moneyball the art of winning an unfair game michael lewis

The answer is that the A's have taken advantage of the statistical analysis developed over the last 25 years or so by Bill James, author of the Baseball Abstract, and an army of fellow statisticians. His defection should have doomed his old team, but amazingly it didn't.

Indeed, after the 2001 season, Jason Giambi, the A's first baseman and the American League's Most Valuable Player, signed a $120 million contract with the Yankees.

Oakland won its division two out of the last three years, and made the playoffs in all three, even as some of its best players have signed with richer squads. The A's have defied this logic and embarrassed the economic determinists, including Bud Selig, baseball's commissioner, who happens to own the small-market and underperforming Milwaukee Brewers. It has long been an article of faith among fans and team owners-especially small-market owners-that the poorer teams could not compete with the richer teams, at least not for long. The A's, as it happened, lost to the Twins, who paid their players just a smidgeon more than the A's. Despite the disparity, the two teams tied for the best record in baseball, each winning 103 games, though both lost in the playoffs. But the A's have been very successful as well, which leads to the question that animates the book: 'ow did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?'Īt the opening of the 2002 season, the Yankees had a payroll of $126 million, and the A's had a payroll of about $40 million. Teams like the Yankees and the Atlanta Braves (backed by cable television revenue) have tended to be successful. Big-market teams have money to pay free agents and wind up with payrolls as much as three times that of small-market teams.

For decades now, Major League Baseball has been divided between big-market teams such as the New York Yankees and small-market teams such as the Minnesota Twins.

Moneyball the art of winning an unfair game michael lewis