Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
    Unavailable
    Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
    Unavailable
    Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

    In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 13, 2003
    ISBN9780739308172
    Unavailable
    Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

    Related to Moneyball

    Related audiobooks

    Baseball For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Book In The News… The Wild Adventurers Who Put The Sugar In Your Tea

      Oct 15, 2021

      Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources Javier Blas and Jack Farchy Random House Business, £20 Most of us don’t pause to consider how the tea or sugar in our morning cuppa got into our mug, as the raw materials that make ou

      1 min read

    • Article

      How Might Archegos’ $10 Billion in Losses Affect Your Retirement?

      Apr 29, 2021

      Imagine you walked into a Las Vegas casino and you brought all the money you had, let’s say $1  million, and the casino gave you $154 million to gamble with. How smart do you think that would be for that casino?  Well, right now Goldman Sachs Bank US

      6 min read

    • Article

      Buy Blinkist, and Save Money!

      Nov 30, 2018

      Buy Blinkist, and Save Money!
      1 min read

    • Article

      Plunging Into the Infinite: How Literature Captures the Essence of Chess

      Oct 13, 2017

      Fiction has the unparalleled ability to grant us insight into a character's psyche. It is therefore uniquely qualified to explore the nature of chess itself. The post Plunging Into the Infinite: How Literature Captures the Essence of Chess appeared f

      6 min read

    • Article

      In 'Upheaval,' Jared Diamond Examines Crisis Resolution Through A Personal Lens

      May 9, 2019

      The Pulitzer prize-winning author draws from history and psychology, theorizing that nations in crisis can learn from the experiences of people in crisis — and looks for a path forward for the U.S.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Baseball Winter Meetings See Downsize Shift

      Jan 17, 2020

      With the notable exception of player salaries, everything in baseball seems to be getting smaller. At the 2019 Baseball Winter Meetings in San Diego, there were fewer player transactions, fewer players, fewer minor league teams, fewer baseball card c

      2 min read

    • Article

      Saints Row

      Sep 16, 2021

      February 25, 2022 Volition Deep Silver saintsrow.com Saints Row is getting a complete reboot, and it’s just called… Saints Row. All those wacky antics from the four previous games, like diving into computers, killing zombies for Burt Reynolds, beco

      2 min read

    • Article

      Saints Row

      Nov 8, 2021

      Saints Row is getting a complete reboot, and it’s just called… Saints Row. All those wacky antics from the four previous games, like diving into computers, killing zombies for Burt Reynolds, becoming president, and ruling the world with superpowers?

      2 min read

    • Article

      Old World

      Oct 17, 2023

      Old World
      5 min read

    • Article

      Darvish Trade Is Cost-saving Move — And It Starts Undoing Of Cubs

      Dec 30, 2020

      CHICAGO — It all looked so good on paper. The new, expanded home clubhouse with plenty of space, flat-screen TVs and cryotherapy chambers. The chefs making healthier meals. The proliferation of mental skills coaches. The yoga instructor. The technolo

      4 min read

    • Article

      Dark Cloud Cast A Shadow Over Growing Hobby

      Sep 20, 2022

      The hobby was riding a wave of momentum following the 42nd National Sports Collectors Convention in Atlantic City. The show attracted another historic crowd and had the industry buzzing as an iconic card surged toward a defining moment. Three weeks l

      3 min read

    • Article

      Saints Row

      Oct 5, 2021

      Saints Row is getting a complete reboot, and it’s just called… Saints Row. All those wacky antics from the four previous games, like diving into computers, killing zombies for Burt Reynolds, becoming president, and ruling the world with superpowers?

      2 min read

    • Article

      Dylan Hernandez: LaVar Ball Has a Place in This Space

      Jan 13, 2018

      LOS ANGELES_LaVar Ball isn't going anywhere. Go ahead and say that he doesn't matter. Try guilting his oldest son into silencing him. Burn incense and say his name three times in the dark. When you turn on the lights, he'll still be here. In defendin

      3 min read

    • Article

      For The Love Of The Game

      Mar 28, 2024

      For The Love Of The Game
      5 min read

    • Article

      Not-So-Slow Summer for Coins?

