Moneyball

Michael Lewis

📚 GENRE: History

📃 PAGES:  336

✅ COMPLETED: March 19, 2022

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

Michael Lewis takes readers inside the clubhouse of the Oakland A’s — a team that has consistently won a high number of games under General Manager Billy Beane despite routinely having one of the lowest payrolls in the league. Lewis explains how Oakland’s willingness to take risks and focus on finding undervalued players helped revolutionize baseball thinking and strategy in the early 2000s.

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Think Different — Because the Oakland A’s routinely have one of the lowest payrolls in the MLB, GM Billy Beane has to deploy unique strategies to compete with the rest of the league. With innovative thinking and a willingness to take risks, Beane and the A’s were able to find undervalued players and revolutionize baseball in the early 2000s. This mindset can be carried into life — always be willing to think different and find ways to do things more efficiently. 

2️⃣ On-Base Percentage Matters — In a league that was obsessed with average and home runs, the A’s were focused on finding hitters who had a high on-base percentage and were able to draw a lot of walks. Get on base and score runs — that’s the formula to winning games.

3️⃣ Money Isn’t Everything — Following the 2002 season, the Boston Red Sox offered Beane a contract that would have made him the highest paid GM in baseball history. He turned it down because money was the ONLY reason he was considering the Red Sox job. His heart was still in Oakland. Don’t make decisions purely based on money.  

Favorite Quote

"No matter how successful you are, change is always good. There can never be a status quo."

Book Notes 📑

Preface

  • To open the 2002 season, the Oakland A’s had a payroll of $40 million.
    • The highest payroll team was the Yankees with a $126 million payroll.
    • The wealth gap between the richest and poorest teams was more significant in Major League Baseball vs. other sports. 
  • Oakland put up huge win totals in 2000 and 2001 despite working with the lowest payroll in the game. 
    • How did they do it? — this is what peaked the author’s interest. 
  • At the core of Oakland’s success was this: the A’s were willing to rethink the game of baseball — how it was played, now it was managed, how players were valued. 
    • Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane was at the center of everything. He is a baseball genius. 

Ch. 1: The Curse of Talent

  • 1975 — Free agency in MLB is born thanks to a court of law grant.
    • The average player’s salary went from $52k per year to $150k.
    • Catfish Hunter was the first modern free agent, getting $3.75 million from George Steinbrenner and the Yankees.
  • Billy Beane attended St. Caramel High School in San Diego, CA, where he was a standout in football, baseball, and basketball.
    • MLB scouts followed him everywhere. He was regarded as one of the best players in the country.
  • Beane would have been the No. 1 overall pick in the 1980 draft out of high school, but he scared teams off because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to play pro baseball or go to Stanford University. There was doubt that he would sign, if picked.
    • If he had gone to Stanford, he would have played baseball and football. He would have succeeded John Elway as the QB at Stanford. 
      • Instead, he was drafted 23rd overall by the New York Mets and decided to sign for $125k. 
        • That $125k was invested by his parents in a real estate partnership that went bad. He lost it all. 
      • Darry Strawberry went No. 1 overall to the Mets. 

Ch. 2: How to Find a Ballplayer

  • 2002 — The A’s had seven first round draft picks after Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen left the team in free agency.
    • Beane fired Oakland’s head of scouting after the 2001 drafts he was at odds with how the scouts were evaluating talent.
      • The 2002 draft was the first one where Beane took a different approach to evaluating players.
  • In 2002, Beane leaned heavily on Paul DePodesta, a Harvard graduate who evaluated players primarily based on their stats and analytics rather using the ‘eye test’ that most scouts relied on. 
    • Beane and DePodesta loved players who drew a lot of walks. They were loved guys who had a high on-base percentage. 
  • Beane and DePodesta were always butting heads with the Oakland scouts. 
    • The scouts were traditional; Beane and Podesta were trying to change it up and do things differently. 
    • The scouts were always focused on the player’s look, body, and talent. Beane and DePodesta were far more focused on numbers, especially walks and on-base percentage.
      • This created some friction. 
  • DePodesta found that walks and plate discipline were arguably the greatest predictors of success at the pro level. He actively looked for guys that drew walks.
    • He loved Kevin Youkelis. Referred to him as “the Greek God of walks.”

