Riku Sayuj's Reviews > Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

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1651956
's review
Aug 20, 12

Read from August 16 to 19, 2012


It was a better story before I knew the whole story.

Almost every book on randomness I have read had a reference to Moneyball and I had built up my own version about this story (I had even told a few people that version!) and it imagined everybody doing what Billy Beane was doing, and Billy Beane doing some sort of probability distribution among all players and randomly picking his team, winning emphatically, and thus proving that a truly random pick of players is the equivalent of a true-simulation of the market and just like how no considered selection of stock picks can ever outperform the market in the long run, a truly random representation of the baseball market cannot be outperformed by the interventionist methods of other teams over a long season. That is the story I wanted to hear. My apologies to anyone to whom I have spouted this story - it is not true. It is still probable though, when the next radical Billy Beane comes along in sports.

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Comments (showing 1-8 of 8) (8 new)

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message 1: by Garima (new)

Garima Oh there's a book! I only watched the movie. From now on I'll do prior googling before watching a movie to check if it's an adaptation of a book and vice-versa.


Riku Sayuj Garima wrote: "Oh there's a book! I only watched the movie. From now on I'll do prior googling before watching a movie to check if it's an adaptation of a book and vice-versa."

:) if the movie is good, there usually is one


Jason Now you have to go back and tell all those people what sabermetrics is really about. :)


Riku Sayuj Jason wrote: "Now you have to go back and tell all those people what sabermetrics is really about. :)"

They would laugh at me for putting on a fancy word where 'common-sense' would do. Wouldn't they?


Jason Except it isn't very commen, is it? Or, at least it wasn't at the time Beane was running a ballclub using its methods.


message 6: by Riku (last edited Aug 20, 2012 12:17pm) (new) - rated it 3 stars

Riku Sayuj Jason wrote: "Except it isn't very common, is it? Or, at least it wasn't at the time Beane was running a ballclub using its methods."

Oh now you want to challenge the genius who invented the word 'common-sense' too?? :)

I agree that Beane was revolutionary in his thinking and that Lewis did a good job of portraying how radical it was but I still never was able to summon up the requisite awe. Maybe because I live in a cricket-crazy, stats-crazy country...


Jason Yeah, I think for me it was sort of an obvious move, especially considering most baseball fans were already aware of dependencies on certain stats (as opposed to the media-happy ones that don't influence runs as much).

The movie is different—it is more Bean-central rather than baseball operations-centered—but it is good.


Riku Sayuj Jason wrote: "Yeah, I think for me it was sort of an obvious move, especially considering most baseball fans were already aware of dependencies on certain stats (as opposed to the media-happy ones that don't inf..."

Maybe I will check out the movie too... to check on the book-movie transition, if for nothing else


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