Rating: 
Summary: Not What You Think It's About
Review: Great writer, lousy title, flawed book, but still worth reading if you know what it's about.Fans of the Oakland A's will enjoy the book for the inside view of the 2002 season - incomplete but insightful where Lewis chooses to look. Fans of baseball who struggle with the direction of the game can see how the economics of the game are driving a new strategy in managing teams - and see why the Red Sox and Blue Jays are following the Athletics formula for appraising player talent differently than traditional (conventional) methods in the league. Those looking for how baseball should be restructured should look elsewhere. This book doesn't have all the answers. It could give fantasy baseball managers a few things to mull over. Sabermetricians will find it light on substance (no math and almost no stats in it). Finally, for fans of Michael Lewis, it's not his best work. I expected more than he fits in here. Good bits, but a bit too much of Michael in the pages, and not enough about the rest of the Athletics players, coaches and executives. It reads like 40-60% of the material Lewis had in mind is missing, however; it introduces the New Baseball Management, and the 2002 A's, but ends just when there should be some sort of payoff. More time with the team, or more time to put something more together could have made this a great book. Deserves 3.5 stars, and could have been more (sort of like the Athletics postseasons recently)
Rating: 
Summary: Making a lot out of little
Review: The author's contempt for traditional baseball wisdom and leadership and his hero worship of Billy Bean the GM of the Oakland team distorts the few insights the book offers. Sure there is far too much "conventional wisdom" and old-time, seat of the pants flying in the game. And what game doesn't have that? The stock market? The attribution of genius to the number crunchers who figured out that on base percentage was more important than batting average and the few other items of this nature certainly doesn't justify a book. In many cases the author grudgingly admits that a lot of people had kind of figured these things out anyway - like that luck plays a big part in any single game's outcome. The liner right at the first baseman, the bloop single... Casey Stengel and Connie Mack knew that. The book is also disfigured by a certain intellectual snobbery. The new age wizards are all from Yale or Harvard it seems. If you want to irritate baseball people that's a good way to start. The story about the release of a veteran player days before he qualifies for a pension by the hero Billy Bean is mentioned coldly, factually. One can't tell whether this is to illustrate Billy's admirable ruthlessness in pursuit of victory or his bad side which the author couldn't quite condemn out of gratefulness at being allowed inside the clubhouse. It could make a non-A's fan hope they lose. The book also has page after page of "filler" anecdotal stories about ballplayers which I enjoy as an old-time fan but which have little relationship to the theme of the book. Verdict: as a baseball book, fair. On a personal basis, kind of nasty. I wonder if Billy Bean liked it? I might add that it is obvious why the book virtually ignores the three star pitchers obviously responsible for the A's recent success, Hudson, Mulder and Zito. It is because they were not selected on the new, miraculous, computer-analysis basis but presumably by the old time "good face" scouting demonized so acidly in the book! The book is very selective in this area.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book on how to get the most for your money
Review: How do you rate an amature baseball player? Up until several years ago, scouts would look for the "good face," or the lean body, or the fastest footspeed, or the 90 mph fastball. How about Statistical analysis? How about how well these high school and college kids actually play the game? Michael Lewis shows how the Oakland A's have been looking at the statistics of amature players in order to determine how they will perform in the future. The Result? The A's continue to win their division year after year with one of the lowest budgets in baseball. This book is a great read that incorperates usefull statistical analysis with a wonderful story. You'll be routing Billy Bean and his Oakland A's on even if you're not an A's fan. But don't worry, the new statistical way to play the game will soon reach all of baseball. Be ahead of the game and pick up this book, and you'll wonder why no one ever had the common sense to think of this before.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent - many time purchaser at Amazon, first time review
Review: I purchased the audio CD, while a baseball lover, had heard that this was a recommended "must read" from Bob Brinker (Money Talk), a National Radio Show host (of the show having the same name) and Financial Guru. Yes, this is going somewhere. I found myself looking forward to my commute, where I voraciously listened to this book. Mr. Bob Brinker and Mr. Billy Beane have both applied key methodologies to different markets (Stock Market and Baseball, respectively) but illustrate that discipline and statistical analysis - (i.e. a scientific approach) can help one have a 'winning' edge, but one must remain 'objective' and make decisions not realtime/gut, but trust the models and proven trends. I encourage you to explore the similiarities. Whether a baseball fanatic, financial guru, statatistican, or just want to have an enjoyable read, this is for you.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book For Baseball Fans
Review: "MoneyBall: The Art of Winning", is a book about success,
stradegy, challenge, overcoming obstacles, desire,
passion, winning, and making it happen. The book gives great insight on the subject and concept
of baseball. A great book for baseball fans. Michael Lewis,
the author, writes it well. Diana: Author of: "Inpirational Wisdom For Love,
Beauty, And Richness"; "You Hold The Key To Riches
And Happiness"; (and) Sure Fire Ways To Make More
Money And Get A Better Job".
