The book crackles with energy - the main plot is the general thesis, applicable to all kinds of aspects of life, that with better knowledge and a willingness to be truly objective, you can be much more efficient than your adversaries and come out on top despite lesser means. An Underdog's bible of sorts. But the framework of Billy Beane that the book uses brings this idea alive, and Lewis hits a great balance of biography, a technical sense of specifically what Beane's sabermetric approach tries to accomplish, today's behind-the-scenes cutthroat maneuvers in the business / baseball world, and the whirlwind lives of the players themselves. Beane in his own career was the antithesis of his coveted-player prototype: he was outrageously athletic, powerful, fast, and so generally talented in the game of baseball that he barely had to have much of a mental approach at all. He also had a ferocious temper, something that strikes a bit close to home. So perhaps the most interesting thing to me about the book is that for all of its objectivity preaching, the seed would not have been sown without Beane's humbling, purely subjective experience as a player himself.
Beane was a drooling scout's dream, and he serves as an n=1 sample of why the drool in the current scouting system does not work. Or more accurately, does not always work, and in Beane's case, badly did not work. Beane, despite his talents, was something of a headcase in his playing days, a guy who didn't have "it." He was undisciplined at the plate, overwhelmed by the superior-to-high-school pitching in both the minor and major leagues, and basically incapable of surviving sanely in the day to day, under-the-microscope environment of professional baseball. He was a batbreaker, toilet smasher and clubhouse lunatic and always had been. He was, in short, a lemon: a player who looked fantastic on the outside (and to his credit, he did routinely make WOW plays in the field) and caused the scouts to jump and sign the deal, only to notice the clanking engine after they had driven off the lot.
One of Moneyball's claims is that this fact was observable in Beane's stats, or that at least the fact that because so many high school phenoms have failed in this exact glorious way, he was not a particularly wise investment. A case of "they should have known better," and maybe one that Lewis appends with an unsubtle "Duh." The book has been widely criticized, and justly so, by the baseballerati. Lewis, in order to emphasize a contrast between Beane's style and the status quo or consensus wisdom, portrays the scouts and opposing general managers and the decisions they make as barbaric and entirely uninformed. I felt Lewis went a little over the top in his attack on the traditions of baseball and essentially, whether he intended to or not, called the careers of a whole lot of people stupid and dumb. It didn't end at the scouts; Lewis portrayed Beane and his consortium as geniuses maneuvering in a sea of general manager idiots waiting by the phone for Beane to call and take advantage. This was an overemphasis to make a point, and I found myself torn as how to take it. It's brilliantly bold and aggressive and gives the book a lot of the spirit and energy I mentioned earlier. On the other hand, it rings somewhat untrue, and seems like a gigantic insensitive middle finger to the very establishment that provides Beane et al with the opportunity to perform their job.
The problem, of course, being that the book is right. I am glad that I read Baseball Between the Numbers just before I read Moneyball - the things that were mentioned but not examined in depth here (the value of OBP, OPS, etc.) were borderline scientifically explained in BBTN. And it is undeniable that the eggheads (myself included; I wear the badge proudly) who play tabletop baseball boardgames have understood the value of on base percentage and other better baseball stats far before the baseballerati paid much attention. Even in the casual fan base, there's still an obsession with average, HR and RBIs that is just undeniably off base (HA!). So my feeling is that while Beane's / Lewis's accusations are accurate, they 1, ignore the contribution that scouts and the conventional wisdom do make and 2, they could have been delivered with a lot more tact. Of course, tact does not always make for an exciting story, nor does it often sell a lot of books.
Still, o ne of my favorite things about this book was the way it no-holds-barred goes after particularly egregious abusers of the fallacies of conventional wisdom. I have long hated ESPN baseball "analyst" Joe Morgan (really, I guess I hate his analysis, I'm sure he's a fine guy). Unfortunately, if this argument were ever thrown out in public, I would be ad hominummed to death rather quickly. The whole reason that Joe Morgan has his job is that he was a great (okay, I'll give him credit, the greatest) second baseman from the 1970s. My favorite player was Ryne Sandberg, unarguably the greatest second baseman from the 1980s and someone who routinely falls behind Morgan in the "of all time" debates. So I suspect people might claim I have an ulterior motive in dissing Morgan. But that whole claim aside, whatever prejudices I have against the guy because of his conflict with my childhood idol are trumped by my feelings regarding one simple fact: he is a blathering idiot. My impersonation of Joe Morgan usually starts with some kind of sentiment of "The only way this team is going to win is if they score more runs than their opponent." Now, you may think that is a parody, but it's not, it's a quote I've heard him express on more than one occasion. Like the nightly news in its infinite absurdity, Joe Morgan is unparodiable - you simply cannot exaggerate his stupidity. There is a blog called FireJoeMorgan that, among other things, analyzes his chats and quotes and illuminates their stupidity. As if they needed illumination.
