Reading Order
Moneyball Reading Order
Michael Lewis's Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003) tells the story of how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, used statistical analysis to build a competitive baseball team with one of the lowest payrolls in Major League Baseball — challenging a century of baseball tradition and conventional wisdom about what makes a good player.
Where to start
Moneyball
Complete Moneyball Book List
- 1Buy
Moneyball
Michael Lewis·2003·The complete standalone book. Start here. - 2Buy
The Undoing Project
Michael Lewis·2016·Lewis's account of the Kahneman-Tversky partnership — the psychological research behind the statistical revolution in baseball that Moneyball describes. Read after for the scientific foundation of the Moneyball approach.
Moneyball — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the 'moneyball' approach?
The 'moneyball' approach — more formally called sabermetrics — is the use of statistical analysis to identify undervalued players and inefficiencies in the baseball player market. Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics' front office identified that the market was undervaluing on-base percentage relative to batting average, home runs, and stolen bases, and built a team of players with high on-base percentages at a fraction of the cost of players valued by traditional metrics. The approach has since been widely adopted across professional sports and is also applied in other fields to describe any systematic use of data to challenge conventional wisdom.
What happened to the 'moneyball' era Oakland Athletics?
The Oakland Athletics under Billy Beane won the American League West division in 2000, 2002, and 2003 and reached the playoffs multiple times, but never won the World Series. As other teams adopted sabermetric methods, the competitive advantage of the approach narrowed, and market inefficiencies that the A's had exploited were priced back into the player market. Beane continued as the A's general manager for many years; the team eventually relocated to Sacramento. The 2003 Athletics team's approach is now taught as a case study in business schools.
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