Moneyball Essay

Chad Marshal Buchda

Mrs. Baird

Economics/Period 6

March, 30th 2017

1. Book Title- Moneyball

2. Author- Michael Lewis

3 . Page Count- 288

4. Summary- For over a decade the people who run professional baseball have argued that the game is less about athletic competition and more of a financial one, and this book focuses on the test of this claim, (Lewis 23). Basically the overall premise of the book is Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta a Harvard Economics major attempting to prove that overpriced superstars is not the key to winning an unfair game but, data that is created through the years of a player playing the game. The New York Yankees, the richest team in baseball had and overall budget in 2002 of $126 million where teams like the oakland

Economical Connections- While preparing his roster for the upcoming season he traded one of the most popular players Johnny Damon, so instead of focusing on the player himself he decided to focus on the price Damon would draw the next season. This concept is considered a Trade-off, by losing Damon they are able to get 3 players to replace him but losing 15 runs a season because of it. The Concept of this book was winning and Unfair game where some teams had a budget of over a 120 million and teams like Billy’s had under 40 million. Instead of taking the usual scouting approach, fans, popularity, appearance, he focused primarily on runs batted in, on base percentage, and hits finding the underrated players that could be afforded. When deciding whether or not to trade Pena he used Benefit cost analysis deciding if trading Pena was worth trading in order to push Hatteberg to the top and in turn help them claim more and more victories. Lastly of course the most obvious Economic quality about the book Moneyball is Scarcity the fact that Billy Beane only had a scarce budget to work with. The whole point of moneyball was to overcome these scarcities that faced them and be a winning team with said

Learned Material- I learned much not just about Economics and how, it can be used to overcome a scarce resource like and overall team budget like the Oakland Athletics. Also I learned that using the trade off policy , when losing something one can achieve something different in return like how because of all the stars Beane and the A’s lost he had to approach the game differently. In the process changing the game of baseball forever especially for the teams that do not have the buying power of the New York Yankees.

7. Recommendation- I would recommend this book to many people, not only does it have the game of baseball that so many adore, but it has the math behind some of the decisions made throughout the entire book. Baseball is America’s pastime and just because scouting was done one way back in said pastime does not mean it still has to be done in the same vain, and attention grabbing way. Baseball should be about the game and this idea that Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta concocted was not changing this ideal but highlighting players who may not get a second look because of some bad decisions or underrated stamp. I would rate the book a 10 out of ten and definitely recommend this to a friend for all the qualities it possesses, honesty, baseball, and all the other things that made moneyball,