. - Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated." p. 65.
"When the numbers acquire the significance of language, they acquire the power to do all of the things which language can do; to becme fiction and drama and poetry." p. 67.(less)

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03/27/09

Mike rated it:

Read in April, 2009

recommends it for: any sports fan

For any sports fan, this is one of the "have to reads", or at least that's what I've always been told. Finally got around to reading it and I definitely agree. It's a story surrounding the Oakland A's success around the turn of the century (isn't that a fun term to use for 9 years ago) when with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball they were winning more games than just about anyone. It's also very much a story about several people in the book, notably Billy Beane, the A's GM. ...more

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01/02/09

Ben rated it:

Read in January, 2009

I'm finding that the three stars rating really encompasses a lot of range for me. This book is at the higher end of what 3 stars means to me. A fun read, an interesting story, and a bit more to it than that. It tells the story of the Oakland A's circa 1998-2002, when they had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball but were consistently winning more games than almost anyone else. It asks: how did they do it? Answer: by taking a fresh look at how players are judged, and finding players whose ...more

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