Moneyball

Rating:
Summary: Root for the Little Guy
Review: I was very surprised when I read this book. I knew that the Oakland A's had a low payroll and an excellent team. I figured that it all had to do with management and thier decisions on players. But I had no idea of the elaborate system that the A's used to find players and how they were able to land them so cheaply. It is truely facinating. The tactics of getting good players for less money than they were worth was eye-opening. Some of the players on the A's were people who no one else wanted because they were not the "typical looking player." The A's took player who were sometimes too fat, too short, and too slow. Everyone continually writes them off becuase they don't do things the conventional way. The thing is, they can't do things the conventional way because they don't have the money.
They have come up with a system that is widely based on the use of statistics and computers and a very strict philosophy on the type of player to draft. This might sound strange now but it is so well explained that at the end you should become a ravid Billy Beane and Oakland A's fan. You will suddenly wish to follow everything that they do.You will understand that thier record 20 game winning streak was deserved and that all the critics were wrong. Moneyball shows that a small market team, when run in a unique way, can be incredibly sucsessful and can give its high priced oppentents all that they can handle.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, doesn't tell the whole story
Review: "Moneyball" is extremely well-written. It is a quick read and a good read. However, there are some problems with the information presented here. Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, and Mark Mulder are all unbelievable pitchers and have much to do with the success of the low-budget team in Oakland; however, they are barely even mentioned in the book. Michael Lewis spends more time on finds like Scott Hatteberg. However, most of the A's success is due to the Big 3. And Billy Beane deserves a lot of credit for finding and drafting those guys. It's just not spelled out in this book.

To read this book and have no knowledge of baseball, you would think that all other GM's were idiots. Guys who just didn't get it. After reading this book, I'm not sure how Billy would find guys like Vlad, Sammy, Pedro, Ichiro (well, basically foreigners who wouldn't fit his statistical model). Sometimes, relying on scouts is a good thing. And sometimes drafting high schoolers (Griffey, Kerry Wood, Josh Beckett) is also a good thing, even if it is a bigger roll of the dice. But Beane does have an admirable plan.

All in all, this book is a worthwhile read, even if it does have the noteable ommission of Hudson, Zito, and Mulder.

Rating:
Summary: Baseball and Truth
Review: Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane and his radically different (and effective) understanding of baseball as a matter of statistics. The success of the Oakland A's, despite one of baseball's lowest payrolls, attests to the efficacy of the strategy. This book is about much more than Beane or baseball; it describes the uphill battle that truth fights against the safety of conventional wisdom. You do not need to know the difference between a fastball and a fly ball in order to enjoy this book, or find its message relevant.

Rating:
Summary: Take a Number . . .
Review: Moneyball is about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's efforts to use statistics to get a competitive edge that translates into more runs scored versus the opponents and more wins. If that's all the book was about, it would be a bore. The story is enlivened a little by the fact that Mr. Beane has less money to work with than most other clubs, so we've got an underdog to root for. But Mr. Beane also turns out to have a volatile temper and a mindset that makes it hard for him to make good decisions in the heat of battle. Those problems kept him from having the "all-star" career that many expected for him as a player. So ultimately the book is about a man getting grips on himself so he can be more successful. Now, that story (if was the entire focus) would have been fascinating . . . but Mr. Lewis clutters the book up with unnecessarily long and boring nonmathematical descriptions of mathematical issues . . . and hurts his story.

That said, chapter two ("How to Find a Ballplayer") has some of the funniest dialogue in it that I have ever read. I had to stop reading the book every so often to stop laughing long enough for the pain in my abdomen to go away. I kept racing through the book to find something else as funny or as good . . . and didn't find it.

Mr. Beane believes that he needs to maximize on-base and slugging percentage for his club and the percentage of strikeouts and ground balls hit by opposing batters. So he focuses on finding players who are good at creating these results. Some of his searches take on a comic character when he finds players who are very deficient in fielding or speed.

This book will appeal most to those who admire Mr. Beane and those who run fantasy baseball teams on the Internet. Such readers will enjoy understanding more about the practical issues involved in applying statistics to baseball in the big leagues.

I was extremely surprised that Mr. Lewis did not briefly show someplace the statistical analyses that favor the quantitative ideas expressed in the book. This book could have been an entry point to interest young people in statistical analysis, but the book's content falls far short of that level. I mention that point because I did a science fair project as a youngster based on Branch Rickey's writing about what factors influence winning pennants. That article, although vastly out-of-date, probably did more good than this one will to encourage the statistical study of human behavior.

One of the better parts of the book is the chapter on Scott Hatteberg (chapter 8) which describes how he came to focus on batting discipline . . . which made him attractive to the A's after his catching career was over. I would have enjoyed understanding more about how disciplined hitters came to be that way. Instead, the book provides much too much information about why most hitters are undisciplined.

If you have never dreamed of being a general manager of a baseball club, you will probably find this book to be a little below average as a sports story.

As I finished the book, I wondered what it would take to stimulate millions of people to start doing these same sorts of measurements and analyses for reducing poverty, housing the homeless, conquering illiteracy and many other social ills. Now, that would be a book!

Rating:
Summary: If you're not a baseball fan, please give this book a pass
Review: First of all, I must admit that I have been one of Lewis' fans since his classic Liar's Poker. How could I miss this one which Tom Wolfe described on the inside back cover as Lewis' grandest tour de force yet? However, being a Chinese trader who's ignorant about baseball, I could only complete the first two chapters (42 pages out of 288) and put it down. The large amount of baseball jargon and player name just stopped me from reading onwards. In fact, this review is written with the sole purpose to warn fellow Lewis' fans that this book, unlike his previous ones, require readers of certain knowledge and interest of baseball. If you're not a baseball fan, I strongly suggest you to give this book a pass.

