Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

The only negative review so far at this site seemed to confuse the author's craftmanship with his subject. This is a well-written, quick read, which, if you are any kind of baseball fan, will cause you to stop repeatedly and think about what you've just read.

Every baseball fan has asked themselves over and over, why are marginal players overpaid? Why are millions invested in ONE player to the detriment of the team? Why does ownership seem trapped in some preconceived notion of what a ballplayer should look like? This book seeks to answer those questions and present an alternative view of how to run a winning team. And here, in a nutshell is that answer:

Position players should be signed based on the On Base Percentage. Pitchers should be signed based on Strikeouts, Walks, Home runs allowed and groundballs.

There. That's it. Time to go home and enjoy your vast savings, Mr. Steinbrenner.

Of course it's more complex than that, but perversely, Major League Baseball seems to have based its criteria for quality on a completely subjective and error-prone system: Wins, earned run average, batting average, runs batted in.

The book does a wonderful job of demonstrating how a small germ of an idea took hold, slowly grew, and then became embraced by people with the position to do something about it. It's the Revenge of the Nerds and it's positively engaging.

Billy Beane comes off as some 21st Century tortured prince, except he's not Hamlet trying to avenge his father's death, he's every jerk high school jock you ever met who, as an adult, hates himself. Freud wouldn't even get out of bed for this one.

It's sad because he and his computer geeks could actually save baseball from itself. But there is not one incident of joy reported in this book. It would be nice to read that he turned down the Red Sox job because he wanted to stay close to his daughter, but she is never mentioned as a consideration. It's just a shame that someone whose eyes were opened to the real value of ballplayers doesn't carry the exhileration of someone lost, now found, but rather wields it like some terrible weapon.

And objectivity, statistics and mathematics notwithstanding, the fact is that nine Miggy Tejadas are preferable to nine Scott Heddeburg (sp?).