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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis

4.25 · Rating details · 77,450 Ratings · 4,333 Reviews

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 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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Paperback, 317 pages

Published March 17th 2004 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 2003)

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Jul 24, 2012 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: baseball, nonfiction, rereads

I read Moneyball at a time when I wasn't reading too much besides preschool kids books and reread it for the baseball book club I am a part of on good reads. Michael Lewis follows the story of general manager Billy Bean and his 2002 Oakland As, a low budget baseball team that managed to win their division going away. What is remarkable is that Bean built his team focusing on sabermetrics, not home runs and RBIs. He knew he did not have money to compete with the Yankees of the world and assembled ...more

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Feb 24, 2016 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: baseball, book-to-film

“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.”

This book came out in 2003, and the movie version came out in 2011; yet, it is amazing to me that despite the success shown by the Oakland As under the guidance of Billy Beane, baseball, for the most part, is still focusing on the wrong things. Just recently the manager of the New York Mets, Terry Colli ...more

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Oct 25, 2008 Will Byrnes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, baseball, brain-candy, sports

This is one of the best baseball books I have ever read, and that is saying something. Lewis’ focus is on Billy Bean, the GM of the Oakland Athletics. Because Oakland is a small-market team, Bean must use his brain to tease out the players who can help his team, at a reasonable cost. This makes him a sort of anti-Steinbrenner. Lewis goes into some detail on how Bean manages to field competitive teams almost every year under dire fiscal constraints. Must-read for any true baseball fan, and a sour ...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, sports, non-fiction, bidness

Having the misfortune of being a Kansas City Royals fan, I thought I’d had any interest in baseball beaten out of me by season after season of humiliation. Plus, the endless debate about the unfairness of large market vs. small market baseball had made my eyes glaze over years ago so I didn’t pay much attention to the Moneyball story until the movie came out last year and caught my interest enough to finally check this out.

Despite being a small market team and outspent by tens of millions of dol Having the misfortune of being a Kansas City Royals fan, I thought I’d had any interest in baseball beaten out of me by season after season of humiliation. Plus, the endless debate about the unfairness of large market vs. small market baseball had made my eyes glaze over years ago so I didn’t pay much attention to the Moneyball story until the movie came out last year and caught my interest enough to finally check this out.

Despite being a small market team and outspent by tens of millions of dollars by clubs like the Yankees, the Oakland A’s managed to be extremely competitive from 1999 through 2006. They did this when their general manager Billy Beane embraced a new type of baseball statistics called sabermetrics that had been championed by a stat head from Kansas named Bill James.

James had pored over box scores and started seriously questioning the traditional ways of measuring the performance of players with his initially self-published digests that eventually became must reads for hardcore baseball nerdlingers. As the digital age made mountains of baseball stats available on-line, fans with a mathematical frame of mind (And there are a lot of them.) started coming up with ways of looking at the data that called the old ways of evaluating players into question.

Beane had plenty of reason to distrust the old way of scouting since he had once been identified as a can’t-miss prospect who ended up quitting as a player to take a job in the front office after his career flamed out. By coming up with new ways to grade performance and ignoring things that other teams deemed flaws like being overweight or having a peculiar throwing motion, the A’s went after low dollar high-impact players who made them one of the winningest teams with the lowest payroll in baseball.

The sport has always had a weird intersection of nerd and jock, and this story illustrates that dynamic very well as Beane and his staff decided to trust the numbers rather than conventional wisdom. The conflict between the two worlds is a fascinating story, and the brash Beane makes a great focal point.

It’s a great book not just for sports fans, but for anyone who likes stories about people trying to shake up an established way of doing things. And if you’re a math geek or have a thing for hard nosed business deals, there’s a lot to like here. By framing the story in terms of the people involved, Lewis keeps it relatable in human terms and not just a dry recitation of on base percentages.

