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Books: Moneyball

I'm currently reading the most famous use-cases of analytics in sports; Moneyball. The book written by Michael Lewis eventually hit the big screen and made analyzing statistics in sports cool. With my obsession of data and sports, I had to buy and read this classic to fully understand the story.


Preface

The book can be summarized as the following, "How did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland A's, win so many games?"

  • In 2002, the Yankees payroll was $126M. The A's? Barely $40M.

  • The A's paid about $500K/win while the Texas Rangers were paying close to $3M.

  • Commissioner Bud Selig called the A's success "an aberration"


The book explores how to "rethink baseball: how it is managed, how it is played, who is best suited to play it, and why." The team set for "looking for inefficiencies in the game" and "unthink prejudice."


"Baseball was an example of how an unscientific culture responds, to fails to respond, to the scientific method."


Chapter 1

Chapter 1 starts off by describing how the old scouting process used to work. The analysis of the "five tools: ability to run, throw, hit, and hit with power." We see the old scouting process implemented on high-school phenom Billy Beane, who eventually will become the GM for the A's. Billy Beane was a beast in high school and touted as one of the best baseball players in the world. He also was a fantastic athlete and was offered to be Stanford's QB the following year.


He was drafted by the Mets, and sadly ended up being a bust.


Choosing the wrong draft pick stopped being thousand dollar mistakes, and started to be million dollar mistakes.


Chapter 2

Billy regrets leaving the Stanford opportunity for baseball and thinks,

"He'd never do something just for the money again. He would never again let the market dictate the direction of his life."

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