Mention About Books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
| Title | : | Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game |
| Author | : | Michael Lewis |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 317 pages |
| Published | : | March 17th 2004 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 2003) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Sports. Baseball. Business. Economics |
Commentary Supposing Books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe
Be Specific About Books During Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
| Original Title: | Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game |
| ISBN: | 0393324818 (ISBN13: 9780393324815) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Casey Award (2003), Listen-Up Award (2011) |
Rating About Books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Ratings: 4.26 From 94861 Users | 4820 ReviewsEvaluate About Books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
If you're a baseball fan, you'll really appreciate this book. It is more or less a primer on the way the emphasis on statistics has come to prominence in many circles around the sport, and provides insight into some of the seemingly more arcane terms around the sport, such as OBP, OPS, VORP, etc. It's really quite valuable in that regard.It has also come to represent the term for the organizations that embrace this approach to scouting, although that assessment is not entirely accurate. The bookA wee bit all over the place and rambling but more than made up for by the fascinating subject matter.
Non-fiction about how Oakland As General Manager Billy Beane used sabermetrics to develop winning baseball team at less expense than the wealthier teams in the industry. Published in 2003, we can see much of Beanes philosophy being practiced now throughout the game. There are fewer sacrifices, hit & runs, and steals, and more emphasis on walks and reliance on statistical probabilities in making decisions. On base percentage plus slugging has upstaged the traditional measurements of RBIs,
It was a better story before I knew the whole story. Almost every book on randomness I have read had a reference to Moneyball and I had built up my own version about this story (I had even told a few people that version!) and it imagined everybody doing what Billy Beane was doing, and Billy Beane doing some sort of probability distribution among all players and randomly picking his team, winning emphatically, and thus proving that a truly random pick of players is the equivalent of a
Simultaneously among the top 10 sports books and the top 10 economics books. Without Lewis's typical Princetonian smugness.
I fucking hate watching sports. Hate it.Then how is it that this book, about applying pertinent statistical analyis to creating baseball teams and playing basesball, so captivated me? It's a testament to a) the skill of the author, Michael Lewis, but also b) the unequivocal appeal of the underlying story: how hard it is to change the status quo (and how one can succeed despite that) and the man Lewis profiles, Billy Beane.A fantastic narrative for fans of spectator sports or folks like me who'd
A couple cons:The writings a little heavy-handed in places, which might just be a hazard of writing about baseball. Ex: The batters box was a cage designed to crush his spirit. Plus, as a poet, I always feel guilty reading books like this when I could/should be reading Proust or ShakespeareBut:Overall, I really enjoyed Moneyball, and Im glad I read it. Even though its focused on the emergence of new baseball-thinking, Moneyball seems much more comprehensive, and much more narrative than I
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