Rating:
Summary: Extended magazine article, but still good reading
Review: I came across Michael Lewis' Moneyball through an excerpted article in the New York Times Magazine one Sunday back in the spring. Not being a huge baseball fan, I was still fascinated by the success of the Oakland A's despite having a budget less than a quarter of some of the top paying teams (i.e. Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, etc.). I was intrigued by the article and sent innumerable copies to friends: first to baseball fans and then just to fans of good writing. Almost all of them read the article (or so they told me), and we all basically had the same reaction: can't wait to read the book. Unfortunately, I think that the story was better as a long magazine article, rather than stretched out to book length. Unlike the article, the book was slow getting going, with the personal history of Billy Beane. Once the story moved into the offices of the Oakland A's, the book became much more interesting. I particularly liked the fast paced atmosphere that Lewis recreates surrounding the draft and the mid-season trading period. In fact, some of these reminded me of his best writing about the bond trading floors in Liar's Poker. Overall, Michael Lewis has detailed a very interesting angle on success in baseball, although he might have done it with 50 fewer pages without losing anything. For anyone interested in baseball (or particularly the business end of it), I think that this book will make fascinating reading. For those interested in underdogs succeeding, you might enjoy this as well. At a minimum, anyone who appreciates good non-fiction writing should read the NYT Magazine article, and then get more details in the book if they like it.
Rating:
Summary: Moneyball Insightful for passionate or casual fan & science
Review: The importance of not making an out in any particular half inning of offensive baseball comes though load and clear and the ways to do this to get on base and keep the inning alive raises all kinds of questions about the conventional wisdom of the last 125 years until the Billy Beane Oakland Athletics era! The personalities of the managers, coaches, staff and players to carry out blue collar lunch box play by staying close to a discipline that favors the team and winning over personal/agent negotiated stats creates a dynamics of tension that causes those on the outside to second and third guess. When luck is evened out over a 162 game season the faithfulness is justified with results. Now for with a hopefully soon to be realized winning post season playoffs and world series victory, the exclamation point will be placed on the statement for all to see. Changes are coming thoughout baseball even down to the Little Leagues!
Rating: 
Summary: Figures lie and liar's figure
Review: There is a saying "If you torture the data long enough, you can get it to admit to anything". Michael Lewis starts with the premise that Billy Beane is the best and smartest GM in baseball, then butchers the statistics to make it seem so.It's simple, the A's don't win so many games with a minimal payroll because of their on base pct. or because Billy Beane outsmarts his fellow GM's constantly. They win because they drafted (before Beane) three of the best youngs starting pitchers in baseball.A fact that gets amazingly little mention in the book.
Predictions:A) When Zito, Mulder, and Hudson become free agents; Beane will will become a free agent right along with them and leave. B)When the before mentioned pitchers leave, the A's will stink, no matter how many pitches Scott Hatteberg takes.
Rating:
Summary: Baseball will never be the same....
Review: Baseball may never be the same, yet nothing is. Moneyball has taken a look at where the game is today and where it is headed in the near future. A must read book for all fans (past and present) of "America's National Past-Time."
Rating:
Summary: Very good book, but far from perfect
Review: I really enjoyed every chapter of Michael Lewis' Moneyball. It took me only one week to read, and I found that I could never put it down once I started reading (I'm a college kid, I even missed an early class from reading this book too early in the morning.) I enjoy the field of statistics, and I am a big baseball guy, so this book made sense for me to buy. What I found most fascinating was the way the A's evaluate batters and pitchers. THeir drafts really did go very well each year, although they never did really explain why high school pitchers are worse to draft than college pitchers. For batters, on base percentage, number of pitches taken, and slugging percentage, and extra base hits are the best ways to evaluate, while for pitchers, it's strikeout to walk ratio, homers allowed, ground ball to fly ball ratio, and extra base hits given up. What makes it so fascinating is that the standards for evaluating players (avg/HR/RBI for hitters, and W-L, ERA, WHIP for pitchers) are very rarely, if ever, considered when evaluating the talent.) What Billy did at the Trading Deadline was unique, and I think that other GMs should get some ideas from him and try to rip off other GMs like Billy did. The stories of Scott Hatteberg, Billy Beane himself, and Chad Bradford were also really interesting. However, a little too much credit is given to Billy Beane. More credit should have been given to his assistant, Paul DePodesta, his scouts, and his coaching staff, in particular Rick Peterson, his pitching coach. This book also doesn't mention the aspects of the A's that have failed since Beane took over as GM (never past the first round of the Playoffs, an offense that even with Jason Giambi was only mediocre overall because of the greatness of the Big 3 in the starting rotation, and some bad acquisitions (Terrence Long, Carlos Pena, Johnny Damon, John Mabry, among others), and the fact that his choir boy manager in Art Howe was right more times than he gave him credit for. Billy Beane might be very creative and might be very successful in correlation to his team's payroll, but he is far from a "genius". Just one piece of information that confuses me: after this book was written, at the trading deadline in 2003, Billy Beane traded a couple of decent pitching prospects for Cincinatti Reds outfielder Jose Guillen, who is the total opposite of a player Billy Beane likes. Guillen might have put up good power numbers the first part of the season, but he draws very few walks, takes very few pitches at the plate, strikes out a whole lot (1 in every 5.2 plate appearances), and his career OPS before 2003 was below .700. He's also been a big disappointment this year as an Athletic.....which makes me wonder why Billy thought he would be a great acquisition.
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