Customer Reviews

Moneyball

5 star:		(138)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

Let me start out by stating this: I'm not a baseball fan. Hockey is my game. But Moneyball transcends the game itself because it is a great story. The failed athlete and now General Manager of the poor and humbled Oakland Athletics must figure out a way to compete against the freespending New York Yankees who have triple their budget. With a rag tag team of defective players, GM Billy Bean takes on the big market teams and baseball traditionalists with a couple of Havard grads with laptops.

And baseball will never be the same again.

Sure it has baseball and statistical analysis for content, but the real story is about a group of underdogs that by wit alone figure out a way to win an unfair game.

Buy it.

Lewis is a gifted writer who draws attention the great things that Billy Beane has accomplished in Oakland. This is really the first time that Beane has been given the credit he deserves in the mainstream, and it is long overdue.

When discussing Beane's player evaluation techniques, Lewis outlines a field of study known as "sabermetrics." For anyone who has not yet been exposed to sabermetrics or has only a passing familiarity with the subject, this will be an eye-opening book and could change the way you view the game of baseball. Many of the things you thought you knew about baseball will be proven incorrect, and you will be introduced to a number of new concepts that you will undoubtedly use in the future.

On the other hand, for anyone who is already quite familiar with sabermetrics (and more specifically, Billy Beane), you will not get much out of this book. Chapters 2, 5, and 9 will be informative, but the rest is either filler or a review of concepts you already know. You won't regret reading the book, but it may not be a particularly memorable one for you (it wasn't for me, hence the three stars). For people in this situation, it would be fine to wait for the book to come out in paperback and save a few bucks.

Overall, I would recommend reading Moneyball, but don't set your expectations too high if you're already familiar with the subject matter.

As an avid baseball fan, avid Seattle Mariner's fan, and avid Oakland Athletic's hater, I am in complete awe of this book. While I don't agree with every one of Billy Beane's philosophy's, so much of it makes sense. When you break it down, it's hard to dispute that it works for him. If every team used his thoughts would it work? Probably not, but that's the beauty of Billy and his team of computer nerds, they made a new way of thinking in baseball work.

Even if you're not a baseball fan, this book is a fabulous read. While he does go into great detail about many aspects of the game a casual observer wouldn't understand, he does it with such grace and elegance that it doesn't get the least bit heavy handed. Micheal Lewis is a master at turning in something that may seem dry to some, and making it a personal, touching story, with fabulous characters and incredible plot development. I highly recommend this book to anyone. It will be talked about for the next few decades for sure, if not beyond.

"Moneyball" is a connoisseur's book. And not necessarily a baseball connoisseur; indeed a lot of baseball fans may disagree with its central theme, or see their eyes glaze over, despite author Michael Lewis' ability to spin a compelling, page-turning story out of the obsession with statistical minutae that calls itself sabrmetrics (the computerized compilation and decision-making application of baseball statistics).
Financial technical analysts, business strategists, political analysts, military history buffs and a host of others will find themselves drawn into a narrative of a story that is set in baseball, and rooted in decision theory. Lewis doesn't get lost in the bits, bytes and statistical arcana. He builds his characters, with all their strengths and failings, and walks the reader through the seminal summer of 2003 when, after more than 35 years, technical analysis of baseball statistics finally hit the big leagues.
The book's central character, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, is himself a case study in why the traditional means of evaluating baseball talent too often fail. As a youth able to excel in baseball scouting's 'big-four' skills: run; throw; hit and hit with power, Beane should have been a slam dunk for a long stint in Major League Baseball. That he wasn't, and by extension neither are thousands of other young men evaluated by baseball scouts, begs the question whether scouts are measuring the right things.
The book introduces the father of sabrmetrics (so named from Society of American Baseball Research), Bill James. It walks the reader through James' ruminations and theories that traditional baseball measures of success remain unchanged from the game's infancy, set in an era when the computational power universally and cheaply available today was beyond comprehension. Stepping back from the tables, ratios and statistics, Bill James concludes that if you just measure the right things at the right time, you can pick better baseball players more likely to succeed in the majors.
Beane and the Oakland Athletics didn't embrace sabrmetrics because they wanted to. They did so because, in an era where richer teams could -- and in Oakland's case did -- buy the best talent in the league by stripping lesser-endowed clubs, Oakland had to! And in so doing, the Oakland Athletics did what high-tech entrepreneurs and outnumbered generals have done through the ages: be where the other guy isn't, and be there with everything you've got.
This book is a story about the breakthrough campaign. It is a book much like the story of the first use of blitzkrieg tactics in France in 1940, or the founding and growth of personal computer hardware icon Apple and software maker Microsoft. Once sabrmetrics showed obvious value, then most every baseball team started to do it. By looking for value where few others went shopping, Beane and the Oakland Athletics in 2003 identified players with the skills to build a winning team at a price they could afford.
Sure, Lewis wrote a baseball book that most fans of the sport can devour. But so can executives of medium-sized businesses looking for a principle to gain an advantage in a market dominated by a few well-heeled oligopolists. If you are picking an executive team, or looking to build a political organization, there are lessons to be learned from "Moneyball." It's a good yarn by a skilled writer who himself found a book where others had overlooked the material. Well worth a read. And like most productions, the book is much better than the movie, although the film is pretty good too.

