Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Beane's business plan for the A's rested on a bold premise, namely that much of the traditional "knowledge" accumulated by baseball insiders was, well, b.s.. After all, Beane had tanked in his professional career after being tagged as a can't miss prospect, so how much could scouts know? Beane's plan, while radical, was also so fiendishly simple it's hard to believe it wasn't more common. Under Beane, the A's started judging prospects not by how athletic they were, or how good they looked in a uniform, but by how well they had performed in games. And if that meant hiring a group of Harvard graduates like assistant GM Paul DePodesta to pull names of college players off a computer, so be it.

Of course, the A's also faced the problem of money, since their payroll had to be kept at about 40 million dollars, or 15 million less than Alex Rodriguez makes. The solution? Treating the team like any other business, Beane and co. used cutting-edge research and technology to break players and stats into parts. Since they couldn't afford highly desired players, the A's had to figure out what was most important and go after it. And if the research is to be believed, it's the ability to get on base by any means necessary. On-base percentage takes on an almost mythical importance in "Moneyball," with the A's searching relentlessly for guys who could get on base and do it cheaply.

It's this aspect of the book that gets the most attention, and quickly becomes the most fascinating. Lewis emphasizes how the A's front office, with plenty of help from stat guru (but don't call him a statistician) Bill James, was able to look at numbers and find the underlying truth. As Lewis makes clear, it's not just looking at numbers that determines a player's value, it's looking at the *right* numbers. Lewis often draws parallels to the business world, and these comparisons serve to illustrate how one can make a killing with superior knowledge and counterintuitive thinking. It was strategies derived from the research of stat geeks that enabled the A's to improve their record in 2002 despite losing three of their top players to free agency.

Lewis also takes some time out from the analytical stuff to paint a vivid portrait of Beane himself. Lewis lets us see him plying his craft in the draft room and at the trading desk, demonstrating the shrewdness of a swindler. He often appears to be playing a different game from his colleagues, which is exactly what Lewis wants us to think. And we get to see Beane's (sort of) human side while he works out, and stresses out, during games. His frequent profanity-laced tirades and incessant tobacco chewing may not be too savory, but Beane is clearly just like the rest of us in at least a few ways.

Lewis gives us snapshots of some other, secondary characters as well. There's Paul DePodesta, Billy's Harvard-educated sidekick. There's Jeremy Brown, the overweight college catcher who was scarcely rated as a prospect despite having set records at Alabama. There's Scott Hatteberg, who was cast off by the Red Sox but given a new life in Oakland thanks to his ability to get on base. Finally there's Chad Bradford, the submarine-throwing pitcher who became a premier setup man with an 84-mile-an-hour fastball and a delivery that scraped the mound. We get to know all of these guys, and why they fit so well into the A's scheme.

Lewis also happens to be a pretty damn good storyteller, with a an engaging and uber-readable style. Bill James said baseball statistics fascinated him because they had the power of language, and Lewis's discussion of this seemingly boring subject demonstrates why. By framing a book about baseball in the language of business, Lewis makes his story accessible to enthusiasts of both. Not to mention, the book is worth reading simply for Lewis's brutally hilarious description of Jeremy Giambi's outfield play. High comedy, friends, high comedy.

I don't think "unputdownable" is a word, but if it were it would definitely be applicable to "Moneyball." I could even be convinced to say this is the best sports book I've ever read, and I've read some good ones. You don't necessarily have to agree with the A's strategies to enjoy the book, but you may well find yourself turned into a stat geek by the end. And for all you dolts out there saying Billy Beane had nothing to do with drafting Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, and Mark Mulder, it's right there on page 39 from a member of the A's scouting department: "Billy made us take Zito." So that's one down right there.


So many ways to enjoy this book   January 14, 2005
M. Strong (Milwaukee, WI USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

Here is a book that can be appreciated from so many different angles. For fans of baseball (which I'm not) the allure is obvious. For fans of statistics, this book offers amazing insight into how numbers can be employed in real life with very pwerful and very real results. For fans of human nature, this story offers a great look at how mistakes can be repeated and then perpetuated until someone with a strong mind and a stronger will comes along to break the cycle. And for fans of character-driven stories, Moneyball, like any Michael Lewis tale, has that in spades too.

If any of that sounds good to you, give this one a try.


Whjy You Should Have Studied Math In School   January 7, 2004
Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

I am not much of a baseball fan, but after reading a review of this book I was compelled to borrow a copy. The story is set against the backdrop of baseball, but it reads more like the solving of a great scientific mystery.

