A Comparison Between Stats And The Market

In Money Ball Michael Lewis makes many good comparisons and refrences that help readers understand the text and most importantly, the true meaning of baseball.  Out of these comparisons there is one that I am a fan off.  "Actual data from the market means more than individual perception/belief. The same is true in baseball" (Lewis 91).  This comparison can relate to many things he said earlier in this chapter and in the book.  The meaning of this quote is that you can never judge how good a player is with your eye and you need a lot of stats to truly know how good they are. This comparison also puts things in prespective for readers who are not too familiar with baseball and everyday people.

Like I said before this comparison supports many things said earlier in this chapter about stats vs. the naked eye.  This quote came from the author of the Baseball Abstact series, Bill James, "Think about it. One can absolutely not tell, by watching the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. the difference is 1 hit every 2 weeks" (Lewis 68).  The author Michael Lewis uses James to back up what he says.  Just down the page there is even more support for Lewis' and James' statement.  "In fact if you see both (hitters mentioned above) 15 games a year, there is a 40% chance that the .275 hitter will have more hits than the .300 hitter in the games you see" (Lewis 68).  All this evidence makes the comparison above accurate and a good point.  On a different note I will probably be doing a seperate blog post on James, the writer of Baseball Abstract who's work is constantly mentioned in Money Ball.  Now think, is there any other things that can't be judged by the eye and need stats to back it up?

Why Michael Lewis Wrote Money Ball

There are many reasons Michael Lewis wrote the novel Money Ball.  However, one of these reasons drastically stands out from the others.  This reason is that he wants to dig deeper into how the game of baseball works than just comparing stats and numbers.  He wants to get to know baseball better.  Figure out why some ideas failed and some were a success and how they could be improved.  This is shown in various places in the story including the people he talks about.  Although many major league organizations are mentioned throughout the story, he mainly focusses on one team, the Oakland A's.

There was one thing that stood out in particular about the A's that sparked Michael Lewis' interest.  This was the fact that the A's were one of the poorest teams, yet were able to compete with teams with lots of money like the Yankees and the Red Sox even in play-off time.  In the book he proved that the A's were doing something right that was not discovered by any other team and that accounted for their success.  And that is what interested Michael Lewis enough for him to write a book about how the game of baseball truly works.  Do you think that money can decide outcomes of games and success of teams in not only baseball but other sports as well?