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Astroball: The New Way to Win It All
When Sports Illustrated declared on the cover of a June 2014 issue that the Houston Astros would win the World Series in 2017, people thought Ben Reiter, the article's author, was crazy. The Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century, but they were more than just bad. They were an embarrassment, a club that didn't even appear to be trying to win. The cover story, combined with the specificity of Reiter's claim, met instant and nearly universal derision. But three years later, the critics were proved improbably, astonishingly wrong. How had Reiter predicted it so accurately? And, more important, how had the Astros pulled off the impossible?
Astroball is the inside story of how a gang of outsiders went beyond the stats to find a new way to win--and not just in baseball. When new Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and his top analyst, the former rocket scientist Sig Mejdal, arrived in Houston in 2011, they had already spent more than half a decade trying to understand how human instinct and expertise could be blended with hard numbers such as on-base percentage and strikeout rate to guide their decision-making. In Houston, they had free rein to remake the club. No longer would scouts, with all their subjective, hard-to-quantify opinions, be forced into opposition with the stats guys. Instead, Luhnow and Sig wanted to correct for the biases inherent in human observation, and then roll their scouts' critical thoughts into their process. The numbers had value--but so did the gut.
The strategy paid off brilliantly, and surprisingly quickly. It pointed the Astros toward key draft picks like Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman; offered a path for developing George Springer, Jos� Altuve, and Dallas Keuchel; and showed them how veterans like Carlos Beltr�n and Justin Verlander represented the last piece in the puzzle of fielding a championship team.
Sitting at the nexus of sports, business, and innovation--and written with years of access to the team's stars and executives--Astroball is the story of the next wave of thinking in baseball and beyond, at once a remarkable underdog story and a fascinating look at the cutting edge of evaluating and optimizing human potential.
Astroball is the inside story of how a gang of outsiders went beyond the stats to find a new way to win--and not just in baseball. When new Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and his top analyst, the former rocket scientist Sig Mejdal, arrived in Houston in 2011, they had already spent more than half a decade trying to understand how human instinct and expertise could be blended with hard numbers such as on-base percentage and strikeout rate to guide their decision-making. In Houston, they had free rein to remake the club. No longer would scouts, with all their subjective, hard-to-quantify opinions, be forced into opposition with the stats guys. Instead, Luhnow and Sig wanted to correct for the biases inherent in human observation, and then roll their scouts' critical thoughts into their process. The numbers had value--but so did the gut.
The strategy paid off brilliantly, and surprisingly quickly. It pointed the Astros toward key draft picks like Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman; offered a path for developing George Springer, Jos� Altuve, and Dallas Keuchel; and showed them how veterans like Carlos Beltr�n and Justin Verlander represented the last piece in the puzzle of fielding a championship team.
Sitting at the nexus of sports, business, and innovation--and written with years of access to the team's stars and executives--Astroball is the story of the next wave of thinking in baseball and beyond, at once a remarkable underdog story and a fascinating look at the cutting edge of evaluating and optimizing human potential.
235 pages, Hardcover
Published July 10, 2018
About the author
Ben Reiter
3 books58 followersBen Reiter is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, which he joined in 2004. He has written 25 cover stories for the magazine and has also contributed to Time and The Village Voice, among other publications. His SI feature 'The Seeker: The Complicated Life and Death of Hideki Irabu' won the 2017 Deadline Award for Magazine Profile. He frequently appears on radio and television stations across the United States and around the world, and is a regular commentator on the MLB Network. Reiter is a graduate of Yale and Cambridge. He lives in New York City with his family. Astroball is his first book.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 360 reviews
September 3, 2019
I had this book on my mind in light of Justin Verlander’s third career no hitter pitched 9-2-19.
The 2019 baseball is about to reach its halfway point and many usual suspects are leading their division races. Until four years ago, the who’s who of baseball did not include the Houston Astros, but in 2015 the Astros started winning, and two years later the team won it all. This came as a shock to everyone outside of Houston and this book’s author who in 2014 wrote a Sports Illustrated story correctly predicting that the Cubs would win the World Series in 2016 and the Astros won beat them to win the title in 2017. Following the Astros’ success, Ben Reiter used his article for the basis of Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, our July 2019 choice for book of the month at the baseball book club here on goodreads.
In 1962 the Houston Astros joined the National League as an expansion team. For the first few years the team, known as the Colt .45s, was atrocious. Playing outdoors, players dealt with mosquito bites and heat stroke during hot and humid Houston summers. Yet, the team’s first owner Judge Roy Hofheinz had a vision to make Houston into a city of tomorrow and the largest metropolis of the south. He foresaw Houston surpassing Atlanta and Miami in population and becoming the city where progress happened. Hofheinz started Houston’s journey toward the future by constructing a multipurpose indoor stadium on top of acres of swampland in the downtown part of the city. With a roof and, more importantly, air conditioning, players would no longer bake in the sun. Tabbing scientists from nearby NASA to produce artificial grass that could be used indoors, Judge Hofheinz named the new invention AstroTurf and his jewel of a stadium the Astrodome.
At the dawn of the 21st century, the Astros had been sold twice, both to ownership groups who did not know how to manage a ball club. The team enjoyed some quality years in the early 1980s when Texas native son Nolan Ryan joined the team as free agent and then enjoyed a renaissance in the first few years of the 2000s behind star players Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. The 2005 team made it to the World Series, but was then swept by Chicago White Sox. With aging stars, the Astros knew it would be their last chance at a winner for many years and then began their tradition of fielding losing teams. Following a move to the American League in 2013 to even out the American and National Leagues at fifteen teams each, it appeared that the Astros had little hope to compete in the future. Then, the unthinkable happened: slowly but surely the Astros began to win.
