MoneyBall

I was so hyped to read the latest book based on being a NY Mets fan, MoneyBall by Michael Lewis.  The concept of the book is very intriguing.  It chronicles the history of sabermetrics and using statistics to choose your baseball team.  This becomes increasingly important as teams in smaller baseball markets, aka Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay, compete with the “beasts” with all of the resources.  Why is this so important to the NY Mets fan, you ask?  Well, the Mets just hired a new General Manager named Sandy Alderson, who is in some ways the father of this movement when he served as the General Manager of the Oakland A’s.  Alderson was caught in the change of frugality with new ownership in Oakland and was forced to think this way.  He hired a number of young Harvard/Yale types who crunched stats to say who may be the college players to pick in the draft, oh yeah high school players were not in the offing with this movement.  The majority of the book follows those hired by Alderson to make this happen.  Guess what?  Most are now in key leadership positions for the Mets so I feel happy for our future!  The book also presents a top draft pick of the Mets in the 80s, Billy Beane who was hired by Alderson and is the real prototype of this thinking.  Beane’s story is one worth reading.  Crazy hyper guy.  The book takes a year in the life of the draft and the fight between the old baseball guys and the new techno stat guys.  The 2002 draft is the focus.  Well guess what… not all the super stat kids made it.  So I guess there is no definitive answer as to who will.  A mix between the stats movement, the life of Beane and others around him, and a few chapters on players who made it even against the odds (though they had great stats)!  Put on your list when spring training comes, for those liking baseball.