      Jun 10, 2022

      The business and the hobby of coins continues its bull run, even as the economy tries to shake off its recent downward trend. A recent online headline reading, “Bitcoin rally-coins to buy for the next crypto bull run” nicely illustrates that crypto c

      1 min read

    • Article

      Toy Stories

      Jan 8, 2020

      NOW seems a good time to remember some things we once had and would like to recover in 2020. I don’t mean the great international and political issues—peace, a sensible US President and proper relationships with our European neighbours. I mean the sm

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Haves And The Have-yachts

      Mar 30, 2023

      The Haves And The Have-yachts
      3 min read

    Reviews for Moneyball

    4/5

    1,510 ratings68 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I think I've read Moneyball before I picked up the audiobook in 2019. At least excerpts? That I hadn't read it while also running a baseball blog in the late 2000s was a sort of running joke. I agree with the need for teams to make smarter decisions, and I'd argue for hours with the proponents of outdated methods. But I hadn't quite gotten around to reading the book.It's quite good 15 years later. The stats are all so familiar now that nothing on the numbers side of things is overwhelming. And Michael Lewis, as he has proven in so many other books since, has a real talent for depicting the little dramas of real life.
    • 4/5
      Personally I really enjoyed this, but I would recommend it only for those who either used to collect baseball cards or currently engage in fantasy baseball leagues, as the focus on baseball stats would otherwise be pretty dry. But, for those who are interested, this is about as great a story based on calculations of various statistics as I can imagine.
    • 5/5
      The best baseball book I've ever read, and I've read plenty.
    • 4/5
      A must read for any serious baseball or sports fan. This book is about the creation of better metrics to evaluation baseball players effectiveness and how the always cash straped Oakland A's has successfully applied them. I will be interested tosee if this changes the way I watch baseball.
    • 5/5
      As usual for Lewis, he mixes storytelling with a bellwether theme, here introducing an emerging social/business trend that manifests not only in sports analysis but to any competitive enterprise where divining advantage is paramount.

      As I read Moneyball, I couldn't help but see how these SABR techniques might apply to all sorts of alternate domains, especially business. Of course, just as Lewis showed in baseball, the factoring and reductionism central to quantification takes a lot of the joy and gamesmanship out of any game.

      In the end, I doubt I'd want to run my life this way. But it's a rare book that can elicit such personal introspection. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      As many people consider "The Catcher in the Rye" the coming of age novel in life, I believe this book to act the same role in the world of sports. The book goes behind the scenes of an organization that is notorious for having little money and it looks to its great success and how that occurred. By portraying Billy Beane's genius ability to change the way the average general manager can go about putting together a winning team, the reader can barely help but to feel like a fan of the Athletic's after reading about their great season. It also goes into the clubhouse and what goes on with players that may not be the most famous, but they are in the clubhouse for a reason. Billy Beane had that success because he realized that. Let's be real for a moment, it had to have been a superb book if Brad Pitt agreed to star in the film for it right?
    • 4/5
      "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis is a true story on how the current general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane, is able to win just as many games as the New York Yankees, despite having only a fraction of the salary. Most teams invest huge amounts of money into players that are flashy and get lots of hits. However, Beane looks at a new stat, called on base percentage (OBP), which measures the amount of time a player is on base, which includes hits and walks. Beane doesn't care if a player reaches base on a hit or walk, all he cares about is if a player can get on base or not, an idea every team but the Athletics neglects to take into account. This strategy allows for the Athletics to make the playoffs and contend for a world series, despite being in a small market and not having a large payroll. The Athletics become a team that everyone loves to root for, unless you are competing with them in the playoffs.
    • 5/5
      I am envious of Lewis' talent and craft, and I find myself increasingly wanting to emulate him for my non-fiction projects. There's something about how he focuses on the most interesting parts of a very interesting story, sort of a fractal approach to reporting. Specifically, he takes a particular baseball wonderment, and pauses at the fascinating parts to dissect them and blow them wide open. The Bill James section was filled with information I had previously not known about my favorite game, and now I appreciate it even more! It is also amazing to realize that during key parts of the A's run of success, Lewis was right there! In the flesh! His part was being the greatest fly on the wall ever for a non-fiction book! The afterword is positively revelatory, and the book is absolutely a remarkable piece of journalism. Bravo.
    • 5/5
      I don't watch baseball, but guys, I think I'm an A's fan now.
    • 4/5
      I love baseball and I loved Michael Lewis' The Blind Side, so even though this wasn't necessarily a book that I had at the top of my TBR pile, I figured those first two facts would probably indicate that I'd love this book once I got into it. I also love Scott Brick as an audio reader, so what was there not to love about this book?Well, it turns out I didn't actually love it. It was okay. It was informative, interesting, and I learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes happenings that help run a baseball team, although granted, in this case Billy Beane and the Oakland A's were running things a little differently and more unconventionally than had been done by teams in the past. But honestly, I found this story a little TOO bogged down by statistics, and the flow of the book just didn't seem quite right. Lewis jumped around a lot from present to past, not necessarily transitioning all that well. I wanted to really like this book or even love it, but it didn't quite do it for me. I wish that I was a little more knowledgeable about the American League and/or the A's, especially back in the early 2000's when all of this was taking place. I think I could've appreciated it a little more. I've not seen the movie yet, although I'm interested to see how it's adapted to the big screen.
    • 4/5
      I read The Blind Side before seeing the movie, but watched Moneyball before reading this book. Lewis' writing on sports just lends itself to good movies that are able to stick closely to the book. The book reads like the movie just with more detail, and the movie captures some of the more fun scenes in the book very well. "I couldn't do a regression analysis but I knew what one was." Billy Beane is much smarter than the movie made him out to be, Beane read all of Bill James' abstracts and devoured articles on baseball analysis; the A's genius wasn't all based on egghead Paul DePodesta's work, though DePodesta did pioneer a few models and built much of the computer work. Beane could easily run up statistical refutations of media criticism, such as the A's supposedly not "manufacturing runs in the playoffs."