Ch. 3: The Enlightenment

  • Beane’s time in pro baseball in the 1980s was a big letdown.
    • He was expected to be a Hall of Famer but he struggled to make it out of the minor leagues, and mostly sat the bench when he did make it to the Bigs.
    • He was a great athlete, but just couldn’t hit. 
    • He had anger issues when he failed. He wasn’t used to failing.
  • Because they came up in the same draft class, Beane and Darryl Stawberry were always compared.
    • Strawberry went on to have a great career. 
  • 1990 — After being traded a few times and never living up to his potential, Beane retired as a player with the A’s and took a job with the organization as an advanced scout. 
  • 1991 — Interestingly, the A’s had the highest payroll in baseball in 1991 under owner Walter Haas, Jr.
    • Oakland went to the World Series three straight years from 1988-1990.
    • This all changed when Haas dies in 1995 and the team was sold to real estate developers Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann.
      • Schott and Hofmann immediately reduced the budget. 
  • After the team was sold and its budget was reduced significantly, Oakland GM Sandy Alderson knew he had to focus on one stat: on-base percentage.
    • The A’s became obsessed with this stat.
      • Alderson pushed this concept and system of getting on base and scoring runs throughout all levels of the organization.
  • 1993 — Beane is promoted to assistant GM under Alderson.
    • His job was to find undervalued minor leaguers that got on base a lot. 

Ch. 4: Field of Ignorance

  • Alderson’s revolutionary methods and strategies were based on the writings of Bill James, a baseball nut that wrote several books on the importance of statistical analysis in baseball. 
    • James graduated from the University of Kansas and was obsessed with baseball.
    • Beane ended up reading all of James’s work as well. 
  • 1850s — The error was born. 
    • Fielders did not wear gloves at this time. 
  • James’s first published piece was his 1977 Baseball Abstract.
    • The main point James was trying to get across in how writings — The naked eye was an inadequate tool for learning what you needed to know to evaluate baseball players and baseball games.
      • Ex. Fielding Errors. The score judge decides whether or not an error was committed based on his own judgement.
    • James wrote The Baseball Abstract every year until 1989.
  • James coined the term ‘sabermetrics’ to describe intellectually rigorous baseball analysts. 
    • The name is derived from SABR — an acronym of the Society for American Baseball Research. 
    • This term is used to describe people who are obsessed with looking at the statistics of baseball. 
  • Although his writings were all accurate and beneficial to those who read them, people inside of baseball never really took James seriously in the 1970s and 80s. They never implemented what he was talking about. 
    • Until Billy Beane with the A’s. 

Ch. 5: The Jeremy Brown Blue Plate Special

  • Beane was promoted to Oakland GM in 1998.
    • He had read all of James’s work and was ready to implement the teachings to build a great baseball team on a tight budget. 
  • 2002 MLB Draft — The A’s take the following players in the early rounds:
    • No. 16 Pick — Nick Swisher, CF, Ohio State University
    • No. 24 Pick — Joe Blanton, P, University of Kentucky
    • No. 26 Pick — John McCurdy, IF, University of Maryland 
    • No. 30 Pick — Ben Fritz, P, CSU Fresno
    • No. 35 Pick — Jeremy Brown, C, University of Alabama
      • Brown was perhaps Oakland’s craziest pick. Brown himself didn’t even know if he would be drafted. The A’s picked him in the first round.
      • Brown led the nation in walks at Alabama. He was exactly what the A’s we’re looking for.
      • But he was slow, unathletic, out of shape, and didn’t “look good” in a baseball uniform. This is partly what made all scouts across the league downgrade him. 
    • The A’s got 13 of the 20 players on their wish list in the 2002 draft — 9 pitchers and 4 hitters.
      • The league thought they were nuts with some of their picks, but the A’s considered it a great draft.

