Rating: 
Summary: Right on the Money
Review: As an amateur Sabrmetrician and devotee of Baseball Prospectus, I was very excited to hear of Michael Lewis' book "Moneyball." I've always admired the A's of the contemporary small-market days and how they are comprehensively a better team (except in power) than my own Texas Rangers, who have almost bottomless pockets.I was not aware of Beane's playing career and found that part of the book particularly interesting. Lewis seems to indicate that much of what has motivated Beane to utilize a sabrmetrically-based approach to baseball are his own demons from his playing career. Whatever the reason for the A's (and now Jays) systems of operations, the results speak for themselves. Hopefully the rest of the league will be as flinty and resistant as they have so far so we can see the dinosaurs taken to the cleaners a few more years before they are rendered extinct.
Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening and troubling
Review: The only negative review so far at this site seemed to confuse the author's craftmanship with his subject. This is a well-written, quick read, which, if you are any kind of baseball fan, will cause you to stop repeatedly and think about what you've just read. Every baseball fan has asked themselves over and over, why are marginal players overpaid? Why are millions invested in ONE player to the detriment of the team? Why does ownership seem trapped in some preconceived notion of what a ballplayer should look like? This book seeks to answer those questions and present an alternative view of how to run a winning team. And here, in a nutshell is that answer: Position players should be signed based on the On Base Percentage. Pitchers should be signed based on Strikeouts, Walks, Home runs allowed and groundballs. There. That's it. Time to go home and enjoy your vast savings, Mr. Steinbrenner. Of course it's more complex than that, but perversely, Major League Baseball seems to have based its criteria for quality on a completely subjective and error-prone system: Wins, earned run average, batting average, runs batted in. The book does a wonderful job of demonstrating how a small germ of an idea took hold, slowly grew, and then became embraced by people with the position to do something about it. It's the Revenge of the Nerds and it's positively engaging. Billy Beane comes off as some 21st Century tortured prince, except he's not Hamlet trying to avenge his father's death, he's every jerk high school jock you ever met who, as an adult, hates himself. Freud wouldn't even get out of bed for this one. It's sad because he and his computer geeks could actually save baseball from itself. But there is not one incident of joy reported in this book. It would be nice to read that he turned down the Red Sox job because he wanted to stay close to his daughter, but she is never mentioned as a consideration. It's just a shame that someone whose eyes were opened to the real value of ballplayers doesn't carry the exhileration of someone lost, now found, but rather wields it like some terrible weapon. And objectivity, statistics and mathematics notwithstanding, the fact is that nine Miggy Tejadas are preferable to nine Scott Heddeburg (sp?).
Rating:
Summary: A must read book
Review: The story is about how the Oakland A's became one of the best teams in baseball year after year despite spending much less than half as much as their competitors. However, the real story is the triumph of objective reality based on statistics and past performance over player appearance and traditions. This book has universal application in all fields. Lewis does a great job telling this amazing story.
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: A Completely New Way to Look at Baseball.
Review: Before reading Moneyball, I had two Bill James books in my bookcase, but they were strictly for show. Before reading Moneyball, I never once cared about the drafting and development of minor league baseball players. Before reading Moneyball, I never paid much attention to the reading of box scores. This book (which is extraordinarily well-written) has changed all that. Michael Lewis presents a unique and different view of measuring the value of baseball players, and a new way to evaluate players' talent. It's impossible to come away from this book without an altered view of baseball in general. After finishing Moneyball, I sat down and watched the Cubs-Pirates game from start to finish, looking at the nuances at the game I had missed before. I haven't done that in years. More importantly, this book got me thinking. I'm not sure that Billy Beane has revolutionized baseball. Much of Beane's ideas were also lifted from the Cleveland Indians' approach to scouting and player development from the early 90s. Led by Hank Peters and his assistant John Hart, the Tribe signed such luminaries as Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle and Jim Thome to long-term contracts, then developed their skills with an emphasis on long counts and walks. Lewis fails to mention this point, but his reports on theories of the game are fascinating. Lewis' reporting is top-notch. The chapter where Beane and his staff work to conduct the 2002 amateur draft is completely riveting. Also, the account of Beane's "trawling" for players through trades is equally first-rate. And I don't think Billy Beane has been deified at all. He treats some people who are rather integral to his success rather shabbily (think Art Howe or Miguel Tejada). However, it is impossible to deny Billy Beane's influence on the game. The Red Sox and Blue Jays have both hired Beane disciples to run their front office -- heck, the Red Sox even hired Bill James. Any book that can rekindle a fan's interest in baseball deserves five stars. I'm already deep into my first Bill James book, which had sat untouched for the last eight years. Definitely worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: Baseball's Got a Blueprint
Review: This is an excellent read if your a fan of baseball or not. Lewis takes you into the most successful small market franchise in the majors and shows you how it runs. That is ofcourse for the baseball fan, but Lewis also gives the average reader something to read this book for. A look into the phsyce of one of the most intense men in baseball. An excellent investment of both your money and your time.
