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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Unavailable
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Unavailable
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Audiobook10 hours

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Written by Michael Lewis

Narrated by Scott Brick

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 20, 2003
ISBN9780736698016
Unavailable
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Author

Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is the host of the podcast Against the Rules. He has published many New York Times bestselling books, including Liar's Poker, The Fifth Risk, Flash Boys, and The Big Short. Movie versions of The Big Short, Moneyball, and The Blind Side were all nominated for Academy Awards. He grew up in New Orleans and remains deeply interested and involved in the city but now lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their children.

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Reviews for Moneyball

Rating: 4.214566749868767 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,524 ratings71 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think I've read Moneyball before I picked up the audiobook in 2019. At least excerpts? That I hadn't read it while also running a baseball blog in the late 2000s was a sort of running joke. I agree with the need for teams to make smarter decisions, and I'd argue for hours with the proponents of outdated methods. But I hadn't quite gotten around to reading the book.It's quite good 15 years later. The stats are all so familiar now that nothing on the numbers side of things is overwhelming. And Michael Lewis, as he has proven in so many other books since, has a real talent for depicting the little dramas of real life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Personally I really enjoyed this, but I would recommend it only for those who either used to collect baseball cards or currently engage in fantasy baseball leagues, as the focus on baseball stats would otherwise be pretty dry. But, for those who are interested, this is about as great a story based on calculations of various statistics as I can imagine.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The best baseball book I've ever read, and I've read plenty.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Since I like both baseball and rational decision making, I really enjoyed this book. The book was as good as the movie, maybe even a little bit better because it was more realistic. The only thing I missed was how this fits into baseball today. I did see that one of the newer GMs, in the the Billy Beane mold, was Theo Epstein who helped the Red Sox win the Series and then the Cubs. So you figure that at least for some teams, rational decision making is catching on.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A must read for any serious baseball or sports fan. This book is about the creation of better metrics to evaluation baseball players effectiveness and how the always cash straped Oakland A's has successfully applied them. I will be interested tosee if this changes the way I watch baseball.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As usual for Lewis, he mixes storytelling with a bellwether theme, here introducing an emerging social/business trend that manifests not only in sports analysis but to any competitive enterprise where divining advantage is paramount.

    As I read Moneyball, I couldn't help but see how these SABR techniques might apply to all sorts of alternate domains, especially business. Of course, just as Lewis showed in baseball, the factoring and reductionism central to quantification takes a lot of the joy and gamesmanship out of any game.

    In the end, I doubt I'd want to run my life this way. But it's a rare book that can elicit such personal introspection. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As many people consider "The Catcher in the Rye" the coming of age novel in life, I believe this book to act the same role in the world of sports. The book goes behind the scenes of an organization that is notorious for having little money and it looks to its great success and how that occurred. By portraying Billy Beane's genius ability to change the way the average general manager can go about putting together a winning team, the reader can barely help but to feel like a fan of the Athletic's after reading about their great season. It also goes into the clubhouse and what goes on with players that may not be the most famous, but they are in the clubhouse for a reason. Billy Beane had that success because he realized that. Let's be real for a moment, it had to have been a superb book if Brad Pitt agreed to star in the film for it right?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis is a true story on how the current general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane, is able to win just as many games as the New York Yankees, despite having only a fraction of the salary. Most teams invest huge amounts of money into players that are flashy and get lots of hits. However, Beane looks at a new stat, called on base percentage (OBP), which measures the amount of time a player is on base, which includes hits and walks. Beane doesn't care if a player reaches base on a hit or walk, all he cares about is if a player can get on base or not, an idea every team but the Athletics neglects to take into account. This strategy allows for the Athletics to make the playoffs and contend for a world series, despite being in a small market and not having a large payroll. The Athletics become a team that everyone loves to root for, unless you are competing with them in the playoffs.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Michael Lewis' Moneyball is a rousing David and Goliath story about an underdog Major League Baseball team that takes a data-driven approach to buying and selling baseball players, and ends up winning many more games each season than their much richer counterparts.

    At times the writing itself feels a little repetitive and breathless, but overall, this a fun, engrossing read.

    Lewis rides along with the Oakland A's for a season and profiles the people who have rejected baseball's hidebound "conventional" approach to player recruitment, which relies largely on intuition, painfully restrictive rules of thumb, and a flawed approach to statistics.

    Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane is at the center of the story, and Lewis couldn't have asked for a more colorful -- or even sympathetic -- character.

    The most interesting part of the book may have been the epilogue (I read the Barnes & Noble ebook version), which outlines the responses of establishment baseball figures and sports journalists to the hardcover version of the book. They're mad and they clearly want to attack the book, but do little more than buttress Lewis' contention that baseball's inner circle is little more than a social club with little interest in modernization.

