Moneyball

Rating:
Summary: Good Reading, Not really the facts.
Review: Michael Lewis is a great author, and really goes inside a war room in baseball. I love books about sports, and i sometimes aspire to be a baseball GM, and such.

Yet i don't believe the Lews portrays many characters correctly. For example Grady Fuson (the A's old Scouting Director) drafted the likes of great pros like: Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Eric Chavez. Lewis gives him absolutely no credit.

Also Assistant GM Paul DePodesta has said that Lewis can over dramatize some of the things they talked about, (like the importance of stats). Lewis also doesnt state that the A's drafted some guys too high, because they couldn't afford the best guys on the market.

With all that said Moneyball is a very good read, and takes you right to the GM's office Of a great franchise

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable book...
Review: It's amazing that with all the complaints by Selig & Co. of how poorer baseball teams cannot comepete, Beane and the A's have built an organization primed for long term success.

As a baseball fan, this book is a great read. It crystalizes what specific factors weigh in to Oakland's player evaluation metrics, and how they leverage inefficiencies in the market to their advantage.

One of the greatest tragedies in baseball is the failure rate of young players. For so long, we've assumed that it's because hitting a round ball with a round bat "square" is so difficult. However, as Beane and the A's have proved, teams are looking for the wrong skills!

Beane has assembled a roster of players that other teams have passed on and cast off, and with it, taken the mighty Yankees to the brink twice in the past 3 years. What's most remarkable is that this isn't an "abberation," but a system of player development that should keep the A's in competition until the rest of the league catches up.

Lewis doesn't get into the actual "meat" of the statistical methods used, but this is a great start for any fan of the game. Especially if your team has been in a state of never-ending "rebuilding."

Rating:
Summary: A new way to look at baseball
Review: it's always interesting to see someone deconstruct anything and put it back together in a way that makes you see things totally differently than conventional wisdom. The story fo the 2002 A's does that.

The one unanswerable question I had that Lewis never answered was-what happens when EVERYONE in baseball adopts something closer to Beane's sicientific approach? Will his present advantage disappear or will he adjust his approach again?
That's a relatively minor quibble. This is a great read.

I would only note while the Mets are now a mess, Kazmir, the high school pitcher that Beane passed on, is having a great season. We'll see.

Rating:
Summary: Money and Baseball
Review: It's refreshing, and re-assuring, to know that money can't buy everything, even in baseball. This book offers hope for all small market teams and their fans. Bill "spaceman" Lee, in his new book, The Little Red (Sox) Book says much the same thing in a humorous, revisionist manner.

Rating:
Summary: Realize that it's NOT a novel!
Review: Great, great book -- but beware of the wrong impression that you might get from the dust-cover write-up! I actually bought the book based on a misunderstanding; from the dust-cover, I swore this was a novel, a writer's fantasy about "what if" a baseball team were put together in a non-traditional way, by people who throw away the tired old assumptions and proceed on the basis of truth. But it turns out that this is no fantasy; it has actually occurred -- it's the Oakland A's of recent years -- and THAT'S what the book is about! And, it's so good that I didn't at all resent the misunderstanding that the book's blurb gave me (I'm sure it wasn't intended). If you are already a keen student of the "new analysis" of baseball (a la Bill James, John Thorn, Pete Palmer etc.), you'll enjoy this confirmation of what you pride yourself on knowing; if not, you'll have the wonderful adventure of getting a steep learning curve on the science of baseball and how for years and years the "old boys network" has failed to see the forest for the trees. Also, you'll laugh an awful lot, and your lexicon will gain some new catch phrases; my personal favorite is, "Put a Milo on him."

Rating:
Summary: Great reading for the thinking baseball fan
Review: Michael Lewis' "Moneyball" is a wonderful book that attempts to answer a strange paradox according to conventional baseball wisdom: How do the Oakland Athletics, one of the poorest teams in baseball, win so much and win so relentlessly? The answer is, of course, the system that General Manager Billy Beane built that challenged irrational baseball orthodoxy and made the most with the least in an inefficient system.