Jim Crane purchased the Astros in 2007 and was invested in fielding a winning team. Moneyball had been recently been published and using data to create a winning ball club was en Vogue. The Oakland A’s team featured in Moneyball took analytics to an extreme due to their low budget. A self made man and scion of a string of successful businesses, Jim Crane was not low budget. He was behind the Astros and their modern Minute Maid Park because he believed that he could create not just a winning team but a winning organization. By 2011, although the major league Astros would field teams that would lose 100 games three years in a row, Crane had brought on a management team that knew its data and was at the forefront of analytics. This team behind new general manager Jeff Luhnow and his stats guru Sig Megdal came aboard from the winning St Louis Cardinals organization. They knew about winning and stats and were excited to turn the Astros into winners.
Losing for years to earn top draft picks that eventually turn a team into winners can take its toll on fans. I know this all too well as my Cubs are known as the Astros’ national league counterpart, preceding them in winning it all one year earlier. Watching draft picks from afar is frustrating, but that is what Luhnow and his team of stats geeks preached to the Astros fan base: have patience with the progress this team is making. That is difficult when a team loses over 100 games three years in a row, but those teams lead to three number one overall draft picks, who are now the core of the Astros winning teams. Luhnow, however, notes that stats need a human element as well, and Megdal actually created elements that take the human element into account. Spin rate, launch angle, and defensive shifts are all metrics that the Astros brought to Major League Baseball before any of the other teams, and, as a fan who at times complains about how the reliance on data is ruining baseball, it was interesting to see the root of these metrics and how human and computer intersect to produce a winning product. Although Sig Megdal is a stats geek and the creator of the Astros’ fabled Nerd Cave, he understands the game of baseball and used his knowledge in both departments to help Luhnow construct his winning roster.
Reiter predicted that the Astros would win in 2017. He saw the draft picks that they had accumulated and foreshadowed that the entire organization had bought into winning. In other sports, tanking has become en vogue, yet writers have pointed out that unless an entire organization buys into the system, the losing will not turn into winning. Astroball, and the Cubs way, are unique in that from the owners on down, the whole organization has bought into winning, even during the years when the top professional team appears to be going nowhere. Reiter goes behind the scenes and picks apart how the Astros management team transformed the Astros into a winning organization. He notes the signing of the now iconic Astros infield and uses those players as examples of how Megdal focused on metrics yet still had scouts meet these players to show how that the human element still mattered. There is still no reliable metric for team leadership, yet signing a 40 year old to do just that is a prominent reason why the Astros won. Another area where there is still no metric: using tragedy in a community to galvanize a team to win. Hurricane Harvey appears front and center; it is not the first time a team has used a natural disaster to propel it to a championship. I would love to see a metric for that. Houston Strong indeed became the Astros rallying cry.
Recently, I saw the Astros in person. In a game that has been transformed to homer or strike out, the Astros only struck out five times for the entire game. They indeed used the defensive shift more than I am used to, but their data served them well as shifting lead to outs. Their big free agent acquisition in 2017, Verlander, he pitched that night, and he is worth whatever prospects the Astros gave up to get him. Verlander has said he would like to pitch until he’s in his mid forties and I don’t doubt him. Astroball has been a fun, summer read. Ben Reiter accurately shows how a data savvy business side of baseball leads to a winning product on the field. While I saw a small sample size in person, it appears as though the Astros have finally created a winning organization.
4 stars
The 2019 baseball is about to reach its halfway point and many usual suspects are leading their division races. Until four years ago, the who’s who of baseball did not include the Houston Astros, but in 2015 the Astros started winning, and two years later the team won it all. This came as a shock to everyone outside of Houston and this book’s author who in 2014 wrote a Sports Illustrated story correctly predicting that the Cubs would win the World Series in 2016 and the Astros won beat them to win the title in 2017. Following the Astros’ success, Ben Reiter used his article for the basis of Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, our July 2019 choice for book of the month at the baseball book club here on goodreads.
In 1962 the Houston Astros joined the National League as an expansion team. For the first few years the team, known as the Colt .45s, was atrocious. Playing outdoors, players dealt with mosquito bites and heat stroke during hot and humid Houston summers. Yet, the team’s first owner Judge Roy Hofheinz had a vision to make Houston into a city of tomorrow and the largest metropolis of the south. He foresaw Houston surpassing Atlanta and Miami in population and becoming the city where progress happened. Hofheinz started Houston’s journey toward the future by constructing a multipurpose indoor stadium on top of acres of swampland in the downtown part of the city. With a roof and, more importantly, air conditioning, players would no longer bake in the sun. Tabbing scientists from nearby NASA to produce artificial grass that could be used indoors, Judge Hofheinz named the new invention AstroTurf and his jewel of a stadium the Astrodome.
At the dawn of the 21st century, the Astros had been sold twice, both to ownership groups who did not know how to manage a ball club. The team enjoyed some quality years in the early 1980s when Texas native son Nolan Ryan joined the team as free agent and then enjoyed a renaissance in the first few years of the 2000s behind star players Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. The 2005 team made it to the World Series, but was then swept by Chicago White Sox. With aging stars, the Astros knew it would be their last chance at a winner for many years and then began their tradition of fielding losing teams. Following a move to the American League in 2013 to even out the American and National Leagues at fifteen teams each, it appeared that the Astros had little hope to compete in the future. Then, the unthinkable happened: slowly but surely the Astros began to win.