Rating:
Summary: Brtilliant and engaging. But the question I have is why did
Review: Billy Beane and the Oakland A's agree to let this book be written? The answer is at the end of the book. Beane wants some public recognition for what he's done. And what he's done is an amazing thing. The A's have the best record in baseball over the past three years but have one of the lowest payrolls. Beane stands the conventional baseball wisdom on its head and proves by wins that he is right. Beane turned down a huge contract offer from the Red Sox but his cooperation with the author is his baseball immortality. His bid to join John McGraw, Connie Mack, Sparky Anderson, George Steinbrenner (yes, that George) and Earl Weaver as baseball managing greats. The other completely untold reason why this book was published is pure arrogance. Beane is so confident in his methods and data that even after this book stays on the best seller list all summer the rest of baseball will stay the same. They won't adopt Beane's methods even though he is right. Now that's in-your-face arrogance. Although not discussed in the book, Oakland's drafting of Cornhusker Shane Komine is a perfect example. He was unhittable in college but didn't "look" like a ballplayer. He's short and slight. And then he had some arm problems. But he's tough as nails. He got hit in the face with a batted ball. His jaw was broken, he spits out some teeth and then throws to first for the out. He's now 6-0 in AA ball. And what's up with George Will siding with the quasi-socialist owners? I thought Will was a free market conservative. Just goes to show the pull of the romance of the game. Baseball is our most interesting game. Hands down. And this is a break-through baseball book for the literature that it is. The work-a-day baseball world will ignore it.
Rating:
Summary: Logic? Reason? In BASEBALL?!?
Review: Michael Lewis has done us a great service: he has unleashed upon an unsuspecting public the story of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. It's a story that legitimizes performance analysis, debunks the myth that baseball is to be seen but not studied, and of course, entertains, by way of some rather unlikely characters (Scott Hatteberg, Chad Bradford). For those of us that have been waiting for the Oakland-led assault on baseball tradition to become a full-fledged revolution, this book is an important step: every baseball fan who reads it and comes away discouraged by their own team's relative lack of sophistication, and we're another small step closer to that revolution.
Rating:
Summary: I hate to chime in with another 5 stars, but. . .
Review: I can't help it. This is Lewis' best since Liar's Poker, even better than The New New Thing, and only behind Liar's Poker because you've read him before. You can look a long time for another book that teaches so much and makes it so much fun. I see a lot of good reviews by baseball fans, and the book deserves them. But I'm in finance. This book will teach you more useful finance than most textbooks. All you have to do is imagine a board of directors instead of the tobacco-chewing scouts; or a bunch of fund managers, traders and analysts instead of first basemen and catchers and you'll see the same basic truths about statistics and human nature apply.
Rating: 
Summary: The Deification of Billy Beane
Review: Having read all of the Bill James Baseball Abstracts since they were first widely published, as well as articles and books from others in the field of sabermatics; and having been a Met fan since their beginning in 1962 and remembering the playing career of Billy Beane, I looked forward to reading this book. What a disappointment. After the first third of the book, which laid out the foundation of the Oakland A's methods of evaluating players, referencing the seminal works of Bill James and others regarding on-base perentages, pitches seen per plate appearance, et al, the remaining two-thirds turned into what I consider a PR puff piece on the greatness of Billy Beane, the man who saved or at least reinvented baseball. Not only did I find the book rather ponderous from the midpoint on, but I also thought the descriptions of Beane's habits to be depressing and very sad. Without a doubt he has retooled scouting and player development using the methods of sabermatics, yet he doesn't want to watch, actually almost cannot watch, the games themselves. When he does watch, he cannot enjoy what he is watching. Somehow, author Lewis does not see it this way, or chooses to make light of it as simply a quirk. With too little discussion of the technical nuances of his methods for my taste, the book is really a character study of a very complex and flawed individual, a man whose whole life revolves around baseball, but not the game as it unfolds on the field but instead the game of buying and selling commodities. It is almost as if he is only in the game to prove to others how smart he is, to gain revenge for the injustice of his playing career, and to do this by controlling and in some cases demeaning others (scouts, Art Howe, et al.) His front office staff come off far better, as men who love the analytical techniques they are bringing to the game, but also as men who love to watch the game unfold. In the long haul, it is they who seem to have the brightest and happiest futures, not Beane. In summary, I was very disappointed in the book -- the exerpt in Sports Illustrated and an earlier article in the New York Times Magazine told me as much as I believe was necesary to understand the methods, and the study of the man was too much a glorification of Bily Beane and too little an objective look at a very complicated man.
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