Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Title: Moneyball: The art of winning an unfair game
Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: WW Norton & Company, 2003
Pages: 317, paperback
Price: £10.49 at Amazon; £11.99 at Waterstones.
In 2002, acclaimed author Michael Lewis (the Blind Side and The Big Short) was granted unprecedented, behind the scenes access to Billy Beane, the general manager of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics.
Oakland, a low budget team with a payroll of $40m, were defying the odds, winning over 100 regular season games, and making it to the playoffs two years in a row.
Despite this relative success, Beane’s dream of winning the World Series was twice thwarted by the New York Yankees- a club with a payroll of $126m.
This financial disadvantage is exacerbated when Beane loses his best two players to the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
With the new season approaching, Beane and his assistant, Paul DePodesta turned to sabermetrics and analytics.
By carefully interpreting player data, they identified it was possible to rebuild a competitive squad at a third of the price.
Their method would challenge the orthodoxy. Often scouts, coaches, general managers and fans would consider physical appearance or athleticism as means of judging a player’s ability.
Beane and DePodesta cared little for appearances. They were only interested in what the data told them.
In essence, players that got onto bases statistically provided more runs and wins. Therefore, they provided better value than the expensive athletic big hitters.
Moneyball, at its core, is a book about Baseball. However, you don’t need to have seen a game to understand it. It will appeal to those who love the underdog.
Moneyball excels when recounting the experiences of the undervalued and how they challenged the very traditions that rejected them to become one of the most successful franchises in MLB.
20 years since its release, Moneyball details an ideology that has since become the norm in Baseball and spread to other sports and businesses.