Rating:
Summary: Nerds, start your calculators!
Review: If Lewis had decided to play devil's advocate instead of lap dog, and scrutinized some of the assertions being made, then this might've really been something. As it stands, the narrative's defining quality is negligence. That's why the 2 stars.

It's already been said here, but the A's were very fortunate in that they had three young pitchers get very good very quickly, insuring several years of productivity before facing the prospect of free agency.

In the playoffs, it comes down to pitching, defense, and timely hitting, only one of which Beane and co. have deemed to be important, which may explain the wall they hit when they get there. Their biggest oversight might be their devaluing of producing in clutch situations. In the last 4 playoffs, the A's opponents have gone 9-0 when facing elimination. I guess guts DO count for something, huh Billy?

I give credit to Beane for at least trying something different. Given the cash-strapped A's, their mangled stadium (courtesy of Al Davis), and lukewarm fanbase, this is not an organization that can win going toe-to-toe, even if I don't necessarily buy into their 'brave new world' of organizational philosophy.

Ignore the scouting department and have Harvard economists surf the internet...I don't think the emperor is wearing any clothes, but I guess we'll see.

Rating:
Summary: major eye opener onto the field of baseball
Review: This book is about the power of critical thinking. It traces the moves made by a general manager--Billy Beane--who, with the help of statistical geeks, was able to find undervalued players and dish off overvalued players. The author points out that players are commonly misappraised because their value is generally tied to things like "looks" and statistics like "batting average" and "rbis" and "saves" and "fielding percentage" which do not adequately reflect the extent to which a player's performance contributes to value to his team. For example, Mr. Lewis describes formulas which have been derived that accurately predict the number of runs a team will score over the course of a season, and these formulas do not depend on some very commonly used (or misused! stats) After you read this book you will get the point that on-base percentage is 3X more valuable than slugging percentage in the formulas. One drawback of the book is that the formulas discussed are not explicitely stated and their validity is not conclusively demonstrated. Another aspect of the book I also wish was expressed in more detail is the new set of pitching statistics that are devoid of any aspect of luck commonly built into today's commonly advertised stats, like "wins" and "era." In the end, the lesson of the book is that you must always ask, "why, why, why." Why do I care if this pitcher has 30 saves? Why do I care if this outfielder made 10 errors. This books explains in a fun way why you shouldn't necessary care about these questions at all!

Rating:
Summary: We're all just numbers
Review: I did enjoy this book although it wasn't what I expected. It was interesting to see how a club with a small payroll can produce on the field. I was impressed to see that the A's would consider players who consistently produce on the field without much fanfare. Rather than concentrating on the hot player who could suddenly go cold after the contract has been negotiated.

The concern I have is that each player is essentially turned into a statistic. They plug you into their model and a number is spit out. I understand that major league baseball is no longer "America's pasttime," but a business. If your stats don't cut it, you are gone.

The shortfall I see is with the A's is they do not even consider pursuing a great ballplayer just because of the money they rightfully deserve. This may be why they haven't gone all the way.

This book isn't about team camaraderie or a rich tradition. It's a little thick on statistics and about being cheap. I'm eager to follow this team and the others that employ this approach to see how far this experiment can go.

Rating:
Summary: It's about baseball the way Fight Club is about fighting ...
Review: Michael Lewis has written a phenomenal book here. Like all good non-fiction, Moneyball tells a slice-of-life story that has applications and implications for virtually all areas of life. The overarching theme--that what we know may just not be so, and that value in people, even in what some may consider a trivial pursuit, baseball, is not always subject to the "conventional wisdom"--resonates through every page and through every character. Having watched the Oakland-Kansas City game that capped the A's 20-game winning streak in 2002, but having known nothing of what went into that night, I found the story of Scott Hatteburg to be full of life truths. Ditto Jeremy Brown.

Despite its somewhat unfortunate title, Moneyball is not to be missed. You will put it down with a renewed determination to find the things YOU are undervaluing in life because of myths you have been taught. The most likely target of this refreshing approach is YOURSELF.

Rating:
Summary: Business Case Study - That Happens to Be a Baseball Team
Review: This is either a great baseball story or a case management study. I chose to regard the book as the later.

If you are trying to run a business or enterprise or even some government department or division what should be your goal? Your goal should be to try and maximize return on investment or operating expenses to get the best results, so your "customer" be that a hospital patient or someone purchasing some product or service gets the best experience and best value while you provide that service spending the least money. It is called good management and or called running a winning and effective operation.

Many managers in all kinds of businesses lose sight of this basic idea. There are about 120 major professional - top level or major - sports teams in the USA and Canada including football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. In general the "big market" teams with more income per player do better. They do better because the managers sign contracts with the best prospects, or best current players, or best free agents, etc. Unfortunately it translates into spending lots of money without too much thought, but with the general idea that better players will yield better team results - higher win to loss ratio. In general this is true but not always. Yes the Yankees have won the most World Series, and have the biggest payroll, but they do not win every year. During the other years teams with different managers, players, and "team chemistry" win.

Now getting to the book. The book is a case management study of the Oakland baseball team in the American league - the same league as the Yankees. It describes how people in Oakland have accepted the idea that they have less money than say the Yankees, about 60% less, but then have said okay, how can we realistically improve our win loss record so the team is competitive. The book is a case study in how to make the operation more efficient by planning and executing at a very detailed level. It seems to involve much more planning and thought and at a more rigorous level than a normal baseball team (my guess). It shows or describes the way all the parts of the team (players) should fit together, the thought process in selecting players, and the results of the hires - the winning team.

It is a very nice case management study, with the bonus of being well written and entertaining baseball book about the A's.

Jack in Toronto