This book tells the story of how the Oakland A's used baseball statistics to build a successful team and challenge the conventional wisdom that a team's success correlates directly with how much money it has.
Sound dull, eh?
Well, it wasn't, and that surprised me. I mean, I wasn't on the edge of my seat, but the author managed to take three subjects I'm not at all into - baseball, statistics and economics - and make a compelling story. He avoided throwing numbers around too much and instead told the backstories of all the people involved, their background and family life and what they thought about things, and the end result is actually quite readable.
One interesting thing is that the book ends at the end of the 2002 season with Billy Beane, the man behind Oakland's novel approach, leaving to work for the Boston Red Sox. I seem to recall something about the Red Sox having a rather good season sometime thereafter?
2 comments:
Except Billy Beane never actually took the Boston job. He backed out at the last minute, citing family reasons.
The Red Sox GM is Theo Epstein, the so-called "boy wonder," because he was 28 when he took the position. Epstein is easily confused with Beane. He is often referred to as a Beane disciple or clone because he is big on using statistics to predict the future success of players.
The Red Sox did win the World Series last year with Epstein as GM. But counter to the premise of "Moneyball," they mostly reinforced the conventional wisdom that success correlates with money to a large degree. Their payroll is huge--much larger than other playoff teams like Oakland or Minnesota--and second only to the Yankees.
Beane is still in Oakland. This offseason, he traded two of the "Big Three" pitchers the team has been built around for younger prospects. He is essentially starting over again. It will be interesting to see if the winning continues now.
Oh, I didn't know he stayed in Oakland, the book ended before he decided to stay and I don't follow baseball IRL at all. The only reason I even remembered that Boston won is because Rob in Get Fuzzy is a Boston fan so there were a few reminders in my morning comics.
That would explain this strange review I stumbled upon while Googling for the author's name. The reviewer said that they were unhappy with the ending, and that they thought the book should have ended with Beane turning down the job in Boston and choosing to stay in Oakland with his family. When I read the review, I was all "Doesn't this person realize that this is a true story, not a made-for-TV movie?"
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