Ch. 6: The Science of Winning an Unfair Game

  • In 2002, Beane had a budget of $40 million to assemble a team of 25 players.
    • The Yankees had a payroll of $126 million entering that year. 
  • The average salary of a baseball player in 2002 was $2.3 million.
    • The average salary for an A’s player on the 2002 Opening Day roster was $1.5 million.
    • The lack of money to play with forced Beane and the A’s to look for undervalued guys — whether they were considered too old and over the hill, or too young and untalented. 
  • 2000 — Commissioner Bud Selig assembled a ‘Blue Ribbon Panel’ to investigate the economy of baseball.
    • Selig was hoping the panel would find that poor teams are at a severe disadvantage and that baseball players should have called salaries.
      • The panel came to this exact conclusion in 2000 — rich teams had an unfair advantage over poor teams. 
  • Oakland’s success was a direct counterpoint to The Blue Ribbon Panel’s findings. The A’s won:
    • 87 games in 1999
    • 91 games in 2000
    • 102 games in 2001
    • Beane was beating teams with far greater payrolls because he was assembling his team with undervalued players and deploying an in-game strategy that was completely unique and against conventional baseball wisdom. 
    • Oakland’s success despite a tight budget was a thorn in Selig’s side. As the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, he wanted there to be rule changes that prevented rich teams from having such an advantage.
      • But Oakland’s success was proving that it wasn’t all about money. 
  • After the 2001 season, Oakland lost their three best players to free agency — Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen.
    • The expectation was that the A’s would really get crushed in 2002. Their luck was over.
      • That didn’t happen. 
  • Bean’s right-hand man, Paul DePodesta, did a deep dive into why teams win games using a bunch of statistical models.
    • What he found was that on-base percentage (the ability to avoid making an out) was by far the most important statistic in baseball.
      • He also found that it was the most undervalued stay by the rest of the league. 
      • The rest of the league was obsessed with power and slugging percentage.
    • These findings led the A’s to become obsessed with on-base percentage.
      • Ex. Johnny Damon. While Damon was considered a big loss, the A’s knew he was easily replaceable. Damon’s on-base percentage in 2001 was .324 — 10 points below the league average. 

Ch. 7: Giambi's Hole

  • Jason Giambi was tough for the A’s to replace.
    • His on-base percentage in 2001 was .477 — the higher in the American League and 50 point above the runner-up (Seattle’s Edgar Martinez, .423)
  • The A’s knew they couldn’t replace Giambi with one individual. They wouldn’t be able to afford a replacement that was as good as Giambi.
    • Instead, they tried to get several players that could recreate a similar on-base percentage. 
      • Former Yankee David Justice
      • Former Red Sock Scott Hatteberg 
      • Jason’s brother, Jeremy Giambi 
      • All three players were considered ‘defective’ (old, washed up, etc.) in some way. That’s why the A’s were able to afford them.
  • Every plate appearance is a mini game between the pitcher and hitter. The first three pitches of an at-bat are huge. 
    • Quote (P. 147): “The difference between 1–2 and 2–1 in terms of expected outcomes is just enormous. It’s the largest variance of expected outcomes of any one pitch. On 2–1 most average major league hitters become All-Stars, yet on 1-2 they become anemic nine-hole hitters. People talk about first pitch strikes. But it’s really the first two out of three.” — Paul DePodesta 
      • Plate discipline is one of the best traits a player can have. The ability to not swing at pitches out of the strike zone. 
      • Beane constantly looked to acquire guys with great plate discipline.
  • Beane was an unusual GM. He ran the entire operation, from who was on the roster, who to play in the lineup, when to bunt and steal, and so on.
    • He was known for being around the players constantly in the clubhouse, asking them questions, pestering them, yelling at them. 
      • Most GMs never engaged with the players. Beane was different. 
    • He also usually worked out in the weight room during games because he couldn’t bear to watch the games. He would get too emotional.

Ch. 8: Scott Hatteberg, Pickin' Machine

  • The A’s got Hatteberg after a nerve in his right elbow prevented him from throwing well. Hatteberg was a catcher with the Red Sox for the first 6 years of his career.
    • After the nerve issue, Boston traded him to Colorado. The Rockies basically allowed him to become a free agent.
  • Beane and the A’s called Hatteberg the second he was a free agent and offered him a contract to play first base with Oakland.
    • It took a lot of work, but Hatteberg went from being an embarrassment at first base to a respectable fielder. 
  • The primary reason Oakland wanted Hatteberg was for his plate discipline and ability to get on base.
    • Hatteberg finished the 2002 season with the 13th best on-base percentage in the league. 
    • Hatteberg finished the 2002 season with the third most pitches seen per plate appearance. 
    • Hatteberg’s walk-to-strikeout ratio was fourth-best in the American League in the 2002 season. 
    • Hatteberg’s overall ability to get on base and score runs was a big reason for the team’s success that year. 
  • Quote: “No matter how successful you are, change is always good. There can never be a status quo.”