The movie is also extremely well done and entertaining (Hence the Oscar nomination for Best Picture.),but the Aaron Sorkin screenplay vastly simplifies the story and Hollywoodizes it to an extreme degree. Still, it’s a great flick for anyone who has a soft spot for stories about underdogs. ...more

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Nov 03, 2011 Jason rated it liked it

Shelves: for-kindle, 2012, reviewed

This is a good book, but not as good as I thought it was going to be. Sometimes I find technical writing to be a bit repetitive and this definitely leans more toward technical non-fiction than biography (I was hoping for more of a human interest story here)—because even though Billy Beane takes up a large chunk of the story, it isn’t really a story about Billy Bean per se.

Moneyball was published in 2003, only a year after John Henry bought the Boston Red Sox. Before that time, very few people in This is a good book, but not as good as I thought it was going to be. Sometimes I find technical writing to be a bit repetitive and this definitely leans more toward technical non-fiction than biography (I was hoping for more of a human interest story here)—because even though Billy Beane takes up a large chunk of the story, it isn’t really a story about Billy Bean per se.

Moneyball was published in 2003, only a year after John Henry bought the Boston Red Sox. Before that time, very few people in baseball had ever heard the term sabermetrics, never mind tried to implement it into a strategy for drafting and trading players—very few people, that is, besides Billy Beane. What’s fascinating about Beane is how much he had to struggle against the tide in order to apply the statistical approach of sabermetrics to his managing of the Oakland Athletics. Of course, given the payroll of the A’s in the early 2000s one might argue that he had no choice. But still, he was the first general manager in baseball to attempt it, so his story is unique.

But why the struggle? Any baseball fan could tell you how important it is to get on base, that patience at the plate is in fact doubly rewarding as it wears down opposing pitching and draws walks. And walks are huge! They extend an inning by avoiding an out, and they put a man on base which statistically leads to a greater probability of runs scored. The reverse is also true: base stealing attempts and sacrifice bunts are no-no’s in the world of sabermetrics precisely because they have the effect of potentially shortening an inning, leading to a lower probability of runs scored. It is simply not worth the calculated risk to try to advance a base runner. So why were these concepts so difficult for baseball operations managers (besides Beane) to understand? This is essentially what the author investigates here, and the easy answer lies somewhere in the fact that baseball managers are curmudgeons who are used to doing things a certain way and don’t want any smart alec college boy with his pocket protector changin’ the way things ‘er done.

Also, Joe Morgan is a buffoon.

I think this is basically old news, but I was still pleased to have my suspicions confirmed. So the story here is definitely interesting, but like I said, the argument in favor of a more objective approach to baseball decision-making is something that I already subscribe to (Yeah, Science!), so the argument itself does become rather repetitive.

Being a baseball fan, though, there are a few things I did enjoy, specifically Billy Beane trying to steal Kevin Youkilis out from under the noses of the Red Sox brass. At first, even though I obviously knew how things would turn out, I was almost rooting for Beane (who, by the way, was John Henry’s initial choice for managing his new organization), but I quickly checked myself and did a Jersey Shore–style fist pump when Theo Epstein refuses to let himself be outsmarted by that West Coast punk!

And now that I’ve read this book, I think I’ll see the movie. ...more

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Mar 01, 2016 Matt rated it really liked it

Shelves: sports, journalism

“It breaks your heart,” A. Bartlett Giamatti wrote of baseball in a piece called The Green Fields of the Mind. “It is designed to break your heart.”

And so it does, year after year.

Baseball, as has often been noted, is a game predicated on failure. The game’s best hitters only succeed in roughly three out of ten at bats. A 162-game season presents a tremendous sample size, which should iron out aberrations; and yet year after year, entire seasons come down to a single bad bounce or mistimed swi ...more

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Jul 22, 2013 Diane rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, sports, economics, movie-adaptation

Michael Lewis hit this one out of the park. I love his writing style -- he is able to explain complex and insider ideas to a layperson, and he makes it interesting. That skill is as valuable to a reporter as a baseball player's on-base percentage was to the Oakland Athletics.

The story follows the Oakland A's during the 2002 baseball season, which was when their general manager, Billy Beane, was following a different set of principles for assembling a team than the majority of the league. Beane a Michael Lewis hit this one out of the park. I love his writing style -- he is able to explain complex and insider ideas to a layperson, and he makes it interesting. That skill is as valuable to a reporter as a baseball player's on-base percentage was to the Oakland Athletics.

