Moneyball | Study Guide

At a Glance

About the Title

Baseball is not only a sport; it is an industry. Each team is a company, an organization, a brand, and a business. In most industries, companies with more resources have more power; in baseball, the teams with more resources have more power. The author, Michael Lewis, views modern baseball as an unfair playing field in which some teams have a significant revenue, and others, such as the Oakland Athletics (the Oakland A's), have limited budgets. The team does not have the financial resources to compete with wealthier teams. Instead, its managers achieve success by using statistical analysis to find inexpensive players who will deliver solid performance results. The approach of the Oakland A's is to ruthlessly "trade," or exchange, players with other baseball teams. As a result, the team finds hidden talents who are ignored by conventional scouts and then increases the value of its mediocre players. The approach of the Oakland A's breaks much of the established conventional wisdom about identifying and recruiting talented baseball players. Moneyball is a humorous term to describe the strategic approach that the Oakland A's take to addressing the income disparity between teams in their sport. In other words, the Oakland A's are playing moneyball as much as baseball.