Jim Crane purchased the Astros in 2007 and was invested in fielding a winning team. Moneyball had been recently been published and using data to create a winning ball club was en Vogue. The Oakland A’s team featured in Moneyball took analytics to an extreme due to their low budget. A self made man and scion of a string of successful businesses, Jim Crane was not low budget. He was behind the Astros and their modern Minute Maid Park because he believed that he could create not just a winning team but a winning organization. By 2011, although the major league Astros would field teams that would lose 100 games three years in a row, Crane had brought on a management team that knew its data and was at the forefront of analytics. This team behind new general manager Jeff Luhnow and his stats guru Sig Megdal came aboard from the winning St Louis Cardinals organization. They knew about winning and stats and were excited to turn the Astros into winners.
Losing for years to earn top draft picks that eventually turn a team into winners can take its toll on fans. I know this all too well as my Cubs are known as the Astros’ national league counterpart, preceding them in winning it all one year earlier. Watching draft picks from afar is frustrating, but that is what Luhnow and his team of stats geeks preached to the Astros fan base: have patience with the progress this team is making. That is difficult when a team loses over 100 games three years in a row, but those teams lead to three number one overall draft picks, who are now the core of the Astros winning teams. Luhnow, however, notes that stats need a human element as well, and Megdal actually created elements that take the human element into account. Spin rate, launch angle, and defensive shifts are all metrics that the Astros brought to Major League Baseball before any of the other teams, and, as a fan who at times complains about how the reliance on data is ruining baseball, it was interesting to see the root of these metrics and how human and computer intersect to produce a winning product. Although Sig Megdal is a stats geek and the creator of the Astros’ fabled Nerd Cave, he understands the game of baseball and used his knowledge in both departments to help Luhnow construct his winning roster.
Reiter predicted that the Astros would win in 2017. He saw the draft picks that they had accumulated and foreshadowed that the entire organization had bought into winning. In other sports, tanking has become en vogue, yet writers have pointed out that unless an entire organization buys into the system, the losing will not turn into winning. Astroball, and the Cubs way, are unique in that from the owners on down, the whole organization has bought into winning, even during the years when the top professional team appears to be going nowhere. Reiter goes behind the scenes and picks apart how the Astros management team transformed the Astros into a winning organization. He notes the signing of the now iconic Astros infield and uses those players as examples of how Megdal focused on metrics yet still had scouts meet these players to show how that the human element still mattered. There is still no reliable metric for team leadership, yet signing a 40 year old to do just that is a prominent reason why the Astros won. Another area where there is still no metric: using tragedy in a community to galvanize a team to win. Hurricane Harvey appears front and center; it is not the first time a team has used a natural disaster to propel it to a championship. I would love to see a metric for that. Houston Strong indeed became the Astros rallying cry.
Recently, I saw the Astros in person. In a game that has been transformed to homer or strike out, the Astros only struck out five times for the entire game. They indeed used the defensive shift more than I am used to, but their data served them well as shifting lead to outs. Their big free agent acquisition in 2017, Verlander, he pitched that night, and he is worth whatever prospects the Astros gave up to get him. Verlander has said he would like to pitch until he’s in his mid forties and I don’t doubt him. Astroball has been a fun, summer read. Ben Reiter accurately shows how a data savvy business side of baseball leads to a winning product on the field. While I saw a small sample size in person, it appears as though the Astros have finally created a winning organization.
4 stars
July 26, 2018
So here's the thing: if you start your narrative/analytic baseball book with an H.P. Lovecraft quote AND a Dr. Dre quote, I basically have no choice but to give the resulting masterpiece 5 stars.
July 11, 2018
I never should have read "Astroball." First off, sports, bleh. What a waste of time. Second, Ben Reiter is one of several Yalies named Ben with whom I’ve hungout over the years and not the one I hit it off with most. But I confused him with a closer acquaintance and requested an advance copy. By the time I noticed Reiter’s suave smirk on the rear dust jacket, I’d already finished the preface and the prologue (yes, it has both, and yes, you should read both), and I couldn’t have put the book down if I’d tried.
That’s because "Astroball" is about baseball the way "Remember the Titans" is about football. Sure, Reiter explains how the Astros went from being the team with the worst track record and prospects in the league to winning the 2017 World Series. But the consummate storyteller uses his unusual level of access to both players and the Astros front office to interweave dramas with much more widespread appeal: How an industry undergoes a revolution. How a parent’s fidelity to their inner compass can transform the course of a child’s life. How peeling back the layers of a professional victory almost always reveals some combination of hustle, skill, and luck, but mostly hustle. How a liability in one context becomes an asset in another. How organizational change done right looks a lot like nation-building. How a supportive romantic partner behaves in a crisis. How human instinct, though repeatedly proven fallible, remains indispensable.
In prose with just the right balance of sobriety and artistry (e.g., “If a pitcher’s arm was the most valuable and fragile asset in baseball, a pitcher’s psyche was second”) and transitions that hum, Reiter introduces his stories’ concepts and characters, sometimes dozens of pages in advance, so that even a reader who gives fewer than two shits about baseball knew Carlos Beltrán from Carlos Correa and locked herself in a bathroom to absorb the blow-by-blow of a playoff game in peace. A game I already knew the winner of. It’s seamless, really, Reiter’s melding of backstory with story to produce a narrative of a magic process that’s magical in its own right.