The story follows the Oakland A's during the 2002 baseball season, which was when their general manager, Billy Beane, was following a different set of principles for assembling a team than the majority of the league. Beane and his assistant, Paul DePodesta, were applying sabermetrics, which meant they were looking for players with certain qualities that the rest of the league had undervalued. This was critical because the Oakland A's had very little money -- back then their payroll was about $40 million, compared to the New York Yankees payroll of $126 million. The stats Beane and DePodesta were most interested in were a player's on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

The A's experiment worked and the team had a historical 20-game winning streak and made it to the playoffs. By now, the A's analytical tactics have widely been adopted by Major League Baseball, but back in 2002, the strategy was mocked by almost everyone inside the league.

In addition to explaining baseball stats, Lewis makes the story more compelling by bringing in sports psychology, game theory and sharing the stories of statistician Bill James, Beane, and a few key players. Beane had himself played in the major leagues, but he lacked the skills to be a consistent hitter. Beane was recruited out of high school and had to decide between a pro-baseball contract or going to Stanford. "I made one decision based on money in my life -- when I signed with the Mets rather than go to Stanford -- and I promised I'd never do it again." After several disappointing seasons as a player, Beane decided he would rather be a scout, and quit playing to work his way up in the A's front office.

Another interesting story was that of A's first baseman Scott Hatteberg. Hatte had been a catcher for the Boston Red Sox, but after suffering nerve damage in his elbow, he could never catch again. Beane and DePodesta saw in him the potential to be a good hitter and trained him to play first base. One of my favorite chapters in the book was about Hatte and how thoughtful he was about his hitting. In a great scene, he's in the team's video room watching footage of pitcher Jamie Moyer, who Hatte will be facing later that day. Moyer was a tough pitcher and Hatte was trying to figure out a strategy.

"Moyer was one of the few pitchers in baseball who would think about Scott Hatteberg as much as Hatteberg thought about him. Moyer would know that Hatteberg never swung at the first pitch -- except to keep a pitcher honest -- and so Moyer might just throw a first-pitch strike. But Moyer would also know that Hatteberg knew that Moyer knew. Which brought Hatteberg back to square one. He was knee-deep in game theory, and he had only an hour before he had to play the game."

I would highly recommend this book to baseball fans, even if they've seen the movie version, because the book is more in-depth and has great stories that didn't make it into the film. I think readers who like stories about underdogs would also enjoy it, because it shows how a poor team was able to change the institution of baseball. ...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Riku Sayuj rated it liked it

Shelves: pop-journ-type, r-r-rs

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-simula ...more

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Jun 07, 2014 Howard rated it really liked it

Shelves: baseball, nonfiction, sports, reviewed

In honor of the MLB postseason, I am resurrecting a book review that I wrote back in 2009.

I hardly know where to begin in attempting a review of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It isn’t that I don’t think that the book is well written, because it is. It isn’t that I disagree with the conclusions that are reached in the book, because, for the most part, I don’t. What bothers me, as a recovering baseball fanatic, is that I don’t enjoy the game that utilizes the approac In honor of the MLB postseason, I am resurrecting a book review that I wrote back in 2009.

I hardly know where to begin in attempting a review of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It isn’t that I don’t think that the book is well written, because it is. It isn’t that I disagree with the conclusions that are reached in the book, because, for the most part, I don’t. What bothers me, as a recovering baseball fanatic, is that I don’t enjoy the game that utilizes the approaches that are proposed in this book.

Moneyball describes how the general manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, has been able to use sabermetrics (statistical analysis originated by Bill James and others) to more intelligently draft players and win games.

According to the proponents of this new approach:

1) offense is more important than pitching; 2) defense hardly matters at all; 3) the most important baseball statistic is on-base percentage, followed by slugging percentage; 4) stealing bases should not be attempted because it is not worth the risk; 5) the same goes for the hit-and-run; 6) never sacrifice because it is not worth giving up the out; 7) scouts are unnecessary; and 8) line-ups and game strategy are dictated to the manager by the general manager and his statistical analysts, making managers almost as unnecessary as scouts.

