Rating: 
Summary: Misleading Title, Great Book
Review: Even though I enjoyed Lewis' Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, and Money Culture, I wasn't planning to read Moneyball. I didn't really care about the economics of baseball. Then I found out that Moneyball is about the Oakland A's, computers, and statistics. I had to read it.Lewis reveals how the A's became (and have stayed) a top team even though they have one of the smallest payrolls in baseball. Billy Beane's (the general manager) method of using massive amounts of statistical information tells him what players to draft and what plays to execute under different conditions. The scouts and even the manager have become less important than his small staff of number-crunchers. By following certain statistically-determined rules such as "never sacrifice bunt," (the numbers show that historically, it doesn't pay off) the A's have gone to the playoffs year after year. Beane refuses to draft players out of high school, because they haven't faced enough real competition to determine, statistically, if they will be any good. It's only in college and the minor leagues that players compile meaningful stats. Not much money in Moneyball, just great writing, and a terrific story.
Rating:
Summary: Money Ball, an excellent story of success
Review: Money Ball, by Michael Lewis, is a non-fiction story about the success of Billy Beane, the current manager of the Oakland Athletics. It tells the story of his failure trying to make it to the major leagues as a boy out of high school, and what caused his breakdown. He was one of the premiere draft prospects in the country out of high school. However, he didn't want his future from high school to be in the major leagues. He wanted to study at Stanford, but when he said he didn't want to play baseball there, his acceptance was revoked, and he ended up getting drafted into the big leagues in the first round. After struggling in the minors for years, and only starting a few games in the majors, he retired before turning thirty, and asked to work in the front office for the Oakland Athletics as an advance scout. His heart wasn't in playing baseball. "In the end, Billy proved what he had been trying to say at least since he was seventeen years old: he didn't want to play ball."- Michael Lewis. After being a scout for the Athletics for some time, Billy Beane became the manager of the team. New management caused the Athletics to go from their high payroll status to a low-budget team. He had learned that the key to running a cost efficient baseball team was to look at the players' statistics, and to look for players who had experience playing in college, even though scouts looked mostly at high school players. Billy Beane had learned from a famous sports writer, Bill James, that on-base percentage was the key statistic for baseball. From that point, Billy Beane was looking for players who had statistics to prove their worth, and the statistics he looked at were on-base percentage and slugging percentage, because Billy Beane wanted players who could get on base and hit. The theme of the book is that, in life, you shouldn't always have to do what you're good at, you should do what you want and like to do. Billy Beane proves this by retiring as a baseball player, and going to work in the front office as a scout, because he still loved the game. His determination allowed him to quickly work his way into the manager position of the team, and from then he worked harder than ever to create a successful baseball team. This relates to my life because while I am good at punting and like to play football, I'm not really interested in going on to play in college. My friends and family are all encouraging me to play, but my heart really isn't in football. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone, especially baseball fans, because it gives a good in-depth look into how baseball teams are run. It is especially intriguing because it shows how effectively Billy Beane runs the low-budget Oakland Athletics, which is one of the best teams in the majors currently.
Rating: 
Summary: Great baseball book, but missing the point
Review: I give this book 4 stars because it was a great book to read. A real pageturner.
However, Lewis missed the biggest reason the A's were and will be successful for a few more years: starting pitching.
The single (or rather three) greatest reason the A's are winners are because of Mulder, Hudson, and Zito.
Take out these 3 players, and all the stats mentioned in the book (on base percentage, slugging, ob plus slugging, etc) are meaningless to winning. These 3 pitchers consistently kept the A's in the games while their offense patiently waited for the other team's relievers to come out.
How many teams have 3 startes that can give you anywhere between 15-20 wins a season. Many teams have 2, but probably only Yankess can match that capability (but not after this season, as they'll lose the Rocket, Wells, and probably Pettite).
I was only somewhat surprised the A's haven't gotten further in the playoffs the past few seasons. It's almost always the case the teams with strong pitching wins out in the playoffs.
I took a look at the A's team stats for year 2003, and they were in the bottom third in the key stats mentioned in the books (OB, Slugging, BB, etc) Also, I would liked to have more info on exactly why Billy Bean failed as a big leager. How did he hit over .500 as a junior in high school, then plummet down to .300's in his senior season? Why was he never able to adjust to minor and major league pitching? Book mentioned his mental weakness as well as "every pitcher having a slider". But if he was such a gifted athlete, he should have been adjusted and learned to his major league pitching. So will we see a trend in current GM's being replaced by Harvard grads with a knack for statistics and scoring models? I don't think anytime soon, althought it is, for me, a refreshing change of order in baseball from old-timers to new faces with modern ideas. So while my tone in the review might seem negative, I gave it high marks since I enjoyed reading it. I didn't necessarily agree with everything in the book, but objectively, it was a fun book to read with few insights into the game I never realized before.
Rating:
Summary: on the ball
Review: This is a very readable, witty book, which on the surface is about baseball, and the application of statistical analysis (sabremetrics) to the evaluating of players and strategies (knowledge of statistics is not necessary; he doesn't get into that: it's all about people and ideas). A basic knowledge of baseball is certainly useful, as Lewis drops the names of many players and mentions certain types of plays (i.e., hit and run, sacrifice bunt, etc.) without pausing to explain them, but also probably not essential. The people, and the lively writing of Lewis, are at the center here. Lewis nicely weaves together the personal stories of the A's general manager (GM), Billy Beane, other team execs and scouts, and the individual players who were often considered misfits by other teams for a very particular reason (a year or two too old, an odd pitching motion, etc.), but were considered bargains by the As. He gives good detail for anyone who has ever wondered how teams decide who to draft, or how a general manager negotiates player deals with other GMs (and, like Red Auerbach was for the Celtics in the 60s, is so good at picking the pockets of other teams that after a while they are reticent to deal with him). And it's very interesting how Beane, a promising high school player who could be a poster child for the failure of the old, scout-driven school, takes it upon himself to dismantle that establishment with sabremetrics. At a deeper level, the book is about several other matters:
- how does any organization evaluate and hire people?
