Moneyball

I finished Moneyball a while ago and haven't had enough time to write this review.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - 320 pages - 3.5 out of 5 stars - Writer Michael Lewis - who wrote Liar's Poker and more recently The Blind Side, which I am reading now - saw the big difference between how many wins the rich teams in Baseball get as compared to the poor teams. Every year only very rich teams would make the playoffs, but one team, the Oakland A's, was winning a lot of games with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball so Michael Lewis set out to find why. What he would find is Value Investing in Baseball.

The genius behind the Oakland A's is Billy Beane, the GM, after high school he received a scholarship offer from Stanford to play baseball and back-up John Elway in football, he accepted. But he was so good a Baseball GM still drafted him with the hope he could be convinced to play in the Majors. He was convinced and went to the Mets, after this Stanford canceled his scholarship. His career in the Major League never went far and he soon quit to be a scout for the Oakland A's.

His method of picking stars his similar to that of a value investor. He only selects proven players, never out of high school. He doesn't listen to old fashioned scouts only the stats. He doesn't care about the potential of the prospect only what he has proven in the past. And he is unconventional in the way he looks at Slugging and On Base Percentage more then anything else. Finally, because of his low budget he always signs players for less then what other teams, or the market, would pay them.

The books is good and a quick read that goes through most of the A's players which were selected through this system and Billy Beane's story, but it can be confusing at times - buy it if you are a baseball fan but if not just borrow it from the library.

I have about 100 pages left in Blindside so that review should eb up soon.