[This is part one of my look back at Moneyball, the era-defining 2002 book on baseball by Michael Lewis. Look for part two tomorrow.]

Moneyball is a gripping, well-written, exciting book about, of all things, baseball statistics. Michael Lewis is perhaps the best non-fiction author working today, and uses his access to Oakland's front office to lay bare the inner workings of one of the most successful franchises of the last 10 years. There's just one problem: Moneyball is more embarrassing to look back on than a high school yearbook.

Sometime since it came out in 2002, Moneyball stopped being a title and instead became an adjective. Moneyball the adjective could be used to describe a team or a player. A Moneyball team employed Moneyball players. A Moneyball player had three important attributes: he drew lots of walks, he saw lots of pitches in an at-bat, and he never stole a base.

It's interesting to revisit this book now for two reasons, the first of which we will examine today. The brief Moneyball era of baseball is coming to an end. To understand why, you need to understand the intertwined effects of Moneyball style baseball and steroids.


The spirit of Moneyball style baseball is summarized by the following passage from a pamphlet written by Eric Walker:

Analyzing baseball yields many numbers of interest and value. Yet far and away - far, far and away - the most critical number in all of baseball is 3: the three outs that define an inning. Until the third out, anything is possible; after it, nothing is. Anything that increases the offense's chances of making an out is bad; anything that decreases it is good. And what is on-base percentage? Simply yet exactly put, it is the probability that the batter will not make an out.

In evaluating players, the Oakland A's valued on-base percentage (and, too a slightly lesser degree, slugging percentage), above all other skills. This included batting average, speed, and defense (an important point we will be revisiting shortly).

At this point I should stop and make a quick clarification: when I say "the Oakland A's", what I am really refering to is Oakland General Manager Billy Beane. Beane is the book's protagonist, and made a star out of him when the book came out. It also served to glamorize the position of GM within the sport of baseball.  The cult of personality that grew around Beane may also help serve to explain why the release of the book lines up rather seamlessly with the end of Oakland's run of success.

The more likely explanation, however, is that the rest of baseball started to follow Beane's template. Lewis is a former bond trader (and wrote about his experience in his famous memoir Liar's Poker) and writes about baseball in the language of the stock market. What Beane and his staff were doing was exploiting inefficiencies in the market for baseball talent. The book served as a template for other teams to follow. As other teams caught on to the secrets to his success, Beane found fewer and fewer inefficiencies to exploit. But there is an important reason that a team was able to find success by focusing on offense while sacrificing or ignoring the importance of pitching, defense, and speed that Michael Lewis either missed or just ignored.

That reason is steroids. Oakland is ground zero of the steroids proliferation of the modern era. Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire played together in Oakland, winning the '89 World Series. Billy Beane's Oakland teams had numerous players either known or suspected of using steroids, most notably Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, and Miguel Tejada.

On-base percentage, by itself, does not make a winning baseball team. Combine all those baserunners with a proliferation of homers, however, and you have a recipe for a potent offense. And steroids delivered the homers in record numbers. As we begin to move into the post-steroids era (and if you don't believe we are post-steroids just look at David Ortiz's home run total), Moneyball no longer dominates. Last year's Tampa Bay Rays won the American League with the best defense in the sport. The new model for success looks alot like the old model: defense and speed are once again necessary parts of the game.

Reading Moneyball today can be a pleasantly jarring experience. Consider the following passage:

Everyone stares silent at [Mark] Teahen's name for about thirty seconds. [Scouting Director] Erik [Kabuto] says, "I hate to say it put if you want to talk about another Jason Giambi, this guy could be it." Giambi was a natural hitter who developed power only after the Oakland A's drafted him. In the second round. Over the objections of the scouts who said he couldn't run throw, field, or hit with power. Jason Giambi: MVP of the American League in 2000.

Tomorrow in part 2: Moneyball - Case studies in the power of hindsight