5 stars (About so much more than baseball!) - Don't judge a book by its cover. Ostensibly the title and cover of this book would lead you to conclude that this book is all about baseball. It isn't. When I was handed this book I was expecting a dreary George Will book about the symmetry of motion in baseball or how baseball is the smart man's sport. My expectations were very low. The first few pages quickly put that concern to rest. This is a page-turner that you will not put down. Have you ever wondered how the Oakland A's with a team that looks so unlike other major league teams can be a consistent winner? The A's General Manager Billy Beane found market inefficiencies and effectively exploited them. He recognized that other teams religiously used subjective measures and the wrong statistical measures in evaluating a player's worth to the team. Billy Beane found the right measures. And, he recognized that the measures being used by every other team inflated player's salaries not because they contributed to the team's bottom line but because they looked the part or their stats looked good on paper. He looked for talent where others were simply not looking and he found it. This allowed him to field a winning team for far less than others. He developed a strategy to exploit the system by seeking out players not deemed worthy by conventional measures. For instance, short stocky players did not fit the image of a baseball player. Because of their smaller strike zone they walk more frequently, meaning they get on base more often. While other teams were looking at batting average or RBIs, Billy Beane was using statistical measure such as on-base percentage to measure a player's contribution to a winning. He focused on what's important. Billy Beane recognized that using the traditional measures of a play's worth and the scout's reliance upon subject measures didn't match up with what really matter to winning. He leveraged this market inefficiency to bui... W W Norton - Company :: United States :: Sports Economics :: Sports & Recreation :: Sports :: Scouting :: Salaries :: etc :: Management - General :: Economic aspects :: Baseball players :: Base :: Moneyball- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
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