Billy Beane's 'Moneyball'

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Summary Before starting the book, I watched the movie. Usually it’s supposed to be the other way around, reading the book first and then watching the movie. In this case I was glad I had watched the movie first. The book was pretty much similar to the movie; however there were major parts in the book that I would not have understood without watching the movie such as the part where Jeremy Giambi was celebrating after they had just lost a game. This part was not described as clearly as it was shown in the movie. Although the novel went into more detail about the concepts, formulas and player stats, both the book and the movie were really good and thoroughly described the meaning of the “money ball concept” The book “Moneyball” is based on a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for…show more content…
Players that could get on base were heavily under rated in the league. Billy Beane didn’t go for the big flashy hitters but those who could simply get on base, either by getting a hit or just getting walked. Beane used this under rated stat to build the Oakland Athletics team. The moneyball strategy was used largely among many other teams after the Athletics got as far as they did. Most notably, the Boston Red Sox used this strategy and won the World Series two years later. This concept was originally formulated in the 1960s; this theory explained how baseball could be won by stats and not just big name signings. When this book by Earnshaw Cook was released in 1964, it was nationally criticised and was hushed up because everyone thought that it was a bizarre idea that baseball could be ever based off of stats. The exact term for the strategy used was sabermetrics. This term refers to the stats used in baseball, it is often used to determine how many homeruns, hits, or the on base percentage the player is projected to
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