Beane and his statistical guru, and not the scouts, decide who should be drafted. According to Lewis, the most important statistic to Beane and his statistician in determining what position players to draft is the ability of players to draw walks. They look for players (only college players for they never draft high school players) who have exhibited the ability to work deep in the count and to draw walks.

I can’t speak for others, but I don’t watch baseball games in order to watch hitters work deep into the count, draw a walk, camp out on the bases until somebody gets an extra-base hit (or two) to drive them home. The strategy utilized by Beane and his proponents may produce a more efficient style of baseball, about that I am in no position to quibble. It may be the only way that a small market team like the Oakland A’s can compete with the deep pockets of the New York Yankees and other large market teams (the ‘unfair game’ mentioned in the book’s subtitle).

However, to repeat, I find the emphasis on this approach to result in a game that is much less fun to watch.
...more

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Mar 29, 2017 David rated it really liked it

Recommended to David by: Grumpus

Shelves: management, nonfiction, psychology, audiobook

For the most part, the is a fun book to read about the general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. The first half of the book was very enjoyable. Toward the end, though, it became a bit repetitive. It's not that the author repeats himself--he does not. It's just that the stories about hiring and trading for good baseball players started to sound all the same after a while.

Billy Beane was the general manager during the late 1980's, early 1990's. His team was one of the poorest in the For the most part, the is a fun book to read about the general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. The first half of the book was very enjoyable. Toward the end, though, it became a bit repetitive. It's not that the author repeats himself--he does not. It's just that the stories about hiring and trading for good baseball players started to sound all the same after a while.

Billy Beane was the general manager during the late 1980's, early 1990's. His team was one of the poorest in the league, so he found it necessary to do things differently than other teams. He could not afford to pay top dollar for new recruits. So, when it came to recruiting and hiring new players, he decided not to strictly follow the advice of his died-in-the-wool scouts. He often ignored their advice, and listened to the advice of his assistant, Paul Depodesta. Paul was an economist, and used sabermetric principles in making up his recommendations. That is to say, he combined data with statistical approaches, and uncovered many correlations and relationships that gave Billy Beane a better idea of the relative values of players.

Whereas many general managers listened to their scouts' advice, they would often judge a player not by their playing ability, but by a set of factors; speed, hitting, fielding--and even by their body type, appearance and mannerisms. But, to Billy Beane and Paul Depodesta, one really counts is the data-based evidenced that a player could get himself on base, which is highly correlated with the number of runs scored. And, since the team was starved for cash, Billy Beane often resorted to wily negotiations with the general managers of other teams. He could not express his interest in another team's player too openly, because that would tip off others about the high value he placed on that player. So, this book is not only about the use of statistics in putting together a superior baseball team, it is also about the art of negotiation, and the wily craftiness involved in getting good deals.

The book describes some very interesting characters. And, it is also about the psychology behind coaching players, and hyping up their self-confidence.

I didn't read this book; I listened to the audiobook. It is narrated by Scott Brick. While I have listened to many thrillers narrated with great drama by Brick, this book is not a thriller. Brick's tendency to over-dramatize seems a bit over-the-top for a book of this sort. He should have toned it down some ...more

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Mar 28, 2015 Alex Ristea rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

I read the book and then immediately watched the movie, and I can confirm that (once again) the book is better than its silver screen counterpart, even when its written by the legendary Aaron Sorkin.

A little about why this book was important to me personally. I am not a baseball fan, but I do work in professional sports, and specifically deal with analytics to now measure things which used to be very hand-wavvy.

This book can actually be a nail-biter at times. Don't get me wrong, it's still a lot ...more

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Apr 30, 2008 Caroline rated it really liked it

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, Moneyball seems much more comprehensive, and much more narrative than ...more

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Apr 22, 2008 Shane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

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 associ 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. ...more

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Oct 05, 2016 Ashley *Hufflepuff Kitten* rated it really liked it

Shelves: baseball-sports-etc, audiobook-would-recommend, 2016, adaptation-loved-it, written-review, buddy-reads

Really enjoyed this, partly because reading a baseball book in October when your team is in the playoffs gives you a great high and partly because I was surprisingly and honestly fascinated by the science of sabermetrics. Science and math have never been my strong points, but like Jurassic Park or The Martian, I was nevertheless intrigued. Coupled with the handful of recognizable players scattered through the book, I had a good time with this one. I also remember seeing the film a few years ago; ...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Eric rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Baseball fans

Recommended to Eric by: Sean Cunningham

Shelves: sports

I found this book extremely interesting, especially since I didn't read it until eight years after it came out, meaning I knew how all the draft picks and other players mentioned in the book panned out (a topic on which a good deal has now been written). Only my rule of always reading the book before seeing the movie prompted me pick it up now, a decision I don't regret.

