Giving it 110%

March 12, 2011

Well, in this case, it’s The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First, by Jonah Keri.

Keri, who published the excellent Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong in 2006, took a in-depth look at inner workings of the Tampa Bay Rays front office and how it transformed the team from a perennial cellar dweller into an annual title contender on a small market budget.

There aren’t that many reviews yet (here‘s an in-depth critique from BaseballProspectus.com, which, of course, looks at the project in terms of sabermetrics and one by James Bailey onBbaseballAmerica.com), but Keri’s book has been getting some great buzz, including several Q&As and profiles with the author on Wired.com, NY Magazine, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Boston Globe. The comparisons to Moneyball are inevitable, but who knows: Certain analyses of sports teams’ business practices are discussed in terms of “the Moneyball approach.” Perhaps someday soon it will be “The Extra 2% approach.”

By the way, Keri also produces some excellent podcasts. His guests feature  sportswriters, authors, and industry insiders such such as Rob Neyer, Joe Posnanski, Jon Wertheim, Dirk Hayhurst, and Alex Belth, who are literate on subjects beyond sports, such as movies, the process of writing and publishing (a particular favorite of mine), and food (always the food), which makes for an interesting change from the usual “sports-only”.

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Tagged as: Jonah Keri, Moneyball, Rob Neyer, Tampa Bay Rays

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