Michael Lewis's 2003 Book Moneyball: The Art Essay

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Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is a compelling narrative about the business of baseball. Yet Moneyball is no ordinary baseball story. Lewis discovered that the 2002 Oakland Athletics managed to compete at the upper echelons of Major League Baseball while maintaining the second-smallest budget in the entire league. The story focuses on the Oakland Athletics management and the strategies they used to win in spite of having a budget lower than average in Major League Baseball.

The story appeals to readers on a number of different levels. From a business standpoint, Moneyball shows how being stuck in outmoded patterns of behavior and thinking can cause failure. On the other hand, taking risks, accepting change and embracing novel ideas into the workplace are keys to success. Moneyball is also an exposition of strong leadership skills, which are a critical component to organizational success. The Oakland Athletics needed a novel strategy for winning; unlike the New York Yankees the team could not rely on a big bankroll to fund a beefed-up team of superstar players. Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane decided to take a risk on signing undervalued players and crafting a team of players that met a new set of statistical measures.

In fact, the crux of Moneyball is the revolutionary methods used to analyze player statistics. On this level perhaps more than any other, Moneyball will appeal to baseball fans. One of the remarkable things about using the sabermetrics system discussed in Moneyball is that has the potential to democratize the sport -- at least in a small way. Many baseball players are overvalued because scouts and general managers are using outmoded methods of evaluating performance.

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As Lewis points out in the opening chapter of Moneyball, running throwing, fielding, hitting, and power hitting are among the most basic needs of a baseball player. Player performance statistics like runs batted in and batting average are important but, as Billy Beane found out, not the only indicators of player and team success.

However, traditional statistics were how baseball prospects were valued on the labor market. This at times led to a major gap between rich and poor teams. The poor teams, not understanding the intricacies of sabermetrics yet, would purchase a few solid players and thus amass a team of potentially incompatible players. Teams with deep pockets could purchase the best players on paper. Sometimes, thought, the old formula of measuring team and player success was not working. "The bottom of each division was littered with teams -- the Rangers, the Orioles, the Dodgers, the Mets -- that had spent huge sums and failed spectacularly," (Lewis, 2003, p. 2). At the other end of the spectrum were teams like the Oakland Athletics.

As the author notes in the preface: "The gap between rich and poor in baseball was far greater than….....

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