The book had some interesting tidbits I wasn't aware of, such as where the term sabremetrics came from ("The name derives from ...more

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Sep 06, 2008 Jason rated it it was amazing

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 folks like me who'd ...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Ryan rated it really liked it

Boy did I read Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game at the right time: January.

(The off-season.)

Over the last two years, I've made a real effort to learn about sports. Hockey? Not a problem. The NBA? A gossipy league, but I think it's more popular because of it. The NFL? Short but sweet. No matter how hard I try -- I'll score the game, I'll eat the peanuts, but I draw the line at chew -- I just cannot develop an interest in baseball. I recently talked to a former ESPN writ Boy did I read Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game at the right time: January.

(The off-season.)

Over the last two years, I've made a real effort to learn about sports. Hockey? Not a problem. The NBA? A gossipy league, but I think it's more popular because of it. The NFL? Short but sweet. No matter how hard I try -- I'll score the game, I'll eat the peanuts, but I draw the line at chew -- I just cannot develop an interest in baseball. I recently talked to a former ESPN writer, and he told me that football's popularity is often attributed to its TV friendly format. I can see what he means. When I watch a football game, there's a lot of action, the replays are good, and there are only a few games so it's hard to become bored with the season. Baseball strikes me as a radio friendly game, particularly the many sounds we think of when we think of baseball. Unfortunately, radio went out of style decades ago. So even after watching an entire season of baseball games, the first association that comes to mind when I think of baseball is this line from The Simpsons: "And now there's a beach ball on the field. And the ball boys are discussing which one of them is going to go get."

In Moneyball, Michael Lewis mostly ignores the game of baseball. Instead, he looks into why the Oakland Athletics, a team with the second smallest payroll in the league, was for a brief while able to compete with the New York Yankees. It turns out that Billy Beane, the A's general manager, decided to found his strategy on decisions that tend to lead to wins. Runs lead to wins; outs do not. For example, stealing second and sacrifice bunts tend to lead to outs. So don't do those things. Relying on Bill James' analysis, Beane ignores defense and invests in hitters that get on base because a high on-base percentage tends to correlate with a lot of wins. Because Beane has an idea of how to measure players that can lead to wins, he can find players that are undervalued.

The best parts of Moneyball may be when Lewis explains the archaic thinking that is guiding the Major Leagues' managers. For example, a relief pitcher's value increases as he accumulates saves. But how often does the relief pitcher "save" the game? Rarely. Consequently, Beane realizes that he can buy cheap pitchers, plays them until they accumulate a lot of saves, and then sell them at a profit. It's not that the other teams don't have access to the same statistics as Beane. It's just that they don't seem to care. Lewis explains that there are outsiders and insiders, and the insiders want nothing to do with the horn-rimmed glasses wearing, ivy league educated, statistic gathering nerds that point out that teams can win more games paying less if they pay attention to these few undervalued skills that have been tied to wins.

What makes Moneyball work is that its central figure, Billy Beane, is actually an insider. He had the "good face," and he looked good in a baseball uniform. He should have been big. He had a ticket to a free education at Stanford, but he traded that in to become a Met. Beane ended up leaving the game to become an advance scout. Beane seems to have a vendetta against the traditional, "go with your gut" decision making that guides the league and, arguably, ruined his life. Watching him outwit other managers because he is willing to consider non-traditional approaches to the game is real joy, and Lewis does a fantastic job in these sequences.

