authors
data
ISBN-10: 0-393-32481-8
ISBN-13: 9780393324815
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York City
Country:
Year: April 2004
Size: 14.00 x 20.80 x 2.01cm
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 299gr
Binding: Paperback
editions
Prof. Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company, New York City; 2003
Hardcover
order
description
»One of the best baseballand managementbooks out … Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.«Forbes
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only »the single most influential baseball book ever« (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what »may be the best book ever written on business« (Weekly Standard).
I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write itbefore I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?
With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilitieshis intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admissionbut the real jackpot is a cache of numbersnumbers!collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors.
What these geek numbers showno, proveis that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.
Billy paid attention to those numbers with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had toand this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win … how can we not cheer for David?
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.
Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe
reviews
I read the whole thing at once!!!!! I could not stop. It is a great real story and great insight into what baseball is all about.
This book is one of the better financial economics books ever written about real, not theoretical, application on asset valuation, not to mention the amazing main story on the Oakland Athletics. Billy Beane has often been considered one of the better general managers in baseball (due to his regular season success with the A's), but »Moneyball« goes beyond just identifying this success by providing a look into the ideology of Beane's decisions. This book shines in its ability to display the history of baseball sabermetrics and its most influential figures. As well, Lewis, along with Beane, argues on base percentage and slugging percentage are, by far, the most important statistics in baseball (obviously parting ways with »the good old boys« in baseball who award the Triple Crown to the league leader in home runs, RBI, and batting average). Finally, and this is where the book takes an unprecedented turn, Lewis is able to take his research on Billy Beane and discuss the importance of statistics in making decisions concerning asset valuation; that is: comparing baseball players, who to sign and release, and who is worth money and who is not. Lewis' background studying economics at the London School of Economics serves him well in drawing this correlation, and ultimately this book provides compelling evidence Beane's strategy in Oakland is a winning way.
Never been a baseball fan, but picked up »Moneyball« based on the prior and very enjoyable experience of reading Michael Lewis's work – happy to say that the book did not disappoint! The author sets out to answer a simple question: how did the Oakland A's, one of the poorest teams in the league, manage to win so many games against much better funded opponents? Of course, money is not everything, but great talent costs money, so how did they do it? Turns out, the baseball talent market was inefficient (in a technical sense), meaning that by virtue of history and established practices, often times the scouts would pay for attributes that had little to do with the success of the team. Michael Lewis provides a number of interesting insights into the birth of »sabremetrics« (statistical analysis of baseball), and how it has changed the game within a short span of the past few years. A fantastic read and an illustrative case study, regardless if you are a baseball fan or not.
This book explores how statistical analysis of baseball games, called sabermetrics, are revolutionizing the way that professional baseball is played. Moneyball follows the Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane during the 2002 season, focusing on how they select players to draft and acquire through trades not by traditional methods, but based instead upon an objective statistical analysis using non-traditional statistics, allowing them to remain competitive with teams capable of paying much more money for their players. Being someone who enjoys math and is interested in how efficiency is achieved, and despite having very little knowledge of baseball (the bulk of my knowledge comes from this book and from asking my dad questions), I found Moneyball to be thoroughly enjoyable.
I must be one of the last people to read Moneyball. When it first came out I was not mentally prepared to read a new approach in the game. Not that I'm a tradionalist but it was baseball. It's the long ball. It's turning the double play and hitting the cutoff man. Now that I've opened my mind to many new things in life my timing was good. I actually felt like I was reading a couple of books in one. The life and times of Billy Beane and the Perfect Storm. So many have the physical talent but the mind gets in the way. That certainly was the case with Billy Beane. Years ago he would have been given his walking papers if he walked in to the boss and said I don't want to play but I want a job in the office. But timing was perfect for him. Everything was coming together, new owners and Sandy Alderson. So they tried new things and it pissed off the world but had some success. Now other teams are trying these methods and that shouldn't surprise anyone. Afterall were in a world of data, today's generation doesn't fight it they massage it and tinker with it and find little bits and pieces that just might give them an advantage. What's wrong with that. Baseball for so long was untouchable, it cloned it's managers, coaches, general managers and everybody was happy. Now a new creature appears and there is skepticism and words written in massive quantities about the perilous end to the game. I don't buy in to everything they say is working, but that can be said about any business that starts to look at things in a new way. Give it time and it will reveal itself. In the meantime it was fun to read and once again as you deal with human nature there is no answer only more questions.
keywords
- Ball Games – Field & Outdoor
- Baseball
- Baseball players
- Baseball – Economic aspects – United States.
- Baseball – General
- Business & Economics – General
- Economic aspects
- Management – General
- Salaries, etc.
- Scouting
- Sports
- Sports & outdoor recreation
- Sports & Recreation
- Sports & Recreation – Baseball – Essays & Writings
- Sports & Recreation – Baseball – General
- Sports Economics
- United States
- USA
related products
Prof. Michael Lewis (Eds.)
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Prof. Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company, New York City; 2008
Paperback
URL: http://www.book-info.com/isbn/0-393-32481-8.htm
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