I have never been much of a baseball fan, but Michael Lewis has me interested. Moneyball is an extended case study of the Oakland A's as run by general manager Billy Beane during recent years. Beane and his advisors were saddled with one of the smallest budgets in Major League Baseball, yet managed to win more games than any other team. They did it by using statistical analysis to identify the qualities of players that were undervalued by the market (i.e., the other GMs). By doing so, they were able to assemble a successful team made up of players nobody wanted. A few years later, the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox are using similar strategies with good success (though the Red Sox have a huge budget in comparison).

Lewis is an excellent writer. The book is part thriller, part history, part biography. It's very much in touch with the human elements of the game and of management strategy, and it's a page-turner to boot. It reveals why batting average, RBI and ERA are not useful statistics for evaluating players, and points out that 90% of the teams in baseball don't want to hear about this approach at all. It's amusing to see that the oldtimers are willfully ignoring information that would help them win more games. I'll be keeping an eye on the Oakland and Toronto this season, and rooting for the Red Sox (even if they can't honestly be called underdogs any more).