Take, for example, the following two vignettes about America’s pastime that teach as much about psychology and systems science as sport:
In the cage, Bonds showed Beltrán how he liked to set the pitching machine to top speed, more than 90 miles per hour, and then gradually move closer and closer to it, training himself to react to pitches that arrived quicker than any human could throw them from a mound. Even more useful, to Beltrán, was the way he described his mentality. “Sometimes you’re in an oh-for-ten slump, and you might start to doubt your ability,” Bonds said. “But you have to understand that every time you walk to the plate, the person who is in trouble isn’t you. It’s the pitcher.” A decade later, when Beltrán arrived for his first spring training with the Astros in February 2017, he knew that he appeared to his young teammates as Bonds once had to him. He was at least seven years older than almost all of them, earned 30 times more than some of them, and was by then a nine-time All-Star who had hit 421 home runs. During his first days with the Astros, he approached each one.
***
Sig Mejdal hated the World Series. He loved it, of course. It was the whole point, the simulated goal when he had spent his boyhood flicking the spinners of All-Star Baseball, the real one as he endlessly tweaked his models during all those late nights above his fraternity brother’s garage. Intellectually, though, he hated it. Baseball wasn’t a game like basketball, in which the best team—the Golden State Warriors, say—could reliably defeat almost any opponent at least 80 percent of the time. Baseball excellence could be judged only over the long term, and yet its annual champion, the club that history would remember, was decided after a series of no more than seven games. Any major league team could beat any opponent four times out of seven. “I wish it was a 162-game series, instead of seven,” Sig said. “But it’s seven. In every game, you have somewhere between a forty-two and fifty-eight percent chance of winning. Which is very close to a fifty percent chance. Which is a coin toss. The World Series is a coin toss competition.”
If you like tight writing on fascinating topics, read "Astroball"—no interest in sports or analytics required. If you already read "Moneyball," trust me, read "Astroball" too. I’m betting if you do, I won’t be the only new member of Ben Reiter’s fan club.
That’s because "Astroball" is about baseball the way "Remember the Titans" is about football. Sure, Reiter explains how the Astros went from being the team with the worst track record and prospects in the league to winning the 2017 World Series. But the consummate storyteller uses his unusual level of access to both players and the Astros front office to interweave dramas with much more widespread appeal: How an industry undergoes a revolution. How a parent’s fidelity to their inner compass can transform the course of a child’s life. How peeling back the layers of a professional victory almost always reveals some combination of hustle, skill, and luck, but mostly hustle. How a liability in one context becomes an asset in another. How organizational change done right looks a lot like nation-building. How a supportive romantic partner behaves in a crisis. How human instinct, though repeatedly proven fallible, remains indispensable.
In prose with just the right balance of sobriety and artistry (e.g., “If a pitcher’s arm was the most valuable and fragile asset in baseball, a pitcher’s psyche was second”) and transitions that hum, Reiter introduces his stories’ concepts and characters, sometimes dozens of pages in advance, so that even a reader who gives fewer than two shits about baseball knew Carlos Beltrán from Carlos Correa and locked herself in a bathroom to absorb the blow-by-blow of a playoff game in peace. A game I already knew the winner of. It’s seamless, really, Reiter’s melding of backstory with story to produce a narrative of a magic process that’s magical in its own right.
Take, for example, the following two vignettes about America’s pastime that teach as much about psychology and systems science as sport:
In the cage, Bonds showed Beltrán how he liked to set the pitching machine to top speed, more than 90 miles per hour, and then gradually move closer and closer to it, training himself to react to pitches that arrived quicker than any human could throw them from a mound. Even more useful, to Beltrán, was the way he described his mentality. “Sometimes you’re in an oh-for-ten slump, and you might start to doubt your ability,” Bonds said. “But you have to understand that every time you walk to the plate, the person who is in trouble isn’t you. It’s the pitcher.” A decade later, when Beltrán arrived for his first spring training with the Astros in February 2017, he knew that he appeared to his young teammates as Bonds once had to him. He was at least seven years older than almost all of them, earned 30 times more than some of them, and was by then a nine-time All-Star who had hit 421 home runs. During his first days with the Astros, he approached each one.
***
Sig Mejdal hated the World Series. He loved it, of course. It was the whole point, the simulated goal when he had spent his boyhood flicking the spinners of All-Star Baseball, the real one as he endlessly tweaked his models during all those late nights above his fraternity brother’s garage. Intellectually, though, he hated it. Baseball wasn’t a game like basketball, in which the best team—the Golden State Warriors, say—could reliably defeat almost any opponent at least 80 percent of the time. Baseball excellence could be judged only over the long term, and yet its annual champion, the club that history would remember, was decided after a series of no more than seven games. Any major league team could beat any opponent four times out of seven. “I wish it was a 162-game series, instead of seven,” Sig said. “But it’s seven. In every game, you have somewhere between a forty-two and fifty-eight percent chance of winning. Which is very close to a fifty percent chance. Which is a coin toss. The World Series is a coin toss competition.”
If you like tight writing on fascinating topics, read "Astroball"—no interest in sports or analytics required. If you already read "Moneyball," trust me, read "Astroball" too. I’m betting if you do, I won’t be the only new member of Ben Reiter’s fan club.
February 12, 2020
It’s too bad this book came out before the sign stealing scandal broke, the read would have felt less like it was pulling wool over our eyes. Certainly, there are several examples of intellectual hubris from Luhnow & Co. and having now read about their background and belief in technology as the advantage provider in sports it is VERY believable that this iteration of the Astros was the leading innovator in sign stealing, but without those exploits detailed here it makes the rest feel fairy tail-ish. Kind of like reading a US History text where the founding fathers were all rational, caring, non-racist perfections of humanity.
