Rating: 
Summary: Moneyball?
Review: I got the impression from reading reviews and snipits from Moneyball, that the book would give me a "fantastic" new behind the scenes view of the A's front office and Billy Beane. The book had it's moments(specifically when Lewis went in depth about the A's "new philosophy" and how things went down before the trade deadline), but the thing I took from the book more than any other, is that Lewis is a master of filler. I got the impression that he went in-depth about the family-life/history of Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteberg because he wanted to make his book a more respectable length, because lets face it, the fact that Chad Bradford throws side-arm, or the fact that he was taught to throw sidearm by his highschool coach/preacher has absolutely nothing to do with the economics of the game and he loosely tied Bradford in with Voros who makes the miraculous discovery about how pitchers don't consistantly give up the same number of hits year-in and year-out(I'm not trying to demean the discovery).I've seen some of the reviews saying "WOW THIS IS THE BEST BASEBALL BOOK I'VE EVER READ", if that's the case, baseball books are in a equally sad state on par with the game and it's economics. It wasn't a bad book, but out of the 5 books I've read in the last three weeks, it falls in at number five from best to worst. As a baseball fanatic(and self-proclaimed stat nerd) I can't even fathom how this book could possibly be interesting to the average fan or baseball novice.
Rating: 
Summary: Your Gut is Wrong! - win Baseball Games with Facts
Review: 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.)
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.
Rating: 
Summary: How to run your business on the cheap....
Review: Michale Lewis talks about how Oakland A's trump the biggest and best in baseball with their 'profit on the cheap' business strategy. Year-in and year-out, they get into playoffs with a $40 million payroll and compete w/ the Yankess (payroll $170+).
The ability of Billy Beane and his team (esp Paul Podesta) to hand pick 'low-end' players on the cheap, and win enuff to make A's profitable is a truly memorable story.
It gets deep into baseball statistics and history, but from a bird's eye view, it's more about running a business with a smart strategy (instead of following the lead of the big kahunas).
Recommend it more as a business guide than as a baseball story. But, if you love baseball (or any sport), it's a bigger bonus :)
Have read his one other book - The New New Game. And, it was
fantastic.
This book deserves a thumbs up from me.
Rating:
Summary: I thought I understood baseball......
Review: Then I read "Moneyball." Michael Lewis opened my eyes to nuances of the game I had not even considered. I played
the game, watched the game, and read every baseball book
I could find. This one challenged me to consider the
absurd way players are valued in the imperfect baseball
marketplace, and to question the very statistics I thought
defined excellence in the game. I am giving this book
to my Father because he's both a former ballplayer and
an economist. He will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: A book that's made its mark on pro ball
Review: Rarely do you come across a book on pro sports like this one, that manages to infuriate one group, enlighten another, and, at the end of the day, have a significant impact on the sport it covered. Moneyball essentially is a baseball how-to guide on constructing a team through maximizing the talents and abilities of low- to medium-cost players, rather than building one by overpaying for high-priced talent or marquee names. It is also a study of how one man -- Oakland A's GM Billy Beane -- and his followers go about finding these low- cost players, and what qualities and statistics they look for and value the most. Overall, it brings to the forefront a debate that has already played itself out in Major League Baseball in the 1-2 years since this book hit the shelves -- old-time, traditional scouting vs. statistical analysis and theories.
Michael Lewis is provided a great deal of access to the Oakland A's mid-season, and it's surprising to me that Beane allowed so many of his ideas to be publicized while he is still in a competitive position. Lewis portrays Beane as restless, not satisfied with mere wins, but seemingly moreso with constant tinkering with and improving the team. The actual game on the field is of little use to him, but the numbers that flow in once the games are over are his main course. Beane challenges what he perceives as the outdated scouting machine across the league, the idea that a player's value can be assessed by watching him throw or hit, looking at his frame and how he can fill out physically, and "meaningless" stats like batting average and RBI. Instead Beane ignores a prospect's physical attributes (see Jeremy Brown), and focuses instead on a player's ability to draw walks and get on base. Lewis deserves a great deal of credit in taking all this information, analysis, and statistics and writing it all in a way that readers can easily understand.
