[An] ebullient, invigorating account of how an unconvential general manger named Billy Beane rebuilt the A’s, a team with the second lowest payroll in baseball, into a team that won 103 games last year — as many as the filthy-rich Yankees. The book is parodied in the 2010 Simpsons episode “MoneyBART”, in which Lisa manages Bart’s Little League baseball team using sabermetric principles. The film adaptation is mentioned in Brooklyn Nine-Nine as being Captain Raymond Holt’s favorite film because of the beauty of its statistical analysis. Additionally, Moneyball was the namesake for the Moneyball Act by U.S. Representatives Barbara Lee and Mark DeSaulnier with the intended purpose of having MLB teams that move 25 miles from its former home city, including the Athletics, to compensate them. Art Howe is also a real-life individual who managed the Oakland Athletics throughout the 2002 season.
Stunning….[Lewis’s] explanations of the science of baseball…are spellbinding. “Michael Lewis’s beautiful obsession with the idea of value has once again yielded gold…Moneyball explains baseball’s startling new insight; that for all our dreams of blasts to the bleachers, the sport’s hidden glory lies in not getting out.” A brilliantly told tale….Michael Lewis’s beautiful obsession with the idea of value has once again yielded gold.
- The approach brought the A’s to the playoffs in 2002 and 2003.
- Bennet Miller’s directorial, Moneyball (2011), is a movie that explores the real-life events surrounding the Oakland Atheltics’ distinct approach to building a competitive basketball team for the 2002 season.
- The best book of the year, [Moneyball] already feels like the most influential book on sports ever written.
- 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.
- The team did introduce a data-driven strategy in a game that is primarily rooted in tradition.
The Oakland A’s began seeking players who were “undervalued in the market”—that is, who were receiving lower salaries relative to their ability to contribute to winning, as measured by these advanced statistics. Stats master Bill James devised the term “sabermetrics” in 1980 to describe the analytical work he and other members of the Society for American Baseball Research were doing, but author Michael Lewis introduced it to the general public. “Moneyball” has entered baseball’s lexicon; teams that value sabermetrics are often said to be playing Moneyball.
Reading information
Moneyball covers the lives and careers of several baseball personalities. The central one is Billy Beane, whose failed playing career is contrasted with wildly optimistic predictions by scouts. Rarely has the lesson of a book…had such an enormous impact….[Moneyball] showcase[s] Lewis’s great gift of finding the perfect characters and moneyball the art of winning an unfair game narratives to animate big, complex ideas that have been hiding in plain sight. “Ebullient, invigorating… provides plenty of action, both numerical and athletic, on the field and in the draft-day war room.” “Ebullient, invigorating…Provides plenty of action, both numerical and athletic, on the field and in the draft-day war room.”
Even outside of the sports crowd, this is a fascinating read of innovation and reinvention in the face of unfairness. By re-evaluating their strategy in this way, the 2002 Athletics, with a budget of $44 million for player salaries, were competitive with larger-market teams such as the New York Yankees, whose payroll exceeded $125 million that season. The approach brought the A’s to the playoffs in 2002 and 2003. I understood about one in four words of Moneyball, and it’s still the best and most engrossing sports book I’ve read in years. If you know anything about baseball, you will enjoy it four times as much as I did, which means that you might explode.
The Oakland Athletics have reached the post-season playoffs three years in a row, even though they spend just one dollar for every three that the New York Yankees spend. Their secret, as Lewis’s lively account demonstrates, is not on the field but in the front office, in the shape of the general manager, Billy Beane. Unable to afford the star hires of his big-spending rivals, Beane disdains the received wisdom about what makes a player valuable, and has a passion for neglected statistics that reveal how runs are really scored.
People discussed in the book
“I understood about one in four words of Moneyball, and it’s still the best and most engrossing sports book I’ve read in years. If you know anything about baseball, you will enjoy it four times as much as I did, which means that you might explode.” Actor Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, while Jonah Hill plays fictional character Peter Brand, based on Paul DePodesta; Philip Seymour Hoffman plays A’s manager Art Howe. Beane assembled a list of twenty players they would draft in a “perfect world”; meaning if money was no object and they did not have to compete with the other twenty-nine teams.
Beane’s ideas are beginning to attract disciples, most notably at the Boston Red Sox, who nearly lured him away from Oakland over the winter. At the last moment, Beane’s loyalty got the better of him; besides, moving to a team with a much larger payroll would have diminished the challenge. Peter Brand’s character is based on Paul DePodesta, who is a real-life baseball executive with a strong background in economics. He was the central figure in the implementation of sabermetrics, and even though the film has changed the name and background of the person, his tactics, talent, and analysis remain intact.
Lewis, Michael
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. Sabermetricians argue that a college baseball player’s chance of MLB success is much higher than the more traditional high school draft pick. Beane maintains that high draft picks spent on high school prospects, regardless of talent or physical potential as evaluated by traditional scouting, are riskier than those spent on more experienced college players.
“Moneyball is the best business book Lewis has written. It may be the best business book anyone has written.” “Rarely has the lesson of a book…had such an enormous impact….[Moneyball] showcase[s] Lewis’s great gift of finding the perfect characters and narratives to animate big, complex ideas that have been hiding in plain sight.” Election years are, perhaps, not our most dignified as a nation. Maybe once the candidates have tired themselves out with all the fighting, whining, and yelling, they’d like to take a load off with a nice book. Lewis explored several themes in the book, such as insiders vs. outsiders (established traditionalists vs. upstart proponents of sabermetrics), the democratization of information causing a flattening of hierarchies, and “the ruthless drive for efficiency that capitalism demands”. Michael Lewis’s beautiful obsession with the idea of value has once again yielded gold…Moneyball explains baseball’s startling new insight; that for all our dreams of blasts to the bleachers, the sport’s hidden glory lies in not getting out.
Is Peter Brand a real person?
In baseball, there is resistance to the idea that someone knows something everybody else does not know. People who evaluate baseball players, the scouts, generally, are motivated by their desire to preserve their good standing within the fraternity. Moneyball traces the history of the sabermetric movement back to such people as Bill James (then a member of the Boston Red Sox front office) and Craig R. Wright. Lewis explores how James’s seminal Baseball Abstract, published annually from the late 1970s through the late 1980s, influenced many of the young, up-and-coming baseball minds that are now joining the ranks of baseball management. “Lewis has hit another one out of the park…You need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it.”
The film shows how there was some tension between him and Beane regarding the use of statistics in a baseball game. However, these dynamics are a bit dramatized for cinematic value. Billy Beane is a real person, and he was the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.
As depicted in the movie, the team actually consisted of undervalued players from other teams. A prime example is Scott Hatteberg, who went from being a catcher to playing first base, and another example is Chad Bradford, who’s a submarine-style pitcher. The best book of the year, [Moneyball] already feels like the most influential book on sports ever written.
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. 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.
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He transitioned from being a catcher and an undermined player to being on the first base and became the highlight of Moneyball. His transition is accurate, and one really finds his determination to be endearing. “It’s a sports story that’s actually a business story that’s also a story about preconceptions. Plus, Michael Lewis’s writing is so clear, readable, and highly entertaining.” The response from other organizations to the Oakland method is outrage.