All that being said, I loved learning the backstories of Altuve, Correa, Springer and Beltran and the connections between the Cardinals organization and the Astros were fascinating. I also enjoyed the compelling case for equitably measuring data with gut instinct. All of this was great and it’s a five-star read for sure, it’s just that once you learn the emperor has no clothes it’s kind of hard to picture him as anything else but naked.
All that being said, I loved learning the backstories of Altuve, Correa, Springer and Beltran and the connections between the Cardinals organization and the Astros were fascinating. I also enjoyed the compelling case for equitably measuring data with gut instinct. All of this was great and it’s a five-star read for sure, it’s just that once you learn the emperor has no clothes it’s kind of hard to picture him as anything else but naked.
June 5, 2021
A Good Read
Personally, I enjoyed this book. Reiter does a very good job of getting behind the action with information and stories that bring the book to life.
I learned very much with this book. Fisrt it explained some of the details of how analytics are used --fascinating for me. Additionally, the scouting process gave me a better understanding of player development.
A great book for a baseball lover like me.
If you like baseball, I recommend.
Personally, I enjoyed this book. Reiter does a very good job of getting behind the action with information and stories that bring the book to life.
I learned very much with this book. Fisrt it explained some of the details of how analytics are used --fascinating for me. Additionally, the scouting process gave me a better understanding of player development.
A great book for a baseball lover like me.
If you like baseball, I recommend.
February 25, 2019
Terrific read. Astroball has now arrived in Baltimore. Here's to hoping Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal will make the Orioles a champion within 5 years.
July 8, 2019
Baseball is well into a new era in which statistical data is analyzed and used for nearly every decision a team makes, from which players to draft to where to place those players on the diamond when a batter steps into the box. While the concept began in the early 2000’s with “Moneyball”, the groundbreaking book by Michael Lewis about the Oakland Athletics using this strategy, the Houston Astros dug even deeper into statistical analysis and their work paid off with a World Series championship in 2017. How they got there is the storyline of this excellent book by Sports Illustrated writer Ben Reiter.
It is important to note that Reiter is a Sports Illustrated writer because he wrote a cover story for the magazine in 2014 predicting that the Astros would be the 2017 champions. It seemed outlandish at the time as the Astros were suffering through their third consecutive season of more than 100 losses. However, the brain trust of general manager Scott Luhnow and rocket-scientist-turned-baseball-analyst Sig Mejdal saw that their plan implemented beginning in 2011 was already starting to take shape.
The book focuses more on these two men, as well as several of the prospects brought to Houston by them, more than the baseball or a recap of the Astros championship season. Although for good baseball writing, the book has plenty in the write-up of the 2017 World Series in which the Astros defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. One key part of that victory was that the Astros hit star Dodger pitcher Yu Darvish hard, and that was because Carlos Beltran gave information to his teammates about Darvish’s pitching.
Why this review brings up Beltran is that the system that is used in Houston by Luhnow and Mejdal includes the human factors of scouting and team chemistry, something that is lacking, indeed even chided, in “Moneyball.” Luhnow felt something else was needed for his team in 2017 despite the success they were having using the advanced data available to everyone. That something was team chemistry and signing the 40 year old Beltran (who had a spectacular three months and postseason for the club in 2004) was just the person who could provide it. There are other great stories about the 2017 season such as the rush to beat the trading deadline in order to obtain pitcher Justin Verlander from the Detroit Tigers. Mejdal informed Luhnow that another quality starting pitcher was needed in order for the Astros to make that final push and Luhnow went out and got his man.
These two examples are just a small sample of how the book combines excellent storytelling with hard statistical data in a manner that is not only fun to read, it is explained in a manner that even non-baseball fans can enjoy this book. There is even some humor sprinkled in for good measure. The best was a tweet by Verlander’s then-fiancée, model Kate Upton. Due to language, I won’t quote it here, but just note that it was one of several injections of text that makes for a good laugh.
The balance of good storytelling with hardcore baseball writing makes this book one to add to the book shelf of any baseball fan, no matter what level. It is fun to read and will provide the reader with the inside story of why the Houston Astros were the 2017 champions of baseball and should remain a top contender for several years.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
It is important to note that Reiter is a Sports Illustrated writer because he wrote a cover story for the magazine in 2014 predicting that the Astros would be the 2017 champions. It seemed outlandish at the time as the Astros were suffering through their third consecutive season of more than 100 losses. However, the brain trust of general manager Scott Luhnow and rocket-scientist-turned-baseball-analyst Sig Mejdal saw that their plan implemented beginning in 2011 was already starting to take shape.
The book focuses more on these two men, as well as several of the prospects brought to Houston by them, more than the baseball or a recap of the Astros championship season. Although for good baseball writing, the book has plenty in the write-up of the 2017 World Series in which the Astros defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. One key part of that victory was that the Astros hit star Dodger pitcher Yu Darvish hard, and that was because Carlos Beltran gave information to his teammates about Darvish’s pitching.
Why this review brings up Beltran is that the system that is used in Houston by Luhnow and Mejdal includes the human factors of scouting and team chemistry, something that is lacking, indeed even chided, in “Moneyball.” Luhnow felt something else was needed for his team in 2017 despite the success they were having using the advanced data available to everyone. That something was team chemistry and signing the 40 year old Beltran (who had a spectacular three months and postseason for the club in 2004) was just the person who could provide it. There are other great stories about the 2017 season such as the rush to beat the trading deadline in order to obtain pitcher Justin Verlander from the Detroit Tigers. Mejdal informed Luhnow that another quality starting pitcher was needed in order for the Astros to make that final push and Luhnow went out and got his man.