Anyone growing up in America, whether or not they even watch baseball, knows the basic stats that ballplayers are judged by: Batting average, RBIs, ERA and so forth. You can't escape them. And these are the numbers that make or break careers. Want to improve your team? Sell that .280 hitter and bring in a .295 hitter. Get a pitcher with a lower ERA, an so on. This was the received wisdom. To everyone but players of "Rotissiere Baseball", that is.

"Rotissiere Baseball" is a paper-and-pencil version of the game popular with thousands of fans who trade players and play games based on the roll of the dice and statistics that they've compiled- statististics very different from the ones commonly reported. The players- many of them mathematicians, actuaries and others with a mind for numbers. These stats- termed "sabermetrics"- were empirically derived and then validated againt actual player performance. And yet they were completely ignored by the people who could most benifit from them- the owners and managers of the major league teams.

With one exception: The A's Billy Beane. An ex-player himself, Billy didn't have the math skills of those who compiled the sabermetric model, but he did have an uncommon amount of intelligence, and knew a good thing when he saw it. He used the sabermetric model to identify undervalued and overvalued players, and quickly traded his way to a top performing team with a relatively small budget.

Now that wasn't the only reason for the A's success, and Beane's skill went beyond just his utilization of the model, but it's the central issue in this story. The book isn't just about the math, of course; the portraits of Beane and the players he selects are every bit as fascinating. A good read for baseball fans, and a fascinating introduction to an arcane world for the math minded.


Indispensible For Any Serious Baseball Fan   May 1, 2004
Edward Garea (Branchville, New Jersey United States)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Ever since free agency became integrated into baseball culture, the current wisdom has always been that the small-market teams must finish at the bottom because they don't have the resources to compete with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Chicago White Sox. The 1997 Florida Marlins spent their way to winning the World Series, but had to conduct a fire sale the next year in order to avoid bankruptcy. This, say the pundits, is in keeping with the current wisdom.

But there is an exception, and a rather large one at that. The Oakland A's, for years the epitome of the small market team, sharing a small market with the National League San Francisco Giants, have managed to win more games (553) from 1998 through 2003 than any other team save for the large market New York Yankees (598) and the Atlanta Braves (594). Now here's the kicker: In 2002, Oakland won 103 games, as many as the Yankees and two more than the Braves, with a payroll ($42M) only one-third the size of the Yankees ($133M) and half that of the Braves ($94M). Is this merely the exception that proves the rule, or is something else going on here?

"Moneyball" provides some of the answers. It is an in-depth look at how the Oakland A's, without the money of the Yankees, managed to win as many games by just looking at the baseball universe in a different way. The old rule was "you gotta spend money to make money." The '97 Florida Marlins spent their way to the World Series, and lost about $30 million in the process. They were forced to dump salary the next year and ended up alienation an already small fan base, which cut attendance even further. Billy Beane, the GM of the Athletics, realized early on that you can't spend what you don't have; thus consistency is the ideal. In this case, consistency is gained by getting the best players for the least money. To achieve this, Beane just looked at the same thing in a different way. Judge players by the things they can control rather than the things they can't control.

This is vividly illustrated in the case of Jeremy Brown, a catcher with the University of Alabama who was pooh-poohed by major league scouts, including Oakland's, as a "bad body catcher." But when Beane and his staff looked at Brown, they saw the only player in the history of the SEC with three hundred hits and two hundred walks. For Beane, the ability to control the strike zone was the best predicator of future success, and the large number of walks was an indicator of how well Brown was able to control the strike zone. The same held true for a pitcher. The speed of his fastball wasn't as important as the ratio of walks to strikeouts. Brown may have been slightly overweight and slow afoot, but he understood the strike zone. The same with pitcher Barry Zito, another overlooked Beane discovery. Zito may not have had that blazing fastball, but he knew how to manipulate the strike zone. What Beane and his staff did was simple: take statistics that already exist and rank them differently. If the game from the hitter's view is not to make outs, then the stat of on-base percentage becomes the best indicator of plate success.

What Beane and his staff knew that the others didn't was that, when humans are involved, the physics of baseball changes dramatically. There are an almost endless variety of books on the physics of baseball, illustrating the Newtonian principles of the curve ball, but when the human factor is computed the game comes down to probabilities. Newton ceases to reign. Heisenberg rules. While Beane's methods do not assure absolute success they do cut down on the probabilities, and that for the serious baseball fan is what the game is all about.

The paperback edition contains a beautifully written postscript entitled "Inside Baseball's Religious War." It is a counter-attack against the critics of the book and at the same time a devastating example of why baseball is in the mess it's in. The critics missed the point, seeing "Moneyball" as an exaltation of Billy Beane instead of as an examination of his system and why it has worked as well as it has. If baseball is to prosper, it has to forego the myopia that plagues it, and that is the real point Lewis is making.