Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning An Unfair Game” changed the way people think about our national pastime.
The book, published in 2003, was based on the Oakland Athletics and the team’s general manager, Billy Beane. It introduced many of its readers to what has become known as analytics: the application of statistical analysis to baseball.
Among other things in the book, it was argued that walks were undervalued while the stolen base, hit-and-run and sacrifice bunt were overvalued. It was also argued that the two most important statistics when it came to scoring runs were on-base percentage and slugging percentage (OPS).