Moneyball

Rating:
Summary: Misleading Title, Great Book
Review: Even though I enjoyed Lewis' Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, and Money Culture, I wasn't planning to read Moneyball. I didn't really care about the economics of baseball. Then I found out that Moneyball is about the Oakland A's, computers, and statistics. I had to read it.

Lewis reveals how the A's became (and have stayed) a top team even though they have one of the smallest payrolls in baseball. Billy Beane's (the general manager) method of using massive amounts of statistical information tells him what players to draft and what plays to execute under different conditions. The scouts and even the manager have become less important than his small staff of number-crunchers.

By following certain statistically-determined rules such as "never sacrifice bunt," (the numbers show that historically, it doesn't pay off) the A's have gone to the playoffs year after year. Beane refuses to draft players out of high school, because they haven't faced enough real competition to determine, statistically, if they will be any good. It's only in college and the minor leagues that players compile meaningful stats.

Not much money in Moneyball, just great writing, and a terrific story.

Rating:
Summary: Very good book, but far from perfect
Review: I really enjoyed every chapter of Michael Lewis' Moneyball. It took me only one week to read, and I found that I could never put it down once I started reading (I'm a college kid, I even missed an early class from reading this book too early in the morning.) I enjoy the field of statistics, and I am a big baseball guy, so this book made sense for me to buy.

What I found most fascinating was the way the A's evaluate batters and pitchers. THeir drafts really did go very well each year, although they never did really explain why high school pitchers are worse to draft than college pitchers. For batters, on base percentage, number of pitches taken, and slugging percentage, and extra base hits are the best ways to evaluate, while for pitchers, it's strikeout to walk ratio, homers allowed, ground ball to fly ball ratio, and extra base hits given up. What makes it so fascinating is that the standards for evaluating players (avg/HR/RBI for hitters, and W-L, ERA, WHIP for pitchers) are very rarely, if ever, considered when evaluating the talent.) What Billy did at the Trading Deadline was unique, and I think that other GMs should get some ideas from him and try to rip off other GMs like Billy did. The stories of Scott Hatteberg, Billy Beane himself, and Chad Bradford were also really interesting.

However, a little too much credit is given to Billy Beane. More credit should have been given to his assistant, Paul DePodesta, his scouts, and his coaching staff, in particular Rick Peterson, his pitching coach. This book also doesn't mention the aspects of the A's that have failed since Beane took over as GM (never past the first round of the Playoffs, an offense that even with Jason Giambi was only mediocre overall because of the greatness of the Big 3 in the starting rotation, and some bad acquisitions (Terrence Long, Carlos Pena, Johnny Damon, John Mabry, among others), and the fact that his choir boy manager in Art Howe was right more times than he gave him credit for. Billy Beane might be very creative and might be very successful in correlation to his team's payroll, but he is far from a "genius".

Just one piece of information that confuses me: after this book was written, at the trading deadline in 2003, Billy Beane traded a couple of decent pitching prospects for Cincinatti Reds outfielder Jose Guillen, who is the total opposite of a player Billy Beane likes. Guillen might have put up good power numbers the first part of the season, but he draws very few walks, takes very few pitches at the plate, strikes out a whole lot (1 in every 5.2 plate appearances), and his career OPS before 2003 was below .700. He's also been a big disappointment this year as an Athletic.....which makes me wonder why Billy thought he would be a great acquisition.

Rating:
Summary: Rethink What You Know About Baseball
Review: Lewis' account of the Oakland A's during a few years in the late 1990s when Billy Beane was their General Manager is a good look inside the strategy of baseball. How do teams select players, which players will be most effective over their careers, and what player traits lead to victories? These are the questions that Billy Beane has considered and reconsidered since he took over the helm of the low-budget Oakland team and found himself competing against teams like the New York Yankees, who could spend three times as much on player salaries.

Through heresies like reading the number-crunching of Bill James drafting fat ballplayers, and worrying more about On Base Average than fielding skills, Beane both outrages the baseball establishment and builds successful teams that make the playoffs and stay on budget.

This is a good book. You may not agree with Beane's strategy -in fact, that's precisely the point- but the book is well-researched and well-written. Lewis has done his homework. I only wish he'd talked to more people who disagree with Beane's approach. Over and over we read that Beane is an innovative genius with a Midas touch, but we never read any of the arguments against his strategy. A bit more balance would have been nice. But overall, this is good reading for the serious baseball fan.

Rating:
Summary: Thinking outside the box
Review: Michael Lewis deftly inserted himself into the A's front office to find out how a professional baseball team with a $40 million payroll can win 102 games and consistently 90 or more wins in subsequent years and compete with teams like the New York Yankees who have payrolls exceeding $130 million.

What he reveals is that by approaching baseball in a more rational, analytical way and doing away with all the traditional conventions, you can compete with anyone who doesn't do the same. Too many GMs and coaches are seduced by speed, home runs, and batters who swing at bad pitches when the simple truth of it is that in baseball the most precious thing you have are your three outs per inning. Anything that risks losing one or more of those outs is something you should avoid. As a long-time fan of the game, it's hard for me to swallow some of the anti-traditional things Lewis describes in this book. But the proof is in the pudding as they say and the A's success over the past several years is hard to argue with.

The focus of the book is A's GM Billy Beane, a former A's player himself who had a world of talent but could not transform that talent into a Hall of Fame career. He didn't have certain intangibles that are needed. Beane now recognizes those talents in the players he drafts, recruits and trades for. Beane's obsessive personality and unorthdox ways make for interesting reading. He's a man who seems horribly tortured by the game and yet thrives on his success in the game as well.