- how does a radically new way of approaching a business develop?
- what -- and how long -- does it take for the new method to displace the previous way of doing things, and -- more importantly -- the people who do it that way? In the case of baseball, the development of sabremetrics -- which developed the new strategic insights based on detailed analyses of baseball's mother lode of stats -- has been ongoing for about 30 years. And the success of the Oakland As -- consistently making the playoffs with a payroll one-third of the Yankees -- is its first major test, and victory. (A few other teams, like the Red Sox, recently say they are heavily influenced by it, although paying huge dollars for 37-year-old veterans like Curt Schilling may not be the best proof.) But at most clubs the old-timers who run the game still prefer to rely on their subjective judgments. In other fields, such as high tech, the head-in-the-sand approach taken by most baseball people would lead to the death of the company. And perhaps that is why some companies do die. Certainly plenty of studies have shown that most companies make hiring decisions in ways that -- like most baseball teams -- are highly subjective. And what other industry has the historical, objective stats on performance that baseball has to develop the strategies from? Other than, perhaps, investment banking and direct marketing, maybe none. So, few could duplicate the depth of analysis, but many could profit from the style of thinking involved. In any case, a very enjoyable read -- I read it in a couple days over Thanksgiving -- and highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: I Wish This Book Had Been Twice as Long
Review: I loved this book and when I finished the last page I was wishing that it had been twice as long. With unparalleled access to the innner workings of the Oakland A's front office, Michael Lewis gives a rare look at a baseball organization which has broken the paradigm of Major League Baseball. Great reading and a totally different type of baseball book. Throughly enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: very enlightening
Review: i know baseball, or so i thught, but to finally see sabremetrics applied by a GM was completely awesome. check this book out.
Rating:
Summary: Great book - Billy Beane is a sorry person
Review: I enjoyed the book, and enjoyed reading about the statistics and methods used by the A's in developing their franchise. However, much credit is given to Billy Beane for building the franchise into what it is today. As the book points out though, he had little to do with the draft until 2002, when he totally took over. So, lets see where the A's are in a few years, when Billy's players make up their farm system. As for Billy Beane himself.....What a shame. Prior to reading the book, I knew just enough of the man to consider myself a fan - I tend to root for the underdogs. After reading the book, I've changed my opinion entirely. Man, what a jerk. He's a man who has little conscience; little control of his raging temper; uses the "F" word in every other sentence, and "wins" by basically screwing people over. I used to think poorly of players who said, "It's just a business. I'll go where they pay me the most..". After reading about Billy Beane, and possibly the future of baseball, I am almost sympathetic to the players cause. The numbers may show Billy to be a shrewd GM, but he's not much of a human being.
Rating:
Summary: drafting versus free-agents approach
Review: This book is very well written, it's an excellent, refreshing book on the inside workings of managing the drafting, signing and paying players. Billy Beane has turned the GM job into an art form. He has made trades, analyzed and critiqued them, and showed up other GMs. If I were another GM, and I saw Beane coming towards me, I'd cross the street. His approach is unique and amazing. Great title, and it's appropriate.
Rating:
Summary: Can't Put It Down
Review: If you are a fan of the statistics of the game, then this is for you. See how Billy Beane and cast completely redevelop how players are scouted and drafted. Without a big payroll, the A's are always contenders. How does he do it ?
Rating: 
Summary: The art of unfair winning
Review: Mr. Lewis is a talented writer, and he is clearly a thoughtful observer of the people and events he chronicles. It is therefore disappointing that on its most basic level, this book is not reporting but propaganda. A thoughtful reader will, I trust, discover that its premise is flawed in two respects. First, it is reductive in the extreme. The model which, we are given to understand, Billy Beane employs to such great effect, treats a baseball game as nothing more than a generator of "market information." Mr. Beane is noted, among other things, for hardly ever watching a game himself. We might expect the same from Mr. Beane's Socrates, Bill James. One wonders if Mr. James feels that the games themselves are, like the management of the Cleveland Indians, "dumb. You know, not bright, slow." If the reader wanted to be similarly reductive, he or she might consider the implications of the following coincidence: one of the most important features of Mr. Beane's "market information" model is the base on balls, which, he acknowledges, was the one offensive achievement which escaped him as a player. The second flaw in the book's premise is that the model is internally inconsistent. One might ask, for example, whether Paul DePodesta really believes his computer when it tells him that a team of nine Scott Hattebergs will score more runs than any other team in the major leagues. But one needn't resort to hypothetical questions to discover the flaw. A team that wins 100 out of 162 games has a winning percentage of .617. A team that wins three out of five games (i.e., a division playoff series) has a wining percentage of .600, and a team that wins four out of seven games (i.e. an LCS or World Series) has a winning percentage of only .571. Surely a team that is so carefully constructed to accomplish the first ought, in six years of trying, to be able to accomplish at least the second, if not the third. It rings hollow for the architect of the team, who has been portrayed as a thoroughgoing rationalist, to throw his hands up, bleating "My s--- doesn't work in the play-offs. My job is to get us to the play-offs. What happens after that is f-----g luck.," and Mr. Lewis to endorse this contradiction with the high-sounding but fatuous observation "The baseball season is structured to mock reason." By reaching such a conclusion after more than two hundred seventy pages of careful analysis, Mr. Lewis becomes what he has beheld.
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