Joe Morgan rather emphatically hates Moneyball, though he at times has appeared to think that it was authored by Billy Beane. He has also said that people who have not played the game cannot teach him anything, so he won't read Moneyball, which, if he thinks Billy Beane authored it is dumb because, hey, Beane did play baseball. But even if he no longer thought this, the entire book focuses on baseball players! Silly Joe. One reason he hates this book is that it poses such an obvious threat to his job of analyzing baseball - his professional life hinges on the concept that you must have played in order to be able to explain. Another is this passage (check pages 270-273), which uses Joe as a prop for everything that is wrong about the traditional baseball thinking. The passage basically points out how stupid it is to claim that the A's don't win playoff games because they can't "manufacture runs in the postseason" - if you look at the actual stats, the A's scored the exact same number of runs in the postseason as they did during the regular season, it's just that their pitching failed them and gave up more runs in the postseason than it had in the regular. It rather obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with manufacturing runs! The passage additionally points out that exactly as Morgan was spouting this nonsense, the A's had an inning where they played no "smallball" as Morgan would have had them do and scored 3 runs. It was a solid course in dramatic irony. Now, picking on Joe Morgan, who is notorious for saying stupid things, as the baseball establishment is a bit of a cheap shot. Furthermore, Morgan has reasons to dislike sabermetrics, as it does (rationally) devalue the stolen base and other speed aspects of the game that Morgan brought to the table. But his line of thinking, the adherence to aphorism and cliche as baseball law, is typical of the establishment that the book is attacking.
If we are going to be honest about this attack, though, we should emphasize something that often gets dropped from the Moneyball discussion. The book is not about "how to win at baseball" - it's about "how to win at baseball when at a severe economic disadvantage." The book does not claim that speed or batting average or high school players are *worthless*, it just points out that these features and more are overpriced. Beane is a bargain shopper, and gets a lot of bang for his buck. But he is confined by his circumstances. OBVIOUSLY you would rather have Giambi at first base, but given financial restrictions, you have to appropriate funds and employ Scott Hatteberg. A weird extension of this would be that if Beane were operating with a team with deeper pockets (and he almost took the Red Sox job), he would theoretically run the table - if he can win 102 games with 30 million, what's he gonna do with 160 million? The answer is NOT win 150 games...
Another point that gets missed about the book is that like it or not, Billy Beane got lucky. He did the best he could with very limited funds to construct a great team - and they were great - but any number of things (injuries, non pan outs, etc.) could have happened that would have derailed the team and probably his career. The book does subtly make the point that a HUGE amount of this game is luck, so the best you can do is do a great job of hedging your bets and see what happens. Beane repeatedly makes decisions based not on objective certainties but on objective probabilities. Drafting college players with high OBP does not guarantee success, but it makes the investment safer and success more probable. So Beane's brilliance is not that he made his teams more successful, it's that he made his teams more likely to be successful. Evaluating Beane and saying that he is great because the A's won 102 games is the exact opposite type of thinking that the book is professing. You can't post-facto evaluate decisions when there was known data about baseball trends at the time the decisions were made. If I go buy 1000 dollars in lottery tickets right now, that is a stupid decision, regardless of whether I win the lottery. Beane's greatness is wrapped up in this idea - that he evaluates the likely future in the present, the only way you reliably can. Beane cannot *make* his team win 102 games, but he can certainly stack the deck.
So Billy Beane with 160 million would not defy all probability and build teams that would go 150-12. What he would do is further solidify (i.e., increase the probability) of his team winning 100 games. He could afford better backups in case a player goes down. He could spend a few extra bucks on a speed guy because while that speed is nowhere near as valuable as other aspects of the game, it still has some value. He could go after better defense, something that the BBTN book argues has been the A's downfall in the playoffs. If he spent the money as efficiently and based on properly valuing player skills as he did when he was with the A's, he would have a lot of money that he could direct toward longer shot, high risk high reward prospects, like phenom high school players. In sum, he could stack the deck even better. Beane would be playing a whole new game with a lot of money, but given his sharp abilities with the A's, he would definitely NOT be found blowing big contracts on players who were highly likely to be past their prime.
I bring this up because a number of critics argue that in evaluating Beane, we'll have to wait and see what happens with some of the players, like Jeremy Brown, that he has against conventional wisdom championed. This is true if we look at all of his decisions as a whole - a large sample size (!) - but looking at a single player and using their performance as an indicator of Beane's technique is just another example of post-facto decision evaluation. It's wrong! A quick peak at Brown's stats last year show that a whopping 11 plate appearances into his career, Brown is proving Beane right. But Beane isn't right - Beane was right, regardless of how Brown's career ends up.
To wrap this up - the book is an excellent delving into the game theory behind baseball. It does a great job of using personalities and biographical accounts of players to pepper a solid argument with life. Beane, at least the Beane that was portrayed in this book, is a vivacious character who demands attention. I suspect his awesomeness was a little over-emphasized, and the attacks on the establishment were exaggerated, but otherwise it's a great account. Lewis has a very smooth style that fills a niche nicely; he's a great storyteller who interweaves his thesis with narrative in a good way, though having read two books I'm starting to glimpse the formula. I highly recommend the book, but I recommend reading it with a close eye - it will be very interesting to see if, once the philosophy permeates the baseballerati (Joe Morgans aside), if the low budget teams can compete when everyone is playing their game.
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