There are excellent mini-biographies in the book including one on A's first baseman, Scott Hatteberg, a Red Sox catcher who was thought all but done with baseball after he ruptured a nerve in his throwing arm. The A's reclamation project recognized a diamond in the rough and brought him aboard to train him as a first baseman, mostly so they could benefit from Hattie's shrewd batting.

Chad Bradford, the A's middle relief pitcher with the unorthodox pitching style and uncanny ability to get outs, is also profiled. A's minor league phenom Jeremy Brown, a former University of Alabama catcher who broke all sorts of NCAA records but wouldn't get a look from most pro teams, is also profiled. You get the sense from this book that there IS no traditional upbringing for a pro baseball player. The A's unusual collection of "misfits" all came from different backgrounds and most have taken a rather odd path to success.

This book is a great insiders look at a pro baseball team and how they approach the game from a very unique perspective. The most fascinating thing of it is, the A's didn't invent what they're doing at all. They're exploiting baseball wisdom that was anyone's for the taking for the past 30 years. You just need to know where to look.

If you're a baseball fan or just someone who can appreciate creativity and ingenuity in a world that promotes imitation, you'll enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Moneyball - not just for the baseball nut.
Review: Michael Lewis's story about the Oakland A's contrarian, statistics driven approach to building a baseball team is outstanding. The book provides interesting detail and lessons to be learned in an engaging style that kept me turning the pages until I was finished. The story is about how Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta went about exploiting baseball's player market value inefficiencies to turn one of the lowest payroll teams in the league into a contender. Interesting stuff while a surprisingly light and entertaining read.

I am not a big baseball fan. I bought the book after hearing Mr. Lewis interviewed on the radio where he focused on the observations this book was making about the flaws inherent in subjective "that's how we have always done it" decision making. I thought the book might support my own thoughts on the subject and I was right...focus on process and outcomes usually take care of themselves.

I never really followed the game of baseball very closely, but you can bet that I will follow the second half Oakland's season like a life-long A's nut!

Rating:
Summary: For anyone who also finds Joe Morgan to be a buffoon...
Review: Moneyball is one of the most enjoyable books I've read in quite some time. It very bluntly states why teams like the Kansas City Royals continue to wallow in their misery while teams with some semblance of intelligence in the front office can thrive, all in a very concise and easy to read manner. Key discoveries, like McCracken's theories on pitchers not being able to control balls in play, and other defining moments in the way baseball statistics are looked at are given ample space to develop without overwhelming the reader with regression analysis.

Looking past the brief sabermetric focused parts of the book, it is simply a great tale with many intriguing characters. Scott Hatteberg, the converted catcher who has to learn a new position. Jason Giambi, who is what most Oakland As will become after their six years of indentured servitude. Jeremy Giambi, his defensively challenged brother. Chad Bradford, a soft throwing pitcher with an unorthodox delivery. Jeremy Brown, a overweight catcher who has a propensity for finding his way on base. And of course, Billy Beane, a man who gets plenty of publicity today, some good, but a lot negative from people too narrow minded to think in new ways.

One question that some people believe remains after the novel is "what happens when all of baseball thinks the way the As, Blue Jays, and Red Sox now do?" The answer is contained in the book - its not likely to happen anytime soon, dispite the overwhelming evidence for many teams to have a complete brain overhaul. Commentators like Joe Morgan, (occassionally Peter Gammons), GMs like Allaird Baird, and managers like Larry Bowa will be in power for the next decade or two, and don't look like they'll change their ways short of a 162-0 season out of the As.

Rating:
Summary: Geeks' revenge
Review: Who knows baseball better - the jocks or geeks? Well, it appears that you can't rid the front office of jocks, but you're screwed if you don't let the geeks in. Lewis has written a book that ultimately proves that careful statistical analysis is often superior to conventional wisdom in finding out what makes good baseball players and teams.

Moneyball tells the story of the A's general manager Billy Beane and his assistant Harvard grad Paul DePodesta and their quest to build an A's team armed with the smallest budget in baseball and a new approach to baseball stats. The success that they achieve proves once again that people cannot accept the fact that science is superior to intuition and conventional wisdom in many circumstances. Beane is a former major leaguer whose promising career never really took flight despite everyone's high expectations. Fortunately, he found his niche in the front office of the Oakland A's, a team he transformed by deemphasizing the conventional wisdom that had falsely predicted the outcome of his own major league career.

Inspired by the sabermetrician Bill James whose Baseball Abstracts were appreciated by only a handful, Beane and DePodesta decided that the best way to spend the tiny A's budget was to draft or trade for players who were undervalued in the baseball market but whose stats told a different story. For example, they realized that on base percentage was worth more than home runs or batting average. They wanted players who could get on base whether by walk or hit. After all, a home run is worth a lot more if previous batters make it on base. Beane and DePodesta also realized among many other things that good fielding stats were overrated, errors were often meaningless, and luck plays a huge role in the outcome of a baseball game.

The beauty of this book is that it reminds us again and again that no matter how strong your subjective notions are, don't forget that statistical analysis is an objective enterprise largely devoid of emotional attachments and preconceived ideas. Of course, choosing players based completely on refined statistical analysis while ignoring other nonquantifiable factors is foolish, but the A's are proof that this new approach is extremely effective.

Very highly recommended.