    A very fun read of a book made popular again by the movie.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am not a huge baseball fan anymore but I still enjoyed this audiobook. I saw a presentation by Michael Lewis and Billy Beane at a conference a year ago and thought it was interesting. The book covers the data driven decisions made by the Oakland A's about ten years ago. A little geeky but a fun read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I actually saw the movie first, but as a person who's beginning to understand/accept sabermetric thinking, I figured I would like both versions of the story - I just happened to see the film first. I checked this out from the library and it was as good as I anticipated, perhaps even more so. I've seen others point out that the book works as both a way to interpret an alternative method to viewing baseball and as an effective business model. The A's knew they couldn't afford to keep many of their star players, so they tried to find ways to get similar production from much cheaper parts. Some of the "secrets" that were touched on here are probably a little outdated as I think most teams follow a lot of these principles now (the valuing of OBP more than batting average, for example), but this is still an essential read to understand where it all began. I would think that this is easily the most influential baseball book in recent memory.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is probably one of my favorite books of all time. It was so well researched, well written, and just so interesting. As a fan of baseball, and one who has an open mind to things like playing baseball with statistics, it kept my interest. As well as being a cool non-fiction book where you learn a little something about what the game could be, it's a great story! It's true what they say that real life is better than any story, and this is one real-life story that is truly that, a great story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a great book on the topic of sabermetrics. Lewis uses Billy Beane and the Oakland A's as his test case, arguing that the proper use of statistics in baseball can overcome any financial limitations a team might have. In the early 2000s, Beane had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, and yet his teams managed to win 100+ games multiple seasons in a row. How did he do it? He realized that the game of baseball was a process, in which the output was to score runs. He also found the world of sabermetrics (study of baseball statistics) and used the key stats/metrics that factored into generating runs to build his roster. Luckily for him, it just so happened that his "key stats" were worth very little money on the open market. He thus aggressively sought after players who other teams overlooked, paid them their "market worth" and used them to build a winning ball club.Since I have an interest in baseball and work in the field of quality, I really enjoyed this book. It's a great piece of objective evidence that taking a process- and fact-based approach to a task can generate great results. It was also very interesting to see the history of Billy Beane, and how he turned what many would consider a failed career as a player into an exceptional career as GM. The only downside to this book is that it ends somewhat abruptly. I felt like it needed two or three more chapters to round out the story and tie up loose ends.In any case, anyone interested in baseball, statistics, or quality in general should pick up this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well-written and thought through. The points made about the game of baseball, and how to identify productive players (i.e. not just "good" players, but those that get runs, or bases, and so help win games) are interesting and persuasive enough, although perhaps a little dulled now by having been publicised, and discussed. Why not count bases advanced, rather than hits? It never made sense to me, but then I never grew up with it. More surprising but also sounding valid, Lewis argues that "Errors", rare and specific enough to be treated conventionally like glaring defects, are more likely to be evidence of capable or spirited play: at least the player was in the position to make the error. For the European reader, one cannot help but speculate what such anaylsis would bring to football, and what we might learn (and then along come Kuper and Szymanski....)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Entertaining, but tilted -- the author is clearly trying to put over the Billy Beane way of doing things rather than offer a balanced look. And no doubt, it's remarkable what he's done, and I don't mean to set myself against it, but as a contrarian, I can't help myself wanting to check out the other side when some standpoint is so strongly forced on me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great but misunderstood book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great read! Any sports fan would like this and if you enjoy data in the slightest, you'll like it even more. Well written and it made me wish that he had written more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is an insight into how in the Oakland A's, having comparably very little money to spend on their team in the early 2000's, ended up winning so many games. Baseball's financial inequality between the richest and poorest teams is the most disparate of all the major sports, and a team like the New York Yankees can use their sizable war chest of funds to purchase the best team possible. The Oakland A's, not having a hundred million to spend, needs to be more resourceful.The A's general manager, Billy Beane, was purportedly the first to implement at the pro level a system of management derived almost entirely from statistical analysis alone. This appears to have begun out of financial necessity and eventually grew into a very efficient and somewhat controversial method for success.The statistical analysis in Moneyball is putting to use the ongoing discussion going back for decades on how to break down the different outcomes of a play and assign them values. In theory, figure out which actions in a game produce the highest outcome towards the intended goal (wins) and focus on those the most.The novel's charm, apart from its savvy business edge, is how Billy Beane's team uncovers the true talents of otherwise unknown college and minor league players.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting topic, but it is too much for a non-baseball nut.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A good read whether you like sports or not, Moneyball highlights using an unconventional mind-set to achieve extraordinary results. Highly underrated as a business book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Fantastic book, really top notch baseball book. Lewis rights this book perfectly, and it just makes you want to keep reading and reading and reading, almost like a fiction story. It reads like a fiction story, even though everything explained in the book is 100% true.