Beane himself was once touted by scouts who thought he had all the right attributes: speed, power, athleticism, and, yes, "the Good Face." When his major league career ended bitterly as an unambiguous failure, he turned his other talents to bringing rationality to an irrational baseball establishment. His new tools: statistical analysis, a willingness to discard conventional wisdom, an ability to think, and a demeanor designed to bait unsuspecting GMs into making foolish deals.

One of the best scenes from the book is Billy Beane in action during the 2002 trading deadline when he cobbled together a few good and undervalued players to add to the Oakland juggernaut. The funniest line in this section comes from Beane's dealings with the hapless Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a team he fleeced before: "[W]hile Tampa Bay's management was willing to talk to Billy, they were too frightened to deal with him." A god among mere mortals indeed.

To me, the most engrossing part of "Moneyball" is the Oakland A's 2002 amateur draft which would lay the foundation of the team in the coming years. While other teams were quite content to gamble and to dream the very possible dream of mediocrity in selecting raw and untested high school players, the A's used their seven first round picks to draft a bunch of college no names the baseball establishment scorned. Why? They were either too short, too fat, too skinny, too slow, or even too ugly to become, in the minds of baseball scouts who supposedly knew better, future stars. Beane rightly dismissed this subjective and irrational hogwash by highlighting attributes the scouts should have paid attention to instead: on base percentage, slugging percentage, walks, strike out-to-walk ratios, and other quantifiable measures that correlate highly to future success.

A word on the recent controversy between White Sox GM Kenny Williams and Beane when the former accused the latter of talking too much to Lewis and making Williams look stupid in their lop-sided trades. In "Moneyball" there is not one section where Beane says anything directly disparaging about his fellow GMs, but the Oakland GM's record nonetheless speaks for itself: GMs like Williams are letting irrational and institutionalized baseball prejudices blind them and Beane took advantage accordingly.

In the end, baseball commissioner Bud Selig could continue to continue to chant his mantra that "small market teams can't compete" over and over until he secures taxpayers' dollars to build every stadium. Teams could continue to ignore the mounting evidence that college players are a good bet and instead blow their money and time chasing down high-risk high schoolers or over-valued mediocrity. In the meantime, the Oakland example will show (and continue to show) that how wrong--and yes, how needlessly stupid--they are.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Insights
Review: I can't recommend this book highly enough. Not only is it the first look inside the most successful franchise - sure, there's the Yankees, but when historians look back, it will be Beane's A's that are remembered as the innovators. Even non-baseball fans will enjoy the crisp writing and phenomenal story-telling. Lewis' previous books are a high standard, but Moneyball may be even better. I'm still amazed that Beane allowed so much access - either Lewis is every bit as persuasive as Beane or Beane has something up his sleeve! The true star of the book may end up being Paul DePodesta, who will likely be the next great GM, following JP Ricciardi and Theo Epstein as "Beane Counters" and likely the men that saved baseball. I can't speak for the rest of Baseball Prospectus, but this has to be the best baseball book not written by us in the last decade.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book Written About How Baseball Really Works
Review: Michael Lewis, whose previous books have taken us inside the worlds of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, takes us to the offices of the Oakland Coliseum for a behind-the-scenes look at Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta, and the Oakland A's.

This is unlike any baseball book you've ever read, as Lewis reports on conversations that Beane had with other GMs and pulls back the curtains on the inner workings of a major league baseball team.

If you're not a baseball fan, this book will appeal to you for its in-depth look at a management team at the top of its game; if you are a baseball fan, you will be amazed by the level of detail that Lewis brings to the subject.

This book deserves a spot among the best baseball books ever written, alongside such classics as 'Ball Four,' and 'Veeck as In Wreck.'

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: Top Shelf Sports Book
Review: This is one of those books that had me thinking about it days after I finished it. It is a rare look inside the business of baseball, but even more, a look inside the mind of a true independent thinker (Billy Beane). The book is extremely well written and well researched and an all around great read.