Sports Book Review: Moneyball, by Michael Lewis

There’s been a lot of talk about Moneyball lately, with the on-again off-again Moneyball movie starring Brad Pitt apparently in the works. The book is always better than the movie, so it seemed like time to dig in to this book that has gotten so much attention.

First off, one thing. Moneyball is not a book about baseball.

The story, non-fiction, is about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane and how he outsmarted the rest of Major League Baseball to build a competitive team on a tiny salary budget.

It talks about Beane’s failures as a player in the big leagues, and his rise to glory as a GM. Along the way it digs into the stories of some of Beane’s prized players, who helped the A’s improbably win 100 games while they might not have made any other big league roster.

But in a few months I won’t remember any of that, because Moneyball is not about baseball.

It’s about thinking about baseball.

Beane takes an unorthodox approach to evaluating players by using only past performance statistics, and chucking out the subjective eyeballing of potential in prospects. Traditional box score statistics end up being inadequate, and Beane instead puts priority on players with a knack for getting on base, and who are patient enough to wait for good pitches.

The book isn’t terribly heavy on numbers—there aren’t any charts or graphs, so don’t be scared away by it all—but it’s just enough to excite Stat Lust in anybody who’s even the slightest bit nerdy about sports (check out the reviews people have written on Amazon for Moneyball for proof).

And to anybody who’s over-the-top about statistics already, like myself, this book is downright inspiring.

The glory of Moneyball, to me, was the validation I felt when it proved that, yes—a great deal of sports statistics are actually poor measures of performance.

The book goes to some length to explain the theories of sabermetrics, the New School of baseball statistical measures. The underlying philosophy is to view baseball objectively, and track statistics in such a way that they both accurately reflect past play and reasonably project future performance.

The application of the theory is some new measurements, most of which are reasonably simple. Part of Beane’s approach is establishing that the primary goal of every batter when they go to the plate is to not get an out. Everything else is secondary. Walks are thus in no way inferior to hits, and on-base percentage becomes the stat du jour over simple batting average.

Some traditional statistics are simply tossed out. Recording errors becomes useless when you realize that, to score an error a player, must have first done something right by being close to the ball. It’s easy to avoid an error if you arrive late and let it bounce.

As I read my mind went straight to straight to basketball, as that’s what I spend my shower time thinking about, and how many times I’ve been dissatisfied with basketball statistics. Rebounds are particularly troublesome—offensive and defensive boards are typically lumped together, and a big man might have a great night of rebounds if he can just manage to miss every shot he takes.

But don’t worry—basketball has its own version of sabermetrics, called APBRmetrics. If you’ve heard of PER or True Shooting Percentage or anything that John Hollinger has ever touched, then you’re already familiar with it.

I feel obligated to repeat that the book’s story is enjoyable as well. It follows the highs and lows of Beane’s career (thus far) as a GM, and there’s a great deal of human interest as he calls upon baseball’s misfits—real deal underdogs—to assemble a playoff-caliber MLB team.

The movie, if it comes to fruition, will probably be good. Maybe even heart-warming. Brad Pitt will probably do a great job as the volatile-tempered Beane. And Demetri Martin was selected to represent Beane’s right-hand man Paul DePodesta, and Demetri Martin is fantastic.

But it’s just not going to be the same.

There’s no way a movie designed for mass audiences is going to make me geek out about statistics as much as the book did.

I’m recommending this book to anybody with a similar academic interest in sports. You don’t have to like baseball, either, although that probably helps.

And while this site is called How To Watch Sports, Moneyball fits right in.

It’s How to Think About Sports.