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Any book that gets Joe Morgan so worked up can't be all bad.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a great read. Lewis explains, in a book that's largely easy to follow and really engaging, the market inefficiencies in major league baseball and the way the Oakland A's exploited them under the management of Billy Beane. Lewis talks to a lot of people in fleshing out his account, and the stories they have to tell are great. As a casual baseball fan and a person with only a passing familiarity with economics and statistics, I found the book easy and engaging. There are a handful of places where my brain shorts out a little, sometimes because Lewis has wrapped a tangent around himself, a little, and sometimes because he occasionally shifts verb tenses in ways that are a little strange, but he tells a great story, full of smart and interesting people, and now that the book's been out for six years, it's even more interesting to read knowing what's happened in the meantime to the teams and players he discusses. Well worth it - even if you don't care about the statistics or the money, the stories are enough all by themselves.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an insanely good book, and I am not a big fan of baseball (I watch parts of perhaps 5 games a year). The book is about a true revolution in how baseball is managed and thus played, perhaps the first revolution in decades. It introduces the wider population to Bill James and his theories, sabermetrics, and using new statistics about player performance to mix winning with managing the economics of the salary cap and player compensation. The book is captivating, well written, and its setup around the life of Billy Beane is emotionally wringing enough to plant the seeds of sorrow and momentum that later turn into victorious happiness for the reader. It's so rare for a book to spark what truly has become a religious war in baseball. This is a must read for any student of business or data or performance of any institution (colleges, who are picking students, to be athletes, scholars, and future financial contributors, are a great example).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The book that caused all the contraversy - an insightful and entertaining look at a new way of building a winner. Baseball is so hidebound that the revolutionaries come from Harvard and Yale!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Disappointing book for me. It has been years since I read Liar's Poker and The New New Thing, but I still remember the stories. To enjoy Moneyball, you probably have to be interested in and already know a lot about baseball before opening the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I grew up watching and listening to baseball. And I live in the SF Bay Area. So, Moneyball was a great fit for me. I love that a whole new view of statistics altered the game so much.Great read and a must for any baseball fan.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Being a British naturalised Kiwi, I could not possibly know (or, to be honest, care) less about baseball. Nonetheless, I found this to be a fascinating book, and have been recommending it to everyone I meet. It contains a fundamental truth of investing that anyone could use, useful precisely because most people (like the low-scoring reviewers on this site) think they know best. If every armchair sports fans thinks they know better than the others, it stands to reason that most of them are wrong.The fact that the Oakland A's never won the world series is absolutely not the point. If the market was functioning efficiently, on their budget, they should never have got within cooey of it: The buying power of behemoths like the Mets should have ensured that. What is remarkable - and what is important - is that the A's consistently, massively, exceeded their own expectations. Sport is a business. I mean that figuratively as well as literally: profit can be measured in dollar terms but also in percentage of wins to losses. Fans seem to forget that. In business, consistently exceeding expectations is an even better thing than winning the World Series, because it necessarily means you've made MONEY. If you're the favourite and you win the World Series, you have only met expectations, and you may even have made a loss. If baseball were a perfect market, it wouldn't be possible to exceed expectations over a long period. Over a few games, maybe - that could be a fluke. Over two seasons, it almost certainly couldn't be. That means two things: (a) conventional wisdom about the value of certain baseball players and certain attributes is wrong; and (b) The Oakland A's have worked out what is right, or at any rate their model is better than the conventional wisdom.This is the sort of thing Billy Beane should have kept as quiet about as possible. Michael Lewis' book ought to be a Eureka moment for every baseball manager: if it is, then the market mis-pricing will disappear, everyone will acquire players on the strength of the new valuation methodology and the Oakland A's will gradually fall down the rankings to where they should have been in the first place, given their budget. I dare say that has already started to happen.What it ought to do is open eyes of managers from other codes, and indeed other businesses: The key is in having sufficient data. If you have enough good quality data (like baseball does) then if your analysis of it is better than your competitors, then as long as your approach is disciplined and consistent, you will, over time, turn a virtually risk free profit. It's called arbitrage.I haven't even got onto the fact that Michael Lewis is one of the most insightful and witty writers writing in business at the moment, and this book is a pleasure to read from start to finish, notwithstanding my ignorance of its subject. I have read a number of business titles recently, and compared to the rest of the pack Lewis is, if you'll excuse the pun, a major leaguer amongst amateurs.Highly, highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    fascinating read. If you commute to work get a copy of the unabridged audio CD read by Scott Britt. I found that I was stopping the CD to jot notes that I could use for projects at my work. Like all books on behavioral economics/econometrics it is just one of the many that have come out in the last 5 years attempting to show that we can do better by being more numerate. Most important for me was that the books contents lead me to other fruitful lines of inquiry....Game Theory, esp. The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A great book for a baseball fan that is interested in the game beyond what happens during those nine innings.