Book Review: Moneyball by Michael Lewis

There are two things I spend the majority of my free time on; reading and sports.  Of course these aren’t two mutually exclusive activities as there is no shortage of books about sports.  I then occurred to me I should be  writing about the sports books I read.  So, without further ado, I give you the first in a series of weekly TSR book reviews, starting with Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

The movie “Moneyball” has been out for a couple of weeks now, and I haven’t seen it.  But, I finished reading the book on the weekend, and the book is always better than the movie.  Always.  There are no exceptions.  Deliverance was close, but the book was still better.  I am really interested to see “Moneyball” now however.  But I digress, I just read the book, and it was great.

In Moneyball, author Michael Lewis chronicles how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane went against the conventional thinking in baseball and started looking a little deeper at players’ statistics.  By finding so called diamonds in the rough, he was able to put together winning teams on a shoestring budget.  They weren’t star-studded teams, but they won a lot of ball games.

But I like to think that the book isn’t about the Oakland A’s and their surprise success, it’s about how ineptly many sports franchises are run.  In Moneyball, Billy Beane and his staff discover that by not following conventional statistics, which they find to be very flawed, they can get players that while good, other teams aren’t interested in.

Take a look at batting averages.  While they do represent how often a player gets a hit, it doesn’t represent how successful he is at not making an out; that is better represented by on-base percentage.  Of course today, everybody looks at that stat, but in 2000 it was cutting edge thinking.  Because teams were so focused on batting average, instead of on-base percentage, Beane and his staff felt they could put together a great line up, by getting guys who had a really high on base percentage and paying them peanuts.  These guys may not have as high an average, but there didn’t make as many outs.  The thinking was it was better to have a guy batting .280 with a .400 OBP over a guy batting .310 with a .350 OBP.  Sounds like a no brainer to me.

But when Beane first begins to look at these newer statistics, he meets a lot of resistance from his scouting department, who tend to rely on ‘gut feeling’ more than anything else, when trying to decide if an 18 year old will be a good player in six or seven years. He quickly realizes that his new system isn’t simply looking at a different column of stats, but a dramatic change in thinking about how the team is run.  As most of the people running a team were former players, they tended to rely on the stats that were used in their playing days, however flawed.  Basically, everybody seems to adhere to the ‘we’ve always done it that way’ philosophy, regardless of how ineffective it has always been.

The book is well written, interesting and entertaining, which I guess makes for a pretty good read.  And it doesn’t hurt that I’m a baseball fan who is interested in the economics of sports.  But it isn’t just for baseball fans, as one can draw so many parallels to other sports.  In fact, it’s probably time to look at stupid hockey stats.  However, that’s another story for another day.  For now, if you’re looking for a good book, try Moneyball.

-TheRev


Jersey Fouls!
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