Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Book Review: Great Baseball/Business Book for Non Baseball/Business Fans
Summary: 5 Stars
Lewis, who previously wrote some of the best books on Wall Street's go-go '80s (Liar's Poker) and Silicon Valley's go-go '90s (The New New Thing), here turns his attention to professional baseball. Now, I should preface this by saying that I used to love baseball and these days it doesn't interest me much at all. There was a time when I was a total stats geek, I bought all the Bill James abstracts, played tabletop games, etc., but a combination of playing in college and the escalating money completely turned me off to the game. I knew this was supposed to be a good book but had no intention of reading it until Nick Hornby's rave review in his column in The Believer. I figured if one of my favorite British novelists liked the book, there must be something to it. I picked it up and within ten pages I was totally hooked.The basis for the book is the question of how the Oakland A's, one of baseball's poorest teams as measured by payroll, managed to win so many games in the first few years of the new millennium. Lewis's potentially boring answer revolves around inefficiencies in the market for players, but he weaves this story around the A's General Manager, Billy Beane. Now, if you have some axe to grind with Beane, you might as well not read the book, 'cause Lewis tends to be rather fawning in many places. Still, Beane's own background and mediocre career form the perfect framework upon which to build this story about evaluating baseball talent. Beane was a hugely athletic, "can't miss" prospect, who turned down a joint football/baseball scholarship from Stanford to sign with the New York Mets out of high school. His pro career turned out to be utterly undistinguished, and this disconnect is what drove him to seek new methods of scouting and evaluating baseball talent. It also helped matters that the A's new owners refused to spend any excess money, and demanded that the team be treated as a business. Beane jettisoned conventional scouting wisdom (and to a certain extent, methods), to focus on statistical indicators not widely followed inside baseball. Here, the book takes a detour into the realm of "sabremetrics" (the statistical analysis of baseball), and various attempts to arrive at more meaningful ways to calculating a player's offensive value.
The result of developing a criteria of player valuation that was radically at odds with the prevailing wisdom of the market was that Beane was able to get the players he liked for very cheap. The rest of the book is devoted to detailing this process. Chapter 5 is probably the best, detailing how the A's orchestrated the 2002 amateur draft so that they got an inordinate amount of players they coveted for below market value. Chapters 6 and 7 discuss the loss of their three star players after the 2001 season and how managed to compensate for this. To show the Beane methodology in action during the season, the reader is taken inside several trades and roster moves. This includes a chapter on the mid-season trade for relief pitcher Ricardo Rincon, bracketed by chapters detailing Beane's pursuit of certain players who were not considered major-league material (Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford). The book ends on a valedictory note, as the A's set a record by winning 20 games in a row and other teams start to buy in to their methods.
It should be noted that the book is far from perfect. Lewis has an unfortunately tendency for repetition when it comes to important points and themes, hammering them home, again and again. And although he does point out many of Beane's logical inconsistencies and emotional flaws, Lewis does often come across as more of an enamored fan than a strict journalist. Some critics feel that the A's success detailed in the book was based on several star players obtained the old-fashioned way, thus disproving the whole premise. However, it has to be understood that the practices detailed in the book can't really be proven to work one way or another for another decade or so. Still the insights into challenging conventional thinking and searching for alternative data or data patterns will likely appeal to readers of Lewis' other works and are applicable far beyond baseball. And while the jury is still out, several other teams have since hired general managers with the same basic philosophy as Beane. Ultimately, it's an interesting story, and one that Lewis tells very well -- even for non baseball fans.
Book Review: Controversial book about sporting success
Summary: 4 Stars
?Moneyball? is the story behind the recent success of the US baseball team the Oakland A?s. For years baseball has been dominated by the richer teams, leading many to conclude that it was possible to simply spend your way to success. However, one team, the A?s, consistently put together winning seasons despite being one of the poorer clubs. Lewis? book argues that the A?s success was due to precise application of economic thinking to baseball, both to the analysis of plays on the field and the money off it. It contrasts the A?s management approach with the ?old guard?, who are more prepared to trust their instincts and experience, rather than game theory. The clash is fascinating, and I suspect that it could be applied to any number of sports.The book begins with a dramatic clash between old and new thinking when it comes to drafting young high school and college players. It goes on to argue that it is lunacy for decisions about assets (players) worth millions of dollars to be in the hands of anyone other than economically minded people. Baseball is a sport that can be broken down into statistical categories more than any other, but Lewis argues that specific categories of stats have been systematically over- and under-valued over the years. New statistical analysis emerged in the late 1970s, but was ignored by the ?old guard? until the A?s management adopted it, allowing them to develop a clearer picture of a player?s worth and spot bargains that everybody else overlooked. Subsequently the A?s won as many games as clubs three times richer than themselves.
It is unfortunate, in one sense, that this book is about baseball. I am a fan, but to the other 99.9% of Brits who don?t know anything about the game, I think that the amount of jargon may render the book too obscure. This is a shame, because this is a genuinely fascinating and important sports book that is written for our generation, with the central question: when is a sport a business, and the people that run it businessmen? The answer given in ?Moneyball? is ?all the time?, a conclusion that has generated a storm of controversy in baseball. In addition, Lewis cleverly weaves in the human story behind the new thinking in the shape of Billy Beane, originally a highly touted young player who was highly touted for all the wrong reasons, and subsequently was the first baseball administrator to adopt the new thinking partly, we are told, to avoid the sort of costly mistake that his own career had been.
This could be one of the most important sporting books of the current era, with its underlying questions about sport and business. It is also very well written and the human stories (of Beane and other players) are intertwined well with the theory. If you are a baseball fan then read this. If you are a sports fan feeling brave enough to tackle the baseball jargon then read this. It would be a shame for it to go unread on this side of the atlantic because it is dismissed as a ?baseball book?, because it is more important than that.
Book Review: Superb book (better if you understand baseball however)
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a great read; fascinating and thought provoking about professional baseball. It's great to see how a team has overcome a lack of financial clout to be able to still compete and to use educated statisticians rather than ex-players who go on hunches and their experience (that they believe to be a global one).
If you don't understand the game however, some of it may pass you by!
Very recommended.
Book Review: Not just for baseball fans
Summary: 5 Stars
The book is centred around the Oakland A's baseball team, but as someone who had only ever seen one baseball game in his life, it was still a fascinating book. The narrative is about how the team can consistently outperform other teams which have more funds to pay for players etc.. Michael Lewis does not labour the analogy of their approach to other fields, and its left to the reader to think how the same ideas may be applied elsewhere. Even if you have never seen a baseball game you would be able to enjoy this book.Book Review: ... you'd really want to love baseball
Summary: 3 Stars
While the book has interesting insights into pro sport, it's very American. I found it a struggle.