Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Book

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 cast-off 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 non-fiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, Next), 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, Amazon.comRead More

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  • Amazon

    In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland Athletic's visionary manager and a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists.

  • Foyles

    A baseball team, of all things, was at the centre of a story about the possibilities – and the limits – of human affairs. A story of winning big against the odds Moneyball is the story of the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane. He has an epiphany: all conventional baseball wisdom is wrong. Reinventing his team on a budget, he needs to outsmart the richer teams. Joining with Ivy Leaguer Peter Brand, they recruit bargain players whom the scouts consider flawed but who have a knack for getting on base, scoring runs and winning games. They'll either be the laughing stock of baseball or its vindicated underdogs. Author of the bestsellers Flash Boys and The Big Short, award-winning author Michael Lewis began the journey to write Moneyball with a curiosity – a curiosity about how one of the poorest teams in baseball could win so many games. From there came a story he fell in love with, a story of success against the odds that demanded to be told. Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball, the search for new baseball knowledge-insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money. ‘Just how Oakland succeeded is a fascinating story: part thriller, part-family saga, brilliantly told. You do not need to know or care about baseball – though I defy you not to be smitten after reading the book – because like all good sports books, it is not really about sport, or even in this case about applied statistics. It is about people.’ – The Guardian

  • Blackwell

    Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane...

  • BookDepository

    Moneyball : Paperback : WW Norton & Co : 9780393324815 : 0393324818 : 26 Jun 2014 : "This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame."" -Forbes"

  • 0393324818
  • 9780393324815
  • Michael Lewis
  • 13 July 2004
  • W. W. Norton & Co.
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 320
  • Reprint
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