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 enlarge | Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $3.73
You Save: $10.22 (73%)
New (48) Used (78) Collectible (9) from $3.73
Avg. Customer Rating:  377 reviews
Sales Rank: 1757
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0393324818
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570691
EAN: 9780393324815
ASIN: 0393324818
Publication Date: April 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The BEST book on the business of baseball July 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The first time I read this book I couldn't put it down from start to finish -- it was the book on the business of baseball that I had been waiting for but it was written in a narrative that draws you in, first to Billy Beane, then to the Oakland A's, then to the plight of baseball today.
In the years since I read this, many have cited Moneyball while building their franchises but have come to realize Beane is some sort of baseball divining rod.
Brilliant book if you are at all interested in a unique way of looking at baseball -- and management -- you won't see either the same way ever again.
 good, but doesn't beat the curve July 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The problem with giving a Michael Lewis book five stars is that there is much better stuff out there. Lewis can be entertaining, and, to give credit, he hits out of the park in his choice of topic here. But he's an arrogant writer, with something of the "brilliant" graduate student after a couple of drinks about him, prone to sermonizing way off topic. He even did this in his first book, Liar's Poker, when he abruptly dropped his fascinating first person account to digress into the history of Salomon in the 1970s. Here - ditto. All the stuff on the A's and Beane is great. However there are way too long digressions into Bill James and the history of stats in baseball, which had me turning pages. Lewis is also fairly repetitive - this book is at least 90pages too long. If you want to read a great, great writer talking sports, try Tom Wolfe's powerhouse short story The Last American Hero, on Junior Johnson and the beginnings of NASCAR, found in his collection The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake. Wolfe is a genuis and can say more in 45pages than Lewis manages here with just under 300.
 A new paradigm of player valuation July 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent introduction to the conception and process of applying sabermetrics, the objective cold-hard-facts method of valuing baseball players in terms of their probabilities of generating runs on offense and preventing runs on defense, to the cost efficient management of a baseball team.
This introduction is accomplished through an almost allegorical tale about Billy Beane, first as a baseball player and then as the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. As such, it tends to read a bit like a tribute or hero-worship novel as Billy Beane is touted for his trailblazing approach to using statistical analysis, not baseball "wisdom", to value players and assemble winning teams within a fixed budget. But there is purpose in the telling of "The Billy Beane Story" and it is to use it as a literary device to keep the reader engaged as a rather dry subject (statistical analysis and dispassionate player evaluation) is revealed.
If you think that Derek Jeter is a great fielding shortstop, you will learn about tools that demonstrate rather convincingly that, despite Jeter's Gold Glove awards, he is a rather pathetic fielder for a major league baseball player. You will learn about tools that allow a baseball general manager to recognize the value of rather unimpressive physical specimens (e.g., catcher turned first baseman Scott Hatteberg) as surprising productive players when they are important contributors to team success.
Sabermetrics is not widely respected among most who run the show on major league teams today. But there is a slow yet growing recognition of its value. Billy Beane and the Oakland A's may have bmost recently the first, but such methods are being adopted by more and more teams, including the and the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox. (Is it merely a coincidence that the Red Sox finally won the World Series after an 86 year drought only once its ownership and general management adopted a sabermetric approach to player evaluation?) This book will effectively and entertainingly expose you to subtle yet powerful new approach to team management that is growing within baseball. If you love baseball ... if you think you know how to evaluate baseball players ... this is a very worthwhile read.
Sabermetrics for the masses... July 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The beauty of Moneyball is Michael Lewis' ability to communicate an excellent baseball story that satisfies hard-nosed Sabermetricians, but do in a way that doesn't alienate non-numbers oriented baseball fans. The story of how Billy Beane got to where he is today (as GM of the Oakland As) is quite compelling, and clearly of key importance to the main question Lewis sets out to answer -- how the Oakland As manage to be successful despite their (relative) lack of salary. The politics of Sabermetrics aside, this is a terrific read and a book all baseball enthusiasts should read at least once (if not once a season).
An Entirely New Way To Think About Baseball July 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
For many years, I walked by this book on the shelf of my local library and gave it no notice, as the "Moneyball" title gave me the false impression that it was all about economics. I should have heeded the book-readers creed: Never judge a book by its cover. From the very first chapter, I was hooked by the unique philosophy of the text and fascinated by its divergence from traditional baseball maxims. Essentially, Michael Lewis (essentially a conduit for Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane) discusses two subjects:
First, there is the radically different method, started by Bill James, of evaluating players. Instead of the traditional home runs and RBI stats, James (and later Beane) determined that on-base and slugging percentages were the best predictors of successful performance. Instead of looking at factors beyond the batters control (like RBI), one must look at how the batter controls each plate appearance. I could go on and on about the theories developed in this book, but suffice it to say that they are (or at least were in 2001) a complete digression from traditional baseball wisdom, thus are generally scoffed at by "real" baseball people.
The second portion of the books discusses how Billy Beane uses those new scouting methods to keep his small-market A's viable in the baseball market. Though fans moaned when Beane traded away such stars as Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Jason Giambi, Beane contends in this book that those trades were necessary in order to reduce payroll, plus he was able to find comparable (if not better) players through his new "sabermetric" scouting method. Being a fan of the small-market Minnesota Twins, I was most fascinated with this portion of the book, trying to determine if the Twins were following a Beane model of business.
Overall, I have absolutely no answers (being neither a baseball insider nor a statistician) as to whether or not James and Beane's theories have merit. However, they do make a very convincing argument filled with valid examples to prove their points. Plus, no baseball fan can argue with the results, as the small-market A's always seem to be in contention.
If you are a die-hard baseball lifer like myself, this is a must-read book. Even if you scoff at every single idea (though I don't think you will) it is worth being exposed to.
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