      Lewis apparently got interested in the A's after the 2001 season and was present for part of 2002, given access to Beane and the clubhouse and apparently the 2002 draft. (The draft drama is largely absent from the movie.) This wikipedia page on the book gives an update on how the A's draft analysis panned out. At first glance it appears they did not fare much better than randomness, but perhaps in sports a slight edge makes a big difference. Lewis was there for the famous streak-breaking game where the A's blew an 11-run lead. The movies portrayal of those moments are quite good. Beane has a darker temper and is much more profane than Brad Pitt's character portrayed (there is no shortage of f-bombs in this book).

      Another difference between versions is that Oakland manager Art Howe understood that Billy Beane and the front office called the shots, there was much less conflict than what was portrayed. On the field, Howe stood where and how Beane told him; the appearance of his command was all illusion. The players all knew Beane called the shots, even though the front office shared little of the data they were crunching-- unlike in the movie.

      The A's analysis was much more thorough than the movie made out, too. Lewis takes the time to explain the history of sabermetrics and the various controversies such as how to judge fielding and pitchers' contributions. From here out, I will only look at on-base percentage and slugging percentage for hitters, and OBP is four times more important than SLG. But the revolution has only changed baseball so much, most articles I see only reference batting average and home runs.

      Scott Hatteberg was acquired by the A's for his great on-base percentage, but missing from the movie is Hatteberg's own approach to methodically recording data about all of his at-bats. The Red Sox had criticized him for his scientific method.

      Another difference was that the touching stories about Beane's relationship with his daughter are not in the book version.

      I give this book 4 stars out of 5.
    • 4/5
      Very good book. Better than the movie.
    • 4/5
      I've got a short list of teams that I follow, between my hometown favorites to teams be enjoyed to watch as a kid or even jet out of pure fascination. The Oakland A's fall n the latter here and during the my childhood I always liked to watch Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley. Then along comes Billy Beane and the wins just keep coming. How can you not be amazed? What I didn't realize then was how methodical all the choices that were made came to create such a team.

      The book reads quickly and kind of meanders here and there during certain topics, but overall you get a feeling and new appreciation for what he front office did or that team. It also helps enlighten us to some o he front office moves by teams afterward that have tried to duplicate the process.
    • 4/5
      I've got a short list of teams that I follow, between my hometown favorites to teams be enjoyed to watch as a kid or even jet out of pure fascination. The Oakland A's fall n the latter here and during the my childhood I always liked to watch Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley. Then along comes Billy Beane and the wins just keep coming. How can you not be amazed? What I didn't realize then was how methodical all the choices that were made came to create such a team.

