Reflection Three of Moneyball — Chapters 6–7

In chapter six, Moneyball starts to get back to the main plot line. The book was sidetracked by discussing the innovative thinking of Bill James. Although the actual story halted a bit with the discussion of James’ thinking, it was crucial to include his work within the book, as I had discussed in my second reflection. Chapter six begins with how an underdog team, like the Oakland A’s, could be winning with their funding restrictions of only 40 million.

This is interesting because the book discusses the reduction of chance. The question of how can an underdog team win, if it isn’t by chance? Of course, I realize not everything can be planned or even explained. As the book discusses, the positive outcome of mistakes are what we consider to be luck, but luck can only go so far. This was puzzling when I read the win totals of the Oakland A’s.

The book repeatedly gives game statistics and then makes the reader think through them. Then the book explains how these numbers are being analyzed in baseball. This thought process reminds me of a math class. For example, they had won 87 times in 1999, 91 times in 2000 and 102 times in 2001. The question is, how can a team beat or “run circles around rich teams”, if the wage ratio between a poor team to a rich team is 1:4? Now that the author has you thinking, he explains these numbers. The author, Michael Lewis, explains the relatively good win totals due to the high on base percentage (OPS) of the Oakland A’s in comparison to the mean OPS. The book actually made me get the answer first before it told me. Lewis did a great job in using this method to show how statistics can play a huge part in sports. The message that math can be used to determine the outcome of seemingly random events, such as a baseball game.

He showed that statistics are the primary tool in making certain events more likely. The author subtly writes this with an experiment, the 2002 Oakland A’s. It was amazing that with the loss of three players, they were able to predict what they needed in their replacements in order to keep winning games, as well as to predict the outcome of an upcoming game against the Yankees.

In conclusion, I like how the author uses a teacher method to get across his message. It was surprising how long it took me to figure out that the book wasn’t just an underdog story. Moneyball was also showing how math can be used in fields that I never realized. It opened my eyes to see how math is such a useful skill to succeed in the real world.