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Summary: Great Introduction to Statistical Analysis in Baseball
Comment: Michael Lewis' Moneyball, is a great introduction to the increasing role statistics play creating a winning baseball team. Lewis profiles the A's owner, Billy Beane, and shows how Beane has managed to create a winning team despite a small budget. It begins to put to rest the use of worthless stats, such as RBI, which is really only a measure of how good the batters are in front of you.
As a former baseball coach, I was interested in the chapter on how Beane selects players from the amateur draft. He creates a strong case for players attending college before entering the draft, especially if one's life long dream is to play for the A's.
If you enjoy Moneyball, I would suggest reading other similar books such as Baseball Between the Numbers, The Fielding Bible, Mind Games, and The Baseball Economist. In general, anything by the Baseball Prospectus people is a great choice.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must read for all baseball fans
Comment: It's simple: If you are a fan of baseball-meaning you go to more than 2-3 games a year, or watch a lot of games on TV-then you need to read Moneyball.
Moneyball tells the story of how the Oakland A's, with a limited budget, manage to out smart almost every other team in baseball. Basically, in a nutshell-they use science instead of old baseball adages, and apply statistics to better analyze a players ability to get on base and avoid making an out-the key to winning games in the long-run.
Great book, well written. Highly recommended to all baseball fans.
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Summary: Disliked his Wall Street books, loved this one
Comment: Michael Lewis made his name writing books describing the people behind our financial system -- books that were inevitably described, for some reason, as "funny" or "hilarious." Perhaps these same reviewers were in stitches while reading Javascript technical manuals or the Kyoto Accords. Truly, I saw neither any humor nor any attempts to be funny in these books, which were, sadly, just dull.
How refreshing, then, to have him find a topic better suited to his tone. Yes, money plays a role, but what's described here is the pursuit of excellence, and the courage to flout conventional wisdom in the pursuit of a competitive edge.
A fascinating subject about dedicated professionals. True, these people may come off as a little singleminded, but they have to be (as this book demonstrates) in order to compete against people equally dedicated to finding an edge.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Comment: I so love the work of Michael Lewis because this story, and another favorite, Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, are essentially about stepping back to consider groupthink. Groupthink is a topic that fascinates me. I haven't read The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, but it's about startups and silicon valley? Hmmmm... it might be about groupthink too. I'll check it out this weekend.
In Moneyball, Lewis examines the effects an outsider can have on the group, in this case, Major League Baseball. That's an extremely high level but, if you're like me, that's about all you need to know. Even if you don't care for baseball, I think you'll enjoy Moneyball. You might even be angry that Congress and the media give so much time to baseball. Since baseball is hard to avoid in America, I think people should try to understand it better. And even the most die hard, stat-loving baseball geek I know learned things from reading Moneyball. So whether you're a total insider to baseball, or a complete outsider to baseball, I think you should read, and that you'll enjoy, Moneyball.
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Summary: So popular that it has become a cliche - MUST READ for any serious or casual baseball fan
Comment: This book has become the cliche for the transformation of the way that baseball is approached over the last decade or so. This book explains in a detailed but highly readable manner how baseball went from simply a business to a quantitatively analyzed (and analyzable) science. Given the large amounts of money in baseball over the past 20 years or so, it isn't surprising that baseball has undergone a transformation so that the computer nerds have taken over. I'm a fairly big baseball fan, and was turned off from reading this book for so long because it has become a `cliche' and I believed that it would be shallow and trite. It is anything but. This book is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to understand how `professionals` view the game today. It is easy to read, but packed with details about the new way of looking at baseball. There are also detailed character studies of some of the players (like Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford) and front office people (primarily Billy Beane and John DePodesta of the As).
The central theme of this book is why the As were able to remain competitive year after year even though they had a total team salary that was 1/3 or 1/4 of the big players like the Yankees and Red Sox. Judging from the reviews I've read on the Amazon sights, many of the reviewers still don't fully appreciate the arguments in this book. The goal of Beane and his cohorts was to bring a mathematical approach to the game and find out which aspects of the game were overvalued (from a mathematical and financial perspective) and which were undervalued. Beane wanted to quantitatively determine which traits were most important (and not rely simply on scouts judgment), but also determine how these traits were compensated in the market. Many have said that Beane and company look at OBP, slugging, OPS, etc., and disregard batting average and defense. This is true, but the key point here is that these traits were also undervalued by the market (at least when Beane got started). It is this point that allowed the As to remain competitive. They could trade players who were overvalued (like closers) and pick up inexpensive, undervalued, but highly productive, players in return.
The first part of the this book details the development of Bill James and his mathematical approach to baseball. There was apparently a small community of baseball fanatics who had, in the 70s and 80s, analyzed the mathematical details of baseball and determined that things like OBP were key factors, and not BA or defense. It took the major league clubs another decade or more to realize (or accept) this. Subsequent chapters deal with Beane's maneuvering to get players that fit into his philosophy, detailed accounts of some of the players Beane acquired (like Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford), and lots of inside details about the messy business of the day to day workings of a baseball front office.
One of the thing that is stress over and over again in this book is that Beane and his cohorts stress process over outcome. They don't care if, in any individual case, their decision works out. They are confident however that over the long haul they will be right. They are playing the averages, and this is what is keeping them competitive with the big-payroll clubs (it is also why they really can't compete in the playoffs with the big payroll clubs - they are beating the `league average' in the long run, but the teams in the playoffs are far from `league average'). Beane and his cohorts have often been wrong (one obvious example taken from the book is Scott Kazmir - they wanted nothing to do with him in the draft as he was a high school pitcher and their process said that the risk on high school pitchers was too high - I wonder if they would like to have a do-over on that pick?), but because they are playing the averages, their system keeps them in contention year after year.
This is a MUST READ for any baseball fan, whether you agree with the conclusions or not. It is well written, contains lots of detail (and will keep the nerdiest computer geek happy), but is also highly readable and doesn't get bogged down in minutiae. There is so much fascinating info in this book, I couldn't put it down (read through it in a day).
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