Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone--but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games?
In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written on business" (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places--the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players--but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?
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Community Reviews
Chapter One THE CURSE OF TALENT
7,5/10
About Billy Beane the guy Brad Pitt plays in the great movie on the book. He was a great athlete, but wanted to go to Stanford not play professionally. So he was drafted late with a much smaller contract offered as the team drafting him didn't know if they could get him. He then decided to accept this draft deal.
Chapter Two HOW TO FIND A BALLPLAYER
8/10
How Billy Beane and his team scoured for players. The older scouts largely judge player based on how much they look and act like a top athlete. Beane wants to reinvent this by using the internet and stats. He wants to draft players no one else wants. His budget is small so he needs to find hidden talent. His team wants other players, but still work for him so they go with his ideas. Great chapter. Lots of fun small stories and plenty of details making it all feel like a diary not post-the-fact narration. The iconic movie scene about "He has a nice face" about drafting a player is directly taken from this chapter.
Chapter Three THE ENLIGHTENMENT
8/10
Beane ends his career early, as his giant talent leads him nowhere because he is overly aggressive and can't hit. He's also not motivated to play. So he asks to work in scouting for his club instead. We get a lot of small stories too and learn that he has a daughter and is divorced. But not much is said about his personal life.
Chapter Four FIELD OF IGNORANCE
7/10
Some of the early statistics men in baseball. Men who sit at home and collect stats. The chapter is nerdy and well-researched, but it's not as fun as it's hard to understand who these men are or what their stats mean. It's a historical overview.
Chapter Five THE JEREMY BROWN BLUE PLATE SPECIAL
8/10
Drafting. Very cool chapter. We are in the room with them drafting players. Draft Day (2014) for example is a great movie even though I don't watch NFL. It's just super exciting.
Chapter Six THE SCIENCE OF WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME
7,5/10
The league writes The Blue Ribbon Panel Report about how unfair the wage differences are between teams. Oakland A’s with their moneyball tactic of course look past wages. They have some of the smallest wages, but great success on the field. Beane is invited to tell the panel why this is so. And instead of telling them about their secrets he lies about how small wages are actually unfair and cries to the board. They write a "false" report about how the wage differences are ruining baseball.
Chapter Seven GIAMBI’S HOLE
8/10
He explains how they replace a player. They don't buy a similar players as that's impossible on their wages. They create stars and sell them to be able to buy new talents. A player is replaced by what he does on the field. Each stat is replaceded not the player so new players come in that can do some of the stuff the player did and it doesn't matter if they have huge weaknesses on some points if they are very strong on some areas and can fill out the stats and get wins.
Chapter Eight SCOTT HATTEBERG, PICKIN’ MACHINE
6,5/10
Trades.
Chapter Nine THE TRADING DESK
6/10
Trades. It's not that interesting. I don't get baseball so this trade stuff doesn't tell me much. It's not stats. It's just some random names going from team to team. Beane is on his phone all day long making deals. Calling one team to buy a player. Calling another team to sell a player to get money to buy the player. Releasing players to make room for new ones. All done in hours. Players arrive on the opponent team to play A's that day and get told they now play for the A's. It's hectic and emotional, but it feels too nerdy in a way where I don't quite get it all.
Chapter Ten ANATOMY OF AN UNDERVALUED PITCHER
7/10
Largely a mini biography about a pitcher who throws slow balls and therefore is not featured much for his first team. Beane calls the White Sox and just says he needs some random pitcher. The guy then names a bunch of names and Beane says he will take a name mentioned while acting like he didn't arrive just for this. He needs to trick teams as otherwise they refuse to sell him players because they have figured out that he uses some system to find the best players on each team. Hence why they instead want to resign the players he actually asks for even though they barely used them before and wanted to sell them before he asked for them.
Chapter Eleven THE HUMAN ELEMENT
7/10
Some very important game as they had won a record amount of games in a row. They need to win another game to break it now and they are 11 points ahead, but the other team gets 11 points. Still they end up winning by using a player who the coach told wouldn't play so he uses a random bat he never used before once called to the field.
He also talks about how some of the players they sign have been undervalued and therefore may feel like they are worth very little and are not good. In reality the team managers were just blind to their actual performance because they played in a weird way and not like "top players". So they assumed the amazing stats were just outliers for these players and that they would become bad at some point. Many just look weird or move in weird ways. They therefore lack confidence overall and don't always play well for the A's either.
Chapter Twelve THE SPEED OF THE IDEA
5/10
Some smaller details and then 2 extra chapters.
The extra chapters have on the field events that I don't understand and don't care about as such unless I can see it on video and have it explained in detail. So the book ends on a very boring note unfortunately.