As for Beane's theories themselves, several of them have worked their way into the game already. The Red Sox built their 2004 squad with Moneyball in mind (GM Theo Epstein is one of Beane's disciples) and won the World Series employing OBP guys like Mark Bellhorn, and buying low on plenty of middle-tier free agents in the past two years, most notably slugger David Ortiz. But there are also a bunch of his ideas that are a little puzzling, and quickly have been tossed aside by baseball minds. The idea that the dominant closer is a myth (and that any journeyman can close out something like 98% of leads in the 9th inning) has quickly gone by the wayside -- even by Beane and his followers (Oakland and Boston have both invested in high-priced closers in the past two seasons). And Florida quickly disspelled Beane's staunch belief that bunting and stealing bases are counterproductive and meaningless, by merely winning the World Series in 2003 through speed and aggressive baserunning. And I wonder what Beane has to say about the impact of Dave Roberts on last year's ALCS.
Whether you buy into what Beane is selling or not, whether the introduction of "rotisserie"-type analysis and team-building is upsetting to you or not, the book is great, and on top of that, it's had a significant and increasing impact on Major League Baseball.
Rating:
Summary: So many ways to enjoy this book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Even if you don't like baseball, it's a must-read!
Review: First off, I'll confess I detest the game of baseball. I can't watch it on TV, and if I make it to the seven-inning-stretch of a live game it is due to a combination of free tickets and a good conversationalist in the next seat.
That said, I've enjoyed Michael Lewis' "Liar's Poker," "Next," and "The New New Thing." So I gave it a shot.
Michael Lewis manages to make the economics of baseball interesting entertaining by following Billy Bean's management of the Oakland A's, winning a tough division despite a cripplingly low budget for player's salaries. Economics itself is a difficult subject to make compelling prose of, but Lewis proved he could do that from his first book.
For someone who finds himself disgusted, not so much with the amount of money in professional sports, but the inscrutable way that money is distributed among owners and players, it is exciting to read about a guy doing what EVERYONE in pro sports says is impossible. It's not David and Goliath with some sort of divine intervention or freakish streak of luck: it's David beating Goliath by being willing to look at the problem a different way.
This is an excellent book for anyone who is fascinated with the debunking of conventional wisdom, or who loves seeing someone make the unjustly wealthy look flat-out stupid.
If you're a baseball fan, especially one who roots for an underdog or small-market team, I can only imagine that the book would be that much better.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best baseball books of all time
Review: Lewis has written what is one of the top 5 baseball books of all time.
The book, unlike what some baseball broadcasters have said, is not exclusively about Billy Beane. It focuses on the Oakland A's and their different way of viewing the potential of baseball players by using statistics such as on base percentage and not simply using scouts to provide judgements based upon watching the player play in a few games. The book if it was written a couple years later could have just as easily been written about the Boston Red Sox, which adopted this statistics based approach after Theo Epstein took over as general manager. Lo and behold, the Red Sox after 84 years of futility, won a World Series largely because of this new way of looking at baseball.
The book also provides a wonderful historical background for this approach and isn't written like the reader has a degree in mathmatics. Every theory is well explained for the average person who hated and struggled through high school statistics to understand. A historical background for the theories used by Beane and the Red Sox, and as mentioned briefly in the end of paperback edition, later the Blue Jays and the Red Sox, is provided. One of the main characters in the book, Bill James, is the father of many of these statistics and the way of looking at baseball used by Beane.
The book also isn't just about boring baseball statistics either. Lewis goes into depth about why Beane looks at baseball the way he does. According to Lewis, it's because Beane was a player that, according to the old way of looking at baseball using scouts and data such as 40 yd dash times, was a can't miss prospect. The scouts ignored statistics that would have raised red flags about Beane's major league prospect status. Beane never rose above a major league bench player. This experience, according to Lewis, drives Beane to never make the same mistake that major league general managers made in drafting him so high.
If you're a baseball fan and want to understand how the Oakland A's have won all those games in recent years even after losing players like Miguel Tejada and Jason Giambi, read this book. After reading this book, you'll also come away with some idea of why Beane traded away two of his best pitchers this offseason too.
Rating:
Summary: Really Enjoyable for Sports Fans or Managers
Review: If you ever have to evaluate performance in any field, or if you are ever evaluated yourself (and this includes virtually all of us), then you should find this book fascinating. Lewis gives us an inside look at the evaluation of baseball talent, and shows us the many ways that people are under- and overrated. Just imaging the difficulty of evaluating performance in fields where there are not dozens of objective statistics. How far off are your evaluations of your subordinates, or your supervisors evaluations of you.
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