Michael lewis has a way to tell the story that makes every subject interesting, and, when you give him a great subject, it makes a great book. Moneyball is one of those. It's really interesting to learn more about Billy Beane and how he developped the Oakland A's as we know, but its even more interesting to learn about what brought him to this point and what was his inspiration. Michael Lewis did a good Job balancing the main storyline with flashbacks that described us and showed us how Billy Beane ended up being Billy Beane the GM. It is a great book for anyone who has some sort of interest in baseball, there's no need to be an expert, Michael Lewis does a very great job and is very clear in what he says throughout the book. Its a must buy!!!

"Moneyball" is an oustanding read if your are interested in baseball, economics, and or statistics. Michael Lewis does a great job telling the story of the Oakland A's and just why a team with one of the smallest payrolls in baseball has compiled one of the best records. This was a book that I found almost impossible to put down and I know that everyone at work got sick of me talking about it, but it was fascinating!! Don't miss reading this one!!

Moneyball reminded me of 1980s-style education theory: throw out everything you know and try everything new. This was an unbalanced piece of journalism. That said, it was interesting. I'd rate the A's way of doing things about 50 percent right. There is a place in the game for "tools" analysis and a place for numbers. Being a Red Sox fan, I firmly believe that Pedro Martinez is a different pitcher before 105 pitches than he is after. I wish Grady Little had consulted that number in October. I do believe that many times a walk is as good as a hit. But Ted Williams walked too much and did not help Boston nearly as much as he would have if he had hit more. In the book, A's managers, coaches and scouts were treated as if they are idiots and there's only a couple of brains, Beane's and DePodesta's. And of all the deals Beane makes, we never hear of the bad ones and when Lewis lauds the deal for Chad Bradford, a reliever who will be out of the game in a couple years, we are not told the player he is traded for, Miguel Olivo, is actually a rising star. The White Sox just traded him for Freddie Garcia, a much better pitcher than Bradford will ever be. The book was good but unbalanced, a piece of hero worship.Too bad Lewis wasn't around last year, when the A's idiotic baserunning allowed the Sox to beat them and Beane whined that if he had $50 million more he's have beat Boston. $50 million more for what, baserunning lessons?

Awesome! The Oakland A's GM defies tradition and wins baseball games based on a different view of baseball stats and facts. This book has made me look at other sports, business, and life in general a little differently. I read the whole book over a weekend. . .something I almost never do. Fascinating! Read it. (I wish my home town ball club would wake up and read this book too.)

The novel Moneyball is a good book about an old sport. It addresses the issue of the use of statistical analysis in baseball. As an ex-amateur player, I found it very thought provoking that professional baseball being a sport ,as well a business, was so far behind in the business end, when considering profitability. I had always assumed money came first !! I have cut one star for read-ability. If you do not really know too much about baseball, it could be a hard book to get into.