What I think about the book overall
The movie is quite different from the book. In the movie there is way more drama. Beane fights with the coach. There is a big scene where Beane sells all the top players to force the coach to field the team of weirdos he bought that the coach doesn't believe in. In the book he sells the players in anger and admits that it was a mistake as it wasn't rational. The coach in the book is barely mentioned as a factor whatsoever. He's a non-factor. Basically, the movie creates a great villain that works quite well. It's never fully clear in the story what other teams understand or don't and what really motivates Beane. Why doesn't he take the Red Sox job? They went on winning the World Series using his methods just 2 years later for the first time since 1918. And then again in 2007, 2013, and 2018. And Beane would have been the highest paid GM ever there. Instead he stayed at Oakland Athletics and won seemingly nothing at all. They got found out and started being a small team again. So what's the lesson here? Red Sox wanted to hire him to implement his tactics. Clearly teams were onto him and wanted what he did. And yet he refused to move as he imagined he could outcompete the bigger teams somehow. Which of course is not how it works. You need to yet again find something they are missing which, unless you are a genius or extremely lucky, you can't do repeatedly. If he went there he surely would go down in history as the greatest GM ever or something? And also been ultra rich. But whatever, he may not have wanted it.
I think the book overall is cool. But I must say that many of the chapters are boring. Unless you follow baseball those chapters will be pointless. Just players and stats presented page after page. Overall it's a cool book as the idea is fascinating. But as someone who doesn't understand baseball the book clearly IS NOT written for me. I can listen to the audiobook, but I don't get half of it. I think I'm largely saying this because the ending is so boring. Looking back I can see that most chapters are cool. It's just such a boring ending that it nearly ruined my experience.
I would say it's a above average Michael Lewis book. He's an amazing writer and some of his books are shockingly good. This one feels like a project for baseball nerds. Which is cool, but not quite up to the level of the books that were just as nerdy, but way more important for the wider world. Unless you follow baseball the book overall is just not that important. It doesn't matter if some player played well those few seasons. Of course Michael Lewis being a baseball fanboy is felt on the page, but not enough that it can make a reader interested in the sport. You can't just cite sport stats and think that outsiders will now see the sport in a passionate way. But this mainly applies to the ending. Many of the initial chapters are great.
3,5-4 stars. Good book as the writing is great and many chapters are quite readable. But at the end of the day it bogs down in stats and player names that are frankly not relevant to the main baseball history or current day baseball. Maybe a better intro book would have followed a bigger and more historically important team. That way you could really inspire the readers.
7,5/10
About Billy Beane the guy Brad Pitt plays in the great movie on the book. He was a great athlete, but wanted to go to Stanford not play professionally. So he was drafted late with a much smaller contract offered as the team drafting him didn't know if they could get him. He then decided to accept this draft deal.
Chapter Two HOW TO FIND A BALLPLAYER
8/10
How Billy Beane and his team scoured for players. The older scouts largely judge player based on how much they look and act like a top athlete. Beane wants to reinvent this by using the internet and stats. He wants to draft players no one else wants. His budget is small so he needs to find hidden talent. His team wants other players, but still work for him so they go with his ideas. Great chapter. Lots of fun small stories and plenty of details making it all feel like a diary not post-the-fact narration. The iconic movie scene about "He has a nice face" about drafting a player is directly taken from this chapter.
Chapter Three THE ENLIGHTENMENT
8/10
Beane ends his career early, as his giant talent leads him nowhere because he is overly aggressive and can't hit. He's also not motivated to play. So he asks to work in scouting for his club instead. We get a lot of small stories too and learn that he has a daughter and is divorced. But not much is said about his personal life.
Chapter Four FIELD OF IGNORANCE
7/10
Some of the early statistics men in baseball. Men who sit at home and collect stats. The chapter is nerdy and well-researched, but it's not as fun as it's hard to understand who these men are or what their stats mean. It's a historical overview.
Chapter Five THE JEREMY BROWN BLUE PLATE SPECIAL
8/10
Drafting. Very cool chapter. We are in the room with them drafting players. Draft Day (2014) for example is a great movie even though I don't watch NFL. It's just super exciting.
Chapter Six THE SCIENCE OF WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME
7,5/10
The league writes The Blue Ribbon Panel Report about how unfair the wage differences are between teams. Oakland A’s with their moneyball tactic of course look past wages. They have some of the smallest wages, but great success on the field. Beane is invited to tell the panel why this is so. And instead of telling them about their secrets he lies about how small wages are actually unfair and cries to the board. They write a "false" report about how the wage differences are ruining baseball.
Chapter Seven GIAMBI’S HOLE
8/10
He explains how they replace a player. They don't buy a similar players as that's impossible on their wages. They create stars and sell them to be able to buy new talents. A player is replaced by what he does on the field. Each stat is replaceded not the player so new players come in that can do some of the stuff the player did and it doesn't matter if they have huge weaknesses on some points if they are very strong on some areas and can fill out the stats and get wins.
Chapter Eight SCOTT HATTEBERG, PICKIN’ MACHINE
6,5/10
Trades.