These two examples are just a small sample of how the book combines excellent storytelling with hard statistical data in a manner that is not only fun to read, it is explained in a manner that even non-baseball fans can enjoy this book. There is even some humor sprinkled in for good measure. The best was a tweet by Verlander’s then-fiancée, model Kate Upton. Due to language, I won’t quote it here, but just note that it was one of several injections of text that makes for a good laugh.
The balance of good storytelling with hardcore baseball writing makes this book one to add to the book shelf of any baseball fan, no matter what level. It is fun to read and will provide the reader with the inside story of why the Houston Astros were the 2017 champions of baseball and should remain a top contender for several years.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
February 22, 2020
Somewhat entertaining, but ultimately hard to take seriously a book whose premise is "The Astros are smarter than everyone else" when in fact, the Astros were cheating.
December 31, 2018
Ben Reiter is a Sports Illustrated writer who in 2014 wrote a cover article predicting that the Astros would win the World Series in 2017. That prediction came on the heals of the 3 worst seasons in Astros' history where the team went a combined 162-324 over those 3 years. This books chronicles the Astros' journey towards that World Series victory, which was correctly predicted when they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017. The Astros were one of the first teams to fully embrace the statistical analysis of baseball stats to become a primary tool for decision-making in player development. What set the Astros apart from the Oakland A's and Billy Beane's Moneyball was that they still included scouting advice and "gut feelings" into their statistical analysis. This allowed the team to developed extremely undervalued players to become world class players who regularly out perform their older and more paid counterparts.
As a baseball fan, I greatly enjoyed reading this well written story of the Astros rise to dominance. As a Colorado Rockies fan, I hope my team will also fully embrace this form of player development, as lower market teams are constantly set at a disadvantage to the larger market teams that can create significantly higher payrolls. Reiter is a good writer and I remained captivated throughout the whole book. I highly recommend this book to all baseball fans.
As a baseball fan, I greatly enjoyed reading this well written story of the Astros rise to dominance. As a Colorado Rockies fan, I hope my team will also fully embrace this form of player development, as lower market teams are constantly set at a disadvantage to the larger market teams that can create significantly higher payrolls. Reiter is a good writer and I remained captivated throughout the whole book. I highly recommend this book to all baseball fans.
July 22, 2018
As a journalist, you always worry about getting too close to your subject. As a sportswriter, though, the other side of getting close is often access that gives you insight you wouldn’t otherwise have any chance at. Ben Reiter without doubt got very close to the Astros. He became a true believer. You won’t read any criticism in here. But you will learn a ton about how a team won a championship, in a story told as well as you would expect from a writer as talented as Ben. Was it worth it to get that close? In this case, I’d say it was.
June 21, 2024
Overall this book was well written! I enjoyed getting to hear how some of my favorite players made it to the big leagues. However, I did find it a little ironic that the journalist who wrote this book didn’t notice that the Astros were cheating… It was an interesting read considering I was trying to pick apart the Astros success due to their semi-Moneyball approach versus success due to cheating. Hindsight is 20/20, and some of the “creative strategies” mentioned in this book were obviously the ways they were stealing signs. Anyways, go ‘Stros✌️
November 12, 2019
I was torn on this book... I couldn't figure out why it took me so long to get through despite generally enjoying it while I was reading. Some of the individual stories were riveting... JD Martinez's renaissance and Carlos Beltran's unique clubhouse skills for example. Also enjoyed the Brady Aiken saga and Correa's back story as well. But the author doesn't give an honest portrayal of Luhnow's character.... the Osuna signing isn't treated honestly by the book, and we get a strange admission later on that "he's not the kind of guy you want to go on vacation with"... after lavishing praise on the man for 200+ pages. To some extent it's the "remarkable" story of how a team with 4 consecutive #1 or #2 draft picks became a World Series winner... imagine that!! But the book also does a good job explaining what a crapshoot the MLB draft is, as evidenced by the Brady Aiken story.
April 21, 2020
This book is actually really good. I think it's a better version of Moneyball, but it makes me furious. The Astros cheated and they have a book talking about how smart they are. They have a chapter about the value Carlos Beltran added to the team. He was one of the players who introduced the sign stealing scheme. They have a section about Yu Darvish tipping pitches in game 7 of the world series. I just watched the tape from that game and it doesn't look like he was tipping pitches. The book even talked about a slump the team entered and then got out of in August and September of 2017, which was the point of the season when the trash can banging reached its peak. (Until Danny Farquhar caught them in the act and it can be assumed the Astros then tried harder to hide the sign stealing)
August 19, 2018
Moneyball 2.0
I had the pleasure of meeting Ben (alongside Ron Darling) at the Yale Club. Being occupied as of late with my work, teaching future analytics professionals at Columbia, I wasn’t aware of this book’s existence. I am a huge baseball enthusiast and student. In many ways, I am Sig Mejdal. I analyze baseball data as a hobby and so reading Moneyball and now Astroball further validated my stance that proper analysis of any data will yield a better understanding of the situation at hand.
Once I started reading Astroball, I couldn’t put it down. I knew about the various events leading up to the Astros’ World Series victory, but never to the level of detail Ben delivered. The narratives all tied in like tributaries of a river meeting at their confluence. Their adoption of analytics, their subsequent decision-making process, and their blending in of gut feelings culminated in a championship season that Ben presaged three years prior.
The difference between this and Moneyball is that the Astros won it all while the A’s got it close to the goal line but couldn’t punch it in. That’s why I feel that this is the more compelling story. I am also in complete agreement that human intelligence combined with the artificial kind will generate more timely successes.