There are moments that don't work so well. For example, Lewis is happy to praise Beane, which is fine. However, after writing an entire book about how every aspect of baseball can be broken down into statistical likelihoods, he then explains Oakland's failure to make it out of the first round of the playoffs is that the playoffs are a "crapshoot." We could argue that an NFL playoff game is a crapshoot, but baseball teams are eliminated in a series. Although there's little data to gain from a single series, there are many playoff series to study. Lewis and Beane want to embrace moneyball, even though it fails in the playoffs. Why they should accept Beane's claim that "my shit doesn't work in the playoffs?"

Lewis also gives little attention to what happens when other teams do begin to realize the importance of on-base percentage. I've read on Marginal Revolution that the size of a team's payroll is a bigger predictor of success now than it was ten years ago. That may have been inevitable, but it's not irrelevant.

Still, I have to admit that for over 300 pages, Lewis had my interest. I once read that the best non-fiction books transcend their subject, and I think Lewis has produced that caliber of non-fiction here.

It was almost as though baseball itself was interesting. But that may just have been because there it's been a long time since I watched a baseball game. After all, it is January. ...more

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Dec 17, 2007 Patrick rated it liked it

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 accurate. The book ...more

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Feb 26, 2009 Nancy rated it it was amazing

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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Oct 30, 2016 Gwen (The Gwendolyn Reading Method) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: best-nonfiction

A wee bit all over the place and rambling but more than made up for by the fascinating subject matter.

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Mar 23, 2016 Scott Rhee rated it really liked it

Shelves: sports, sociology, economy, nonfiction

As a writer, Michael Lewis has that amazing ability to write about one thing but actually be writing about something else entirely. Sometimes it’s meanings within meanings, and it often requires a deeper read between the lines.

“Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” is, ostensibly, about the economics of baseball, how baseball can be looked at as a financial microcosm of the real world: the wealth inequalities between major league teams and how rich teams tend to win many more games than ...more

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Feb 01, 2018 Jokoloyo rated it it was amazing

The major taxing of this book is not the baseball terms, but there are so many people appeared in the book, and the similarities in names are not helping. For example, the main protagonist is Billy Beane, and there is another important character whose name is Billy James. That's my only concern when reading this book. Some people maybe not comfortable with the writing style in this book, jumping from one subject to another without smooth main story.

I am not a professional baseball fan although I ...more

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Jan 31, 2012 Big League Manager rated it it was ok

Shelves: baseball

Well, its kind of about baseball. Its more really about Billy Beane and how terrific a GM he is and, as an extra bonus, he is so much like the swell guys on Wall Street who have it all figured out.

Well kinda.

You see, the Oakland Athletics were/are a "poor" ballclub. They do not have the cash of teams like the Yankees or Red Sox so they can not afford much in the way of scouting and even if they do scout they do not have the money to sign the best players (actually I mean the players the rich t Well, its kind of about baseball. Its more really about Billy Beane and how terrific a GM he is and, as an extra bonus, he is so much like the swell guys on Wall Street who have it all figured out.

Well kinda.

You see, the Oakland Athletics were/are a "poor" ballclub. They do not have the cash of teams like the Yankees or Red Sox so they can not afford much in the way of scouting and even if they do scout they do not have the money to sign the best players (actually I mean the players the rich team want, so forget the word "best")... free agents or anyone else. So they had to come up with something different.

They did. They said they would use "stats" and look at things other teams did not look at... like On Base Percentage... and sign those guys. This did two things. First, it cut the expense of scouting (you do not need to pay so many real people to go see real players), but then they could not afford much of this anyway. Second, they could hire someone to pour over numbers on a PC and "Voila!" they got scouting! And its cheaper!!

OK, it worked. Kinda. That is until the rich ballclubs hired stat guys with PCs too. The Red Sox hired the best stat guys around. Guys who are famous in the stat world. Guys the Oakland team could not afford. The rich teams said "If it works for Oakland, we will really throw a ton of money at it and it will work EVEN BETTER for us!!" (It really didn't but that's another story.)

See, baseball is a business that works like this: If you have good success with something, then everyone else copies it and your good success isn't good any more on account of now everyone is doing it and the rich clubs do it better than you do on account of they have all the money. They still sign the "best" players because like anyone the "best" players want as much money as possible for being the "best" players. (This is not a new thing either... goes back to 1901 at least).