      The book reads quickly and kind of meanders here and there during certain topics, but overall you get a feeling and new appreciation for what he front office did or that team. It also helps enlighten us to some o he front office moves by teams afterward that have tried to duplicate the process.
    • 2/5
      Lewis's usual hagiography. Honestly, Ricardo Rincon ain't nothing to write home about.
    • 4/5
      I loved this book, but I also have a deep love of baseball and the minutiae that is involved with the game. I also really like non-fiction and stories of people overcoming the odds and becoming something different--even great.

      I would NOT go into this book thinking that it is anything like the movie. There is no real narrative here, beyond the framework of Billy Beane building the Oakland A's into something out of nothing. What there is in this book is a lot of background info about sabremetrics and how they affected major league baseball.

      I enjoyed it thoroughly, but it is definitively more for people who already have a love of the game!
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed sharing this as an audio with my husband. I left with lots of great discussions and a better understanding of the game.
    • 4/5
      Quite enjoyable. I wish it wasn't so repetitive in the first half if the book. I really liked the stories about individual players and James and McCraken the most. I loved the brief discussion of chance in the playoffs. The scope of statistics could have been larger. I was also pleased by the epilogue recounting the reception of Moneyball from M.L.'s perspective.
    • 5/5
      Baseball is a game of inequalities, teams that have a great players and huge salaries, and others that just get by. Amateur draft day is, unlike the protracted celebration of pro football's, essentially carried out behind closed doors and not all that interesting. Players - athletes - are found by scouts in high school. At least, that's what conventional wisdom says. But Billy Beane and the Oakland A's may just be the wrench in the system that everyone thinks they know.Statistics and baseball are two things that go together like peanut butter and jelly. But what if the stats we're looking at to determine the best ball players aren't the right stats? What if most GM's are valuing the wrong things, and it's costing them games? Michael Lewis argues that this is behind the A's success: their GM, Billy Beane, doesn't value the same things that most people in Major League Baseball value, and it's going mostly unnoticed. Though the book is over a decade old, much of the information still reads fresh and I was left wondering why more hadn't changed about the game in the intervening years. Some aspects are very technical, but Lewis treats them with a light touch and makes it accessible whether you're a math major or not, leaving you with a fascinating story of one team's "making it big" with one of the lowest team salaries in the game.
    • 4/5
      Michael Lewis' Moneyball is a rousing David and Goliath story about an underdog Major League Baseball team that takes a data-driven approach to buying and selling baseball players, and ends up winning many more games each season than their much richer counterparts.

      At times the writing itself feels a little repetitive and breathless, but overall, this a fun, engrossing read.

      Lewis rides along with the Oakland A's for a season and profiles the people who have rejected baseball's hidebound "conventional" approach to player recruitment, which relies largely on intuition, painfully restrictive rules of thumb, and a flawed approach to statistics.

      Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane is at the center of the story, and Lewis couldn't have asked for a more colorful -- or even sympathetic -- character.

      The most interesting part of the book may have been the epilogue (I read the Barnes & Noble ebook version), which outlines the responses of establishment baseball figures and sports journalists to the hardcover version of the book. They're mad and they clearly want to attack the book, but do little more than buttress Lewis' contention that baseball's inner circle is little more than a social club with little interest in modernization.