All in all, this is an excellently researched and written book. I am biased in that there was no need to sell me on baseball. To the non-fan, it might be a tougher read. They might be better off waiting for the movie. I can totally see Chris Pratt or Liam Hemsworth playing Ben in this one.
As an aside, I did like that Ben addressed the Yuli Gurriel incident during the World Series. Being an Asian American, I completely believe that Yuli meant no harm and was simply unaware. But, his action did bring up haunting memories of my past when kids did use that gesture to taunt and humiliate. It is probably more palatable to an outsider who never went through that experience. But, this transcends baseball and, in many ways, I’m glad it occurred on the big stage.
Kudos Ben!
I had the pleasure of meeting Ben (alongside Ron Darling) at the Yale Club. Being occupied as of late with my work, teaching future analytics professionals at Columbia, I wasn’t aware of this book’s existence. I am a huge baseball enthusiast and student. In many ways, I am Sig Mejdal. I analyze baseball data as a hobby and so reading Moneyball and now Astroball further validated my stance that proper analysis of any data will yield a better understanding of the situation at hand.
Once I started reading Astroball, I couldn’t put it down. I knew about the various events leading up to the Astros’ World Series victory, but never to the level of detail Ben delivered. The narratives all tied in like tributaries of a river meeting at their confluence. Their adoption of analytics, their subsequent decision-making process, and their blending in of gut feelings culminated in a championship season that Ben presaged three years prior.
The difference between this and Moneyball is that the Astros won it all while the A’s got it close to the goal line but couldn’t punch it in. That’s why I feel that this is the more compelling story. I am also in complete agreement that human intelligence combined with the artificial kind will generate more timely successes.
All in all, this is an excellently researched and written book. I am biased in that there was no need to sell me on baseball. To the non-fan, it might be a tougher read. They might be better off waiting for the movie. I can totally see Chris Pratt or Liam Hemsworth playing Ben in this one.
As an aside, I did like that Ben addressed the Yuli Gurriel incident during the World Series. Being an Asian American, I completely believe that Yuli meant no harm and was simply unaware. But, his action did bring up haunting memories of my past when kids did use that gesture to taunt and humiliate. It is probably more palatable to an outsider who never went through that experience. But, this transcends baseball and, in many ways, I’m glad it occurred on the big stage.
Kudos Ben!
January 30, 2025
Great audiobook listen while walking the dog.
Interesting that Kate Upton was 19 and Verlander was 28 when they started dating.
Interesting that Kate Upton was 19 and Verlander was 28 when they started dating.
September 13, 2018
This book is flat-out amazing.
The depth and breadth of Ben Reiter’s reporting are on full display with “Astroball,” undoubtedly benefiting from the author’s handful of years with unparalleled access to the franchise. Because he sought out the right people (essentially anyone even remotely connected to the Astros in a number of different fields, inside and outside of the organization) and asked the right questions, the text writes itself. I say that not to disparage Reiter’s style; he writes beautifully and clearly. Rather, I note that in order to compliment his extensive reporting.
From my perspective as a knowledgeable baseball fan, Reiter expertly navigates the balance between giving baseball aficionados the behind-the-scenes gold we desperately crave and not getting too insidery in a way that would turn off a casual fan or even a non-baseball fan. Given the unintimidating way he explains complicated baseball topics or metrics, I don’t believe I’m exaggerating when I say that a non-sports fan has the potential to thoroughly enjoy this book. For instance, when he’s referencing Statcast data such as spin rate or other statistics, he contextualizes them in a way that slowly brings along the uninitiated. But at the same time, the more serious baseball mind does not feel any type of dumbing down is occurring.
This story is crafted tremendously well. The main way Reiter does that is through all the diverse perspectives he includes. Again and again throughout the narrative, he introduces the reader to a particular character but makes sure to delve into that character’s backstory. In doing so, we learn what makes the character tick and how he’s become so talented and/or interested in his field. This approach seamlessly lends itself to a fair and balanced view of how Jeff Luhnow and company balance the wishes and expertise of scouts versus the analytics people. Because we’ve already gotten to know various key scouts and various key members of the analytics team, as well as Luhnow and other executives, we, as readers can digest draft discussions, for example, much more easily. The chapter centered around the 2014 MLB Draft is one of the my favorites in the book, because it showcases Reiter’s strength of being able to comfortably bring in so many perspectives. He tells the story of this draft from a slew of angles, including that of No. 1 overall pick Brady Aiken, the scouts, the analytics guys, Luhnow, and more. The way he takes the reader behind the scenes in such vivid detail is amazing. I felt like an extremely lucky fly on the wall.
I should note this book provided my first audio book experience. Listening to the book on Audible was terrific, although as an old-school reader, I still prefer the feel of a physical book in my hands. Nothing replaces the subtle but repeated feeling of accomplishment after each turn of the page. But I digressed. Reiter voiced the book himself and did well with it. He reads with energy and enthusiasm in a way that seems to complement all the rich details he’s collected through his reporting and the way he’s woven them into the broader narrative. One thing I found funny but also a little strange was the higher pitch he adopts when quoting children. On a related note, I noticed he employs a different tone with quotes in general, which I think is helpful for the listener. “Reading” the book in the car, especially on longer drives, was so much fun, providing color to an otherwise mundane part of life.
