Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Rating:
Summary: An absolute must-read
Review: Any baseball fan must read this book. It's the story of former super-prospect and current super-GM Billy Beane, the low-budget but successful Oakland A's, and one interesting but not transcendent 2002 season, but it's not about the man or the team or the season. It's a basic philosophy that seems intuitive but is practiced too infrequently: a GM must seek out what is undervalued in the baseball market. So this is all about finding out what is valuable in baseball, defining this great game and what makes a good player. Sabermetrician or not, whether or not you agree, this book should be read by every baseball fan.

Rating:
Summary: New way to access talent and win......
Review: As the Boston Red Sox fan, I found this book to be utterly interesting. The book tells the story of how the money poor Oakland A's managed to fielded a winning team year after year on a budget which is only the third of the many of their rivals. Oakland's General Manager, Billy Beane have developed a new system of accessing talents and getting them cheap. In essence, it all about statistics, theories and possibilities that defied the traditional way for accessing baseball talent.

Of course, as a Red Sox fan, I found this book to be a great interest because the Boston General Manager, Theo Epstein, is the great believer and follower of Billy Beane School of Thought on accessing talents. But unlike Beane, Epstein can applied this concept with a big checkbook and the result I believed was the glorious Red Sox victory of 2004.

I think after reading the book, I believed someone like Epstein can applied the lessons of Beane and make it work more effectively with a big bankroll. Beane on the other hand, have to let go of players he developed as their demand for a larger paychecks continued. Thus lies Beane's great trap in life. He can maintained a winning team but probably never get to the next level because he can't hold on to what he have developed. The next level is, of course the World Series Championship.

A great book for any Red Sox fans out there. It may give us a clue on what Epstein is thinking about when he is giving out contracts, or rejecting a player or getting new player. If not a Red Sox fan, the book is still highly educational in the revolutionary way baseball is changing in front of us.