      A very fun read of a book made popular again by the movie.
    • 2/5
      I had heard the book was very interesting even if you were not a baseball fan. No, you really do need to be a baseball fan to enjoy this book.
    • 4/5
      I am not a huge baseball fan anymore but I still enjoyed this audiobook. I saw a presentation by Michael Lewis and Billy Beane at a conference a year ago and thought it was interesting. The book covers the data driven decisions made by the Oakland A's about ten years ago. A little geeky but a fun read.
    • 5/5
      I actually saw the movie first, but as a person who's beginning to understand/accept sabermetric thinking, I figured I would like both versions of the story - I just happened to see the film first. I checked this out from the library and it was as good as I anticipated, perhaps even more so. I've seen others point out that the book works as both a way to interpret an alternative method to viewing baseball and as an effective business model. The A's knew they couldn't afford to keep many of their star players, so they tried to find ways to get similar production from much cheaper parts. Some of the "secrets" that were touched on here are probably a little outdated as I think most teams follow a lot of these principles now (the valuing of OBP more than batting average, for example), but this is still an essential read to understand where it all began. I would think that this is easily the most influential baseball book in recent memory.
    • 5/5
      This is probably one of my favorite books of all time. It was so well researched, well written, and just so interesting. As a fan of baseball, and one who has an open mind to things like playing baseball with statistics, it kept my interest. As well as being a cool non-fiction book where you learn a little something about what the game could be, it's a great story! It's true what they say that real life is better than any story, and this is one real-life story that is truly that, a great story.
    • 4/5
      This is a great book on the topic of sabermetrics. Lewis uses Billy Beane and the Oakland A's as his test case, arguing that the proper use of statistics in baseball can overcome any financial limitations a team might have. In the early 2000s, Beane had one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, and yet his teams managed to win 100+ games multiple seasons in a row. How did he do it? He realized that the game of baseball was a process, in which the output was to score runs. He also found the world of sabermetrics (study of baseball statistics) and used the key stats/metrics that factored into generating runs to build his roster. Luckily for him, it just so happened that his "key stats" were worth very little money on the open market. He thus aggressively sought after players who other teams overlooked, paid them their "market worth" and used them to build a winning ball club.Since I have an interest in baseball and work in the field of quality, I really enjoyed this book. It's a great piece of objective evidence that taking a process- and fact-based approach to a task can generate great results. It was also very interesting to see the history of Billy Beane, and how he turned what many would consider a failed career as a player into an exceptional career as GM. The only downside to this book is that it ends somewhat abruptly. I felt like it needed two or three more chapters to round out the story and tie up loose ends.In any case, anyone interested in baseball, statistics, or quality in general should pick up this book.
    • 3/5
      Well-written and thought through. The points made about the game of baseball, and how to identify productive players (i.e. not just "good" players, but those that get runs, or bases, and so help win games) are interesting and persuasive enough, although perhaps a little dulled now by having been publicised, and discussed. Why not count bases advanced, rather than hits? It never made sense to me, but then I never grew up with it. More surprising but also sounding valid, Lewis argues that "Errors", rare and specific enough to be treated conventionally like glaring defects, are more likely to be evidence of capable or spirited play: at least the player was in the position to make the error. For the European reader, one cannot help but speculate what such anaylsis would bring to football, and what we might learn (and then along come Kuper and Szymanski....)
    • 4/5
      Entertaining, but tilted -- the author is clearly trying to put over the Billy Beane way of doing things rather than offer a balanced look. And no doubt, it's remarkable what he's done, and I don't mean to set myself against it, but as a contrarian, I can't help myself wanting to check out the other side when some standpoint is so strongly forced on me.
    • 5/5
      A great but misunderstood book.
    • 4/5
      Great read! Any sports fan would like this and if you enjoy data in the slightest, you'll like it even more. Well written and it made me wish that he had written more.
    • 4/5
      This book is an insight into how in the Oakland A's, having comparably very little money to spend on their team in the early 2000's, ended up winning so many games. Baseball's financial inequality between the richest and poorest teams is the most disparate of all the major sports, and a team like the New York Yankees can use their sizable war chest of funds to purchase the best team possible. The Oakland A's, not having a hundred million to spend, needs to be more resourceful.The A's general manager, Billy Beane, was purportedly the first to implement at the pro level a system of management derived almost entirely from statistical analysis alone. This appears to have begun out of financial necessity and eventually grew into a very efficient and somewhat controversial method for success.The statistical analysis in Moneyball is putting to use the ongoing discussion going back for decades on how to break down the different outcomes of a play and assign them values. In theory, figure out which actions in a game produce the highest outcome towards the intended goal (wins) and focus on those the most.The novel's charm, apart from its savvy business edge, is how Billy Beane's team uncovers the true talents of otherwise unknown college and minor league players.