Ch. 9: The Trading Desk

  • Another one of the big secrets to Oakland’s success has been Beane’s ability to make great trades at the trade deadline.
    • Quote (P. 192): “Since the All-Star Game was created in 1933, no other team had ever won so many of its final 75 games.”
      • Oakland went 58-17 after the All-Star break in 2001.
    • The A’s are usually a different team after the All-Star break. Beane usually makes a few big trades.
      • He calls these “Fucking A” trades for their ability to “make the rest of the league say ‘Fucking A.’”
  • July 2002 — Beane swings like 3 separate trades to eventually land 2B Ray Durham from the Chicago White Sox for almost nothing in return (a minor league pitcher).
    • This was a “Fucking A” trade. Durham was considered one of the best 2B in the league.
  • Beane was extremely smart and crafty with his trades. He had a great ability to get what he needed without giving up anything. 
    • Ex. In previous seasons he had acquired Jermaine Dye and Johnny Damon — two really good players — from the Kansas City Royals for nothing. 
  • In one of the more bizarre trades he has ever made, Beane works a complicated deal for Cleveland Indians pitcher Ricardo Rincon 30 minutes before the A’s are about to play the Indians. 
    • Rincon walked right across the hall and joined the A’s. 

Ch. 10: Anatomy of an Undervalued Pitcher

  • Chad Bradford was a key relief pitcher for the A’s. He was a big reason for the team’s success. 
    • Drafted in 1994 by the White Sox. 
    • The White Sox never believed in him, despite outstanding Triple A numbers, because his Leo very was weird. Bradford was a submarine pitcher.
  • Bradford grew up in Missouri and wasn’t anything special in high school.
    • His high school coach asked him to drop his arm angle to a three-quarter release to put some extra spin on the ball. It worked.
      • Interestingly, as Bradford pitched in college and the minor leagues, he began to drop his arm angle more and more without even noticing. Eventually his release point was down by his toes. 
  • One of the reasons Oakland loved Bradford so much was that his walks and home runs allowed were really low and his strikeouts were high.
    • He didn’t throw hard at all and he looked funky. But he was extremely effective.
    • Paul DePodesta had his eye on Bradford for awhile. Beane eventually swung a trade with the White Sox for Bradford before the 2001 season.
      • Bradford thrives on the A’s. He became one of the best relievers in baseball.
      • He was a weapon out of the bullpen for Oakland. 

Ch. 11: The Human Element

  • Quote (P. 256): “Relievers are like volatile stocks. They’re the one asset you need to watch closely and trade for quick profits.” — Billy Beane
  • 2002 — The A’s won 20 straight games, setting an American League record.
    • The 2017 Cleveland Indians snapped this with 22 straight wins.
    • Their 20th consecutive win came in a 12-11 walkoff victory over the Kansas City Royals. Scott Hatteberg hit a game-winning solo home run in the bottom of the 9th. 
      • The A’s had been winning 11-0 earlier. Wild game. 

Ch. 12: The Speed of the Idea

  • One of the weird philosophies that Beane encouraged was the idea of not making outs on the base paths.
    • Stealing bases was basically not allowed.
    • Taking risks on the base paths was basically not allowed. 
    • Oakland stole just 25 bases all year in 2002.
  • The 2002 Oakland A’s miraculously led the MLB in wins with 103 after losing Giambi, Damon, and Isringhausen. 
    • This was one more win than the team had on 2001 with those three players (102). 
  • Unfortunately, Oakland’s phenomenal 2002 season came to an end in the American League Divisional Series against the Minnesota Twins.
    • The Twins took the series, 3-2.
  • Soon after losing in the playoffs, Beane was offered a contract by the Boston Red Sox to become the highest paid GM in MLB history.
    • The offer was $12.5 million over 5 years.
    • Initially, Beane basically took the job. He was already imaging trades he would do and DePodesta was told he would be Oakland’s new GM.
      • But Beane then had second thoughts and decided to remain with the A’s. He is still Oakland’s GM in 2022.
      • DePodesta is the President of the Cleveland Browns now.