Chapter Nine THE TRADING DESK
6/10
Trades. It's not that interesting. I don't get baseball so this trade stuff doesn't tell me much. It's not stats. It's just some random names going from team to team. Beane is on his phone all day long making deals. Calling one team to buy a player. Calling another team to sell a player to get money to buy the player. Releasing players to make room for new ones. All done in hours. Players arrive on the opponent team to play A's that day and get told they now play for the A's. It's hectic and emotional, but it feels too nerdy in a way where I don't quite get it all.
Chapter Ten ANATOMY OF AN UNDERVALUED PITCHER
7/10
Largely a mini biography about a pitcher who throws slow balls and therefore is not featured much for his first team. Beane calls the White Sox and just says he needs some random pitcher. The guy then names a bunch of names and Beane says he will take a name mentioned while acting like he didn't arrive just for this. He needs to trick teams as otherwise they refuse to sell him players because they have figured out that he uses some system to find the best players on each team. Hence why they instead want to resign the players he actually asks for even though they barely used them before and wanted to sell them before he asked for them.
Chapter Eleven THE HUMAN ELEMENT
7/10
Some very important game as they had won a record amount of games in a row. They need to win another game to break it now and they are 11 points ahead, but the other team gets 11 points. Still they end up winning by using a player who the coach told wouldn't play so he uses a random bat he never used before once called to the field.
He also talks about how some of the players they sign have been undervalued and therefore may feel like they are worth very little and are not good. In reality the team managers were just blind to their actual performance because they played in a weird way and not like "top players". So they assumed the amazing stats were just outliers for these players and that they would become bad at some point. Many just look weird or move in weird ways. They therefore lack confidence overall and don't always play well for the A's either.
Chapter Twelve THE SPEED OF THE IDEA
5/10
Some smaller details and then 2 extra chapters.
The extra chapters have on the field events that I don't understand and don't care about as such unless I can see it on video and have it explained in detail. So the book ends on a very boring note unfortunately.
What I think about the book overall
The movie is quite different from the book. In the movie there is way more drama. Beane fights with the coach. There is a big scene where Beane sells all the top players to force the coach to field the team of weirdos he bought that the coach doesn't believe in. In the book he sells the players in anger and admits that it was a mistake as it wasn't rational. The coach in the book is barely mentioned as a factor whatsoever. He's a non-factor. Basically, the movie creates a great villain that works quite well. It's never fully clear in the story what other teams understand or don't and what really motivates Beane. Why doesn't he take the Red Sox job? They went on winning the World Series using his methods just 2 years later for the first time since 1918. And then again in 2007, 2013, and 2018. And Beane would have been the highest paid GM ever there. Instead he stayed at Oakland Athletics and won seemingly nothing at all. They got found out and started being a small team again. So what's the lesson here? Red Sox wanted to hire him to implement his tactics. Clearly teams were onto him and wanted what he did. And yet he refused to move as he imagined he could outcompete the bigger teams somehow. Which of course is not how it works. You need to yet again find something they are missing which, unless you are a genius or extremely lucky, you can't do repeatedly. If he went there he surely would go down in history as the greatest GM ever or something? And also been ultra rich. But whatever, he may not have wanted it.
I think the book overall is cool. But I must say that many of the chapters are boring. Unless you follow baseball those chapters will be pointless. Just players and stats presented page after page. Overall it's a cool book as the idea is fascinating. But as someone who doesn't understand baseball the book clearly IS NOT written for me. I can listen to the audiobook, but I don't get half of it. I think I'm largely saying this because the ending is so boring. Looking back I can see that most chapters are cool. It's just such a boring ending that it nearly ruined my experience.
I would say it's a above average Michael Lewis book. He's an amazing writer and some of his books are shockingly good. This one feels like a project for baseball nerds. Which is cool, but not quite up to the level of the books that were just as nerdy, but way more important for the wider world. Unless you follow baseball the book overall is just not that important. It doesn't matter if some player played well those few seasons. Of course Michael Lewis being a baseball fanboy is felt on the page, but not enough that it can make a reader interested in the sport. You can't just cite sport stats and think that outsiders will now see the sport in a passionate way. But this mainly applies to the ending. Many of the initial chapters are great.
3,5-4 stars. Good book as the writing is great and many chapters are quite readable. But at the end of the day it bogs down in stats and player names that are frankly not relevant to the main baseball history or current day baseball. Maybe a better intro book would have followed a bigger and more historically important team. That way you could really inspire the readers.
The only reasons I didn’t give this book 5 stars is that it was a little slow in the second quarter and that I’m not at all a baseball fan, with the exception of one season of trying to learn all the Red Sox players only to see them all leave the team the following season- catching me completely by surprise and making me vow never to give away my love like that again. Necessary run-on sentence.
I love data and statistics though and from that perspective, this book is such a joy. If only more people took an interest in what statistics can and cannot tell us, the world would be a more logical and effective place.
I love data and statistics though and from that perspective, this book is such a joy. If only more people took an interest in what statistics can and cannot tell us, the world would be a more logical and effective place.
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