This book gives provides a great look into the statistical analysis that has seemingly taken over player evaluations in the grueling task that is scouting prospects. A very light, enjoyable read.

Michael Lewis isn't only a great sports journalist, but one of the greatest writers of my generation. He has created a new way to showcase the secret lives of sports by going behind the scenes and telling us a story of the puppeteers that control certain aspects of their game. In Moneyball, we dive in head first into the life of Oakland A's GM, Billy Beane, and how he used Bill James' analysis of baseball to create a winning team season after season. It's hard to do that today in this ever-increasing world of high contracts and young kids making millions of dollars, not knowing what to do with it. Lewis' journey amasses one season with the Oakland A's but really makes you feel like you've been there the whole time. Great book, excellent read, highly recommended!

Great baseball book for the baseball lover! Heard it was a great book from some friends of mine and decided to get it for gifts for the holiday. Both people who received it were thrilled to get it and more excited to finally read it.

I thought this book was worth reading, but that Michael Lewis was not the best person to write it. He does a good job of introducting James, an everyday person who introduces an intriguing new set of statistics that convincingly illustrate which player skills lead to baseball victories. Interestingly, these are not the skills that most ML baseball teams attend to when recruiting.

Lewis alternates between idolizing Billy Beane (the Oakland A's GM who acts on James statistics), and portraying him as a raving maniac. In a postscript, Lewis admits that he skewed the manic portrayal (and that Beane wasn't too happy about it). Can't say I blame him. As a reader, I found the inaccurate portrayal baffling, and found it lessened the book and my view of Lewis as an author. Substantially.

Lewis reveals his scientific naïveté again and again by providing narratives of a few baseball games when Oakland A's players, chosen for their embodiment of James' theory, experience success. After reading these, a mental image of a 7-year-old running to his mother saying, "Look Mom, it's true" came to mind. If a scientist were to test whether James was right, she would also consider for each of these anecdotes whether there was another explanation. She also would look at cases when James' theory fails, and explain them. I found these narratives sometimes dragged on pointlessly and detracted from the book's readability. I believe James' theory, but think a more balanced look at when it works and doesn't would have been much more interesting.

Lewis ends by contending that despite his book, nobody in ML baseball has changed their practices (other than the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox, who as he explains during the book, start to emulate the Oakland A's). It appears he reached this conclusion by anecdotal evidence, so I think it's preliminary (and contentious) to make such an assertion.

I'm glad to see that many have become interested in sabermetrics, and hope that a better author writes more on this topic. I don't anticipate reading any more Lewis books, but would read others on this topic.

I used to wonder how it was that Billy Beane is such a great manager or coach or whatever he is and now I know why: communications skills. Beane is not only baseball-smart, he's book-smart. And not just "I read a book once" smart either. This is one of the few men in any field smart enough to write a book without the help of a ghost writer.

This is no faint praise. Throughout the book you will learn about such true-life travails and characters as Jeremy Brown, the catcher drafted in the 16th round because the Oakland A's value fatness in their backstops, or Paul DePodesta, who went on after this book was written to get fired by no greater team than the Los Angeles Dodgers (no, not the one with both the Los Angeles and the Anaheim in their name, the ones who actually play in Los Angeles). Beane himself makes an appearance, although it's rather off-putting that he refers to himself in the third person a la Bob Dole or Barry Bonds.

One thing that should be clear though: there is no such thing as "Moneyball", and the sport Beane is actually referring to is baseball, not the lottery. Sadly, he does not give up the secret clues on how to win or even have a better chance at winning the lottery. I do not know these clues either (which is why I originally bought the book) but I did see a software program once so I know they exist.