Moneyball: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Early in 2002, the Oakland A’s were playing the New York Yankees. Before their game, the A’s gathered in their tiny clubhouse—surely the “least charming real estate in professional baseball.” On the day of the game, Michael Lewis arrived at the Oakland clubhouse and found David Forst, one of Paul DePodesta’s assistants, and Dan Feinstein, who prepared videotapes for the A’s.

From Forst and Feinstein, Lewis learned about Paul’s personality. Paul didn’t drink, because alcohol killed brain cells. He played football at Harvard, but, unlike his teammates, he graduated with honors in economics. Later, he turned down an offer from the Toronto Blue Jays to become the youngest GM in baseball history. Paul was cautious and rational—he tried not to let greed or passion influence his decisions. The decision Paul was trying to answer at this point in 2002 was: “Why does it matter that we let Jason Giambi leave?”

Let’s return to where we were at the end of the last chapter. Leading up to the 2002 season, the Oakland A’s traded away three popular players, including their first baseman, Jason Giambi. Giambi was so talented that the A’s couldn’t find a good replacement; however, Billy Beane told his employees to focus on “recreating the aggregate” of Giambi, in other words, finding multiple players who had bits and pieces of Giambi’s statistical record (his walks, his hits, his on-base percentage, etc.). Billy and Paul tried to replace the aggregate on-base percentage of the three players they’d traded, .364, with a comparable figure from three new players. To their surprise, this was fairly easy: Major League Baseball didn’t place a lot of stock in on-base percentage, at least not in 2002.

The game between the Yankees and the Oakland A’s begins. Jeremy Giambi—Jason Giambi’s younger brother, who has played on the team for two years but given a bigger role to help replace his departed brother—stands in the outfield. A Yankee hits the ball toward him, and Jeremy runs after it, embarrassingly slowly. Paul watches the game on a TV screen, emotionless.

The inning proceeds, and Jason Giambi, now a Yankee, steps up to plate. Oakland fans wave signs saying “Sellout,” expressing their fury that Giambi left Oakland. Giambi, a seventeen million-dollar-a-year hitter, stands against Oakland’s 237,500 dollar-a-year pitcher, Eric Hiljus. As Paul watches Hiljus, he notes that Hiljus isn’t pitching well. He doesn’t throw to the inside part of the plate, for fear that Giambi will be able to return the ball; instead, he throws to the center or the outside of the plate. Giambi hits the ball, and drives one of his teammates to home base. The Yankees hit four more runs.

It’s Oakland’s turn to bat. Paul has kept a list of the probability that each hitter will hit at a ball outside the strike zone—a very bad move. Interestingly, the new players on the Oakland A’s are more disciplined than the returning players—they don’t give in to the temptation to hit a bad ball. The Yankee pitcher pitches efficiently, instead of wearing himself out at the beginning of the game, as Eric Hiljus has done.

Michael Lewis watches David Justice hit for the A’s. Justice is talented, with more postseason hits than any player in history. At thirty-six, though, he’s past his prime, which is why the A’s were able to acquire him in a trade at the end of 2001. However, Justice is excellent at walks: he’s patient, and he doesn’t swing at bad pitches. Justice has no idea that Paul wanted him for the A’s because of his walk ability—“at no points were the lab rats informed of the details of the experiment.” The A’s score at the bottom of the third, bringing the score to 5-1.

Michael Lewis goes to talk to Billy Beane, who’s in the weight room. As he walks over, he realizes that Billy spends much more time with his players than the GMs of high-profile teams. In short, Billy “runs the whole show” in a way that most GMs never do. He communicates constantly with his Big-League manager, Art Howe, giving him specific instructions about how to control the players and plan out the game. Some players dislike Billy’s propensity for micromanaging, but others think that he’s making the team considerably better by doing so.

In the fourth inning, Michael Lewis finds Billy Beane, who, as usual, has been tuning in to the game in brief, nervous snatches. To distract himself, Billy makes small-talk with Michael about the Bastille in France. Abruptly, he walks away, and drives home. Meanwhile, the A’s get up to bat. Miguel Tejada, a hitter for the A’s, gets a run and brings the score up to 5-3. Two innings later, David Justice gets a walk, and then runs to home, bringing the score to 5-4. Later, Jeremy Giambi gets another walk, and then brings the score to 5-5. The crowd goes wild: they can sense that David is matching Goliath.

The Yankees are up to bat, and Michael Lewis goes back to watch the game on TV with Paul. The A’s pitcher, Jim Mecir, limps up to the pitcher’s mound, and Paul explains that Mecir has a clubfoot. Strangely, Mecir’s foot gives his pitch a ruthless efficiency against left-handed hitters. With five pitches, he stops Jason Giambi from getting a hit. However, the umpire calls his last pitch (which was clearly on the inside corner of the plate) a ball. Even Paul becomes angry with this bad call. On his next pitch, Giambi gets a hit, and ends up scoring two runs. The A’s fail to score again, and the Yankees win.

After the game, Scott Hatteberg walks into the clubhouse and asks to see the videotape of the game. Hatteberg is the third “defective part” Paul assembled to replace Jason Giambi—he can’t throw, which made him very cheap, but he had discipline at the plate and could always get on base. Hatteberg was, in short, a testament to the short-sightedness of Major League Baseball: a useful, unglamorous, undervalued player. Paul’s only question was where to put Hatteberg—in order to qualify as a designated hitter, what position should he play in the field?