Every so often a poor or losing club will come up with a new idea because they want to win and the old ideas are not working or just cost too much. Owning minor league teams, signing players from the Dominican Republic or some other country, guys who hit tons of homers, guys who stole lots of bases, guys who get lots of walks... these were all new ideas at one time and once a team has good success, it becomes a "Revolutionary Idea!! That Changes The Game!!" because everyone else follows and does it too, figuring that is the quickest road to good success. Then those new ideas just become the way everyone does it and the poor or losing clubs need to come up with another new, revolutionary idea that changes the game.

Now, to the book. Its OK, but I think the author does not know much about ballclubs and rather too much about Wall Street. Beane's idea worked for a time but was not all that revolutionary or fantabulous to begin with. The stat stuff has been around for a long time for basic scouting and player contract negotiations.... like since at least 1908, probably even before that but I can not remember right now. That Beane concentrated on OBP (On Base Percentage) ain't a particularly new idea either (may I introduce you to John McGraw and Connie Mack). Using PC's and stats has been around in ballclubs since the 80's.

I do not really grasp what this author thought was so great. Its just a guy running a poor ballclub that needs to come up with a new idea. For Bill Veeck it was a midget, the Yankees got Babe Ruth, Whitey Herzog got speedy guys... there's always a new idea. Some work, some work for a while and some don't work at all.

An OK read, but no news here. Maybe his Wall Street books are better. This one was not so good.

...more

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Mar 23, 2018 Wayland Smith rated it really liked it

This is a book that's not quite what it seems, or not wholly, anyway. It's mostly about Billy Beane, manager of the Oakland A's, and his unique method of recruiting players. Where most baseball teams rely on scouts and "wisdom" like "This guy is good looking," Beane uses some hard data by way of stats, and looks at them in a way most other baseball professionals can't seem to bring themselves to.

While it's an interesting look inside baseball, that's not all it's about. What I really found fasci ...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Kali Srikanth rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Anyone who has an appetite for underdog stories.

Shelves: adapted-to-screen, biographies-memoirs

Billy Beane raises his right hand up- “There are rich teams, there are poor teams, there is 50 feet of crap and then there is US.” reaches the table level.

Thirty pages into book I knew this book is going to be completely different from movie version only time to decide if it’s engaging or uncompelling. So I thought I would find a way to supply my patience fuel for another thirty pages or so, then I shall confidently decide on quitting or no because after all, this was not the story I fell in l ...more

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Apr 17, 2009 Ben rated it really liked it

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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Jul 20, 2012 Joshua Guest rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

If you haven't already seen the movie, you ought to see the movie. And after you have seen the movie, you ought to read the book. I loved the film adaptation, it adds magic and melancholy to the story. This book stands out to me not because it's a good underdog story (though it is a very good underdog story), and not because it's a good non-fiction story (and it is a very good non-fiction story), but because of the symbolic power and universality of its core message: there is unseen value in eve ...more

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Nov 27, 2013 Nooilforpacifists rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sports

Simultaneously among the top 10 sports books and the top 10 economics books. Without Lewis's typical Princetonian smugness.

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Aug 01, 2017 Alisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: sports

The inside story of the unlikely success of the Oakland Athletics 2002 team at the hands of General Manager Billy Beane and his unconventional talent evaluation methodology that enabled him to field a division winning team at bargain basement salaries. The history of baseball statistics and analysis was actually pretty interesting. I'm no mathlete but the theory behind it was thought provoking. Success on the field is sometimes calculated and ascribed a value that has just as much to do with cir ...more

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Apr 18, 2018 Mehrsa rated it liked it

This would probably have been a more interesting read if I had read it a while back--before the movie and before all the other books I've read that cited to it. Or maybe if I knew anything at all about baseball.

Still, no one writes about Michael Lewis and this is a very interesting book. Although I am not sure the conclusions still stand. I've read and heard some pushback on purely statistical draft picking. Though the theory that we are too biased to trust our own guts is eminently provable.

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About Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis

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Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, The Money Culture, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game, The Big Short, and Boomerang, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children.

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