We go back to our bookshelves for this week’s Fantasy Book Review here on Fantasy Ethos. I am happy to announce that today’s review is Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis.

Prior to the release of Moneyball, Sabermetrics was something of which only serious stat geeks cared about.
Moneyball gives you incredible insight as to how Billy Beane managed to put together teams that won no fewer than 87 games from 1999 to 2006 despite having one of the tiniest payrolls in baseball. Michael Lewis was given unlimited behind-the-scenes access to Oakland Athletics’ front office. He details how Billy Beane became a disciple of sabermetrics and began shunning the overly-hyped prospect for guys who knew how to draw a walk.

Now, to call this a fantasy baseball book, might be a stretch. However, for myself personally, it changed how I approached fantasy baseball. I know focused on young pitchers who managed to maintain high strikeout to walk ratios through the minors and avoided the ones who had a lot of hype but never were that did not have the statistics to back it up the hype. When evaluating young hitters, the fact that a player knew how to work a count meant that he was much more likely to adjust to new situation and succeed in the majors.

As a result of the book and Beane’s success, it is common for major league baseball front offices to employ a full-time statistician to evaluate options for general managers, and some even become general managers wonderkids such as Boston’s Theo Epstein.

Moneyball is easily one of the best books written about professional baseball in the last decade and very well may be one of the books that has the longest lasting impact on how major league baseball front offices are run.

You may purchase Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game at amazon. , via our affiliate link (which helps fund this site).

What are your thoughts about Moneyball?