Regardless of medium, I recommend you pick this book up and see what you think. If you’re not hooked pretty quickly, I don’t think it’s the right fit for you. But most prospective readers who enjoy a well told story of last to first from a ridiculous (in the slang, good way) number of angles will be pulled in early and go on to savor every page. I look forward to Reiter’s next book, whenever it may come. In a sense, this can be seen as a modern-day Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, a book I enjoyed in the mid-aughts. Like Michael Lewis’ chronicling of Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s who identified and capitalized on an inefficiency in the MLB team-building market, Reiter explores how Jeff Luhnow did the same for the Astros, albeit using different methods. It’s been more than a decade since I’ve read “Moneyball,” but I’m pretty sure “Astroball” tackles its story from a wider array of angles, lending a sociological feel to the tale at times. For instance, I don’t remember “Moneyball” discussing language barriers between teammates or exploring the MLB draft from nearly every possible perspective. Also, I believe that book’s overarching argument was much less nuanced (feeling black and white at times), at least relative to this one’s.
The depth and breadth of Ben Reiter’s reporting are on full display with “Astroball,” undoubtedly benefiting from the author’s handful of years with unparalleled access to the franchise. Because he sought out the right people (essentially anyone even remotely connected to the Astros in a number of different fields, inside and outside of the organization) and asked the right questions, the text writes itself. I say that not to disparage Reiter’s style; he writes beautifully and clearly. Rather, I note that in order to compliment his extensive reporting.
From my perspective as a knowledgeable baseball fan, Reiter expertly navigates the balance between giving baseball aficionados the behind-the-scenes gold we desperately crave and not getting too insidery in a way that would turn off a casual fan or even a non-baseball fan. Given the unintimidating way he explains complicated baseball topics or metrics, I don’t believe I’m exaggerating when I say that a non-sports fan has the potential to thoroughly enjoy this book. For instance, when he’s referencing Statcast data such as spin rate or other statistics, he contextualizes them in a way that slowly brings along the uninitiated. But at the same time, the more serious baseball mind does not feel any type of dumbing down is occurring.
This story is crafted tremendously well. The main way Reiter does that is through all the diverse perspectives he includes. Again and again throughout the narrative, he introduces the reader to a particular character but makes sure to delve into that character’s backstory. In doing so, we learn what makes the character tick and how he’s become so talented and/or interested in his field. This approach seamlessly lends itself to a fair and balanced view of how Jeff Luhnow and company balance the wishes and expertise of scouts versus the analytics people. Because we’ve already gotten to know various key scouts and various key members of the analytics team, as well as Luhnow and other executives, we, as readers can digest draft discussions, for example, much more easily. The chapter centered around the 2014 MLB Draft is one of the my favorites in the book, because it showcases Reiter’s strength of being able to comfortably bring in so many perspectives. He tells the story of this draft from a slew of angles, including that of No. 1 overall pick Brady Aiken, the scouts, the analytics guys, Luhnow, and more. The way he takes the reader behind the scenes in such vivid detail is amazing. I felt like an extremely lucky fly on the wall.
I should note this book provided my first audio book experience. Listening to the book on Audible was terrific, although as an old-school reader, I still prefer the feel of a physical book in my hands. Nothing replaces the subtle but repeated feeling of accomplishment after each turn of the page. But I digressed. Reiter voiced the book himself and did well with it. He reads with energy and enthusiasm in a way that seems to complement all the rich details he’s collected through his reporting and the way he’s woven them into the broader narrative. One thing I found funny but also a little strange was the higher pitch he adopts when quoting children. On a related note, I noticed he employs a different tone with quotes in general, which I think is helpful for the listener. “Reading” the book in the car, especially on longer drives, was so much fun, providing color to an otherwise mundane part of life.
Regardless of medium, I recommend you pick this book up and see what you think. If you’re not hooked pretty quickly, I don’t think it’s the right fit for you. But most prospective readers who enjoy a well told story of last to first from a ridiculous (in the slang, good way) number of angles will be pulled in early and go on to savor every page. I look forward to Reiter’s next book, whenever it may come. In a sense, this can be seen as a modern-day Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, a book I enjoyed in the mid-aughts. Like Michael Lewis’ chronicling of Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s who identified and capitalized on an inefficiency in the MLB team-building market, Reiter explores how Jeff Luhnow did the same for the Astros, albeit using different methods. It’s been more than a decade since I’ve read “Moneyball,” but I’m pretty sure “Astroball” tackles its story from a wider array of angles, lending a sociological feel to the tale at times. For instance, I don’t remember “Moneyball” discussing language barriers between teammates or exploring the MLB draft from nearly every possible perspective. Also, I believe that book’s overarching argument was much less nuanced (feeling black and white at times), at least relative to this one’s.
July 26, 2018
As a lifelong Astros fan (I’m actually 10 years older than the franchise), my attraction to this story may reflect quite a bit of favoritism, but I am of the sincere opinion that this book is a more than worthy successor to Moneyball, and belongs among some of the most revered observations on the national pastime. It is baseball analytics squared, dipping into human emotion and inspired decision-making that goes beyond number-crunching. A recommended read for everyone who wants to understand modern baseball.
August 7, 2018
Very interesting nerdy book on how the Astros won the World Series in 2017. Takes me back to the 1960's when my little brother and his friends would make up games and the outcomes from the stats on their shoeboxes of baseball cards. We have come a long way since then.
May 27, 2020
Baseball is a very easy sport to cheat in. Everybody does it. What the Houston Astros did in the past couple of seasons has been the definition of cheating. Everyone in baseball tries to bend the rules a little bit. Usually, they will try to steal signs (not like how the Astros did it) to get information from the runner on second base to the hitter that is either expecting a fastball or an offspeed pitch. That isn't cheating though as this has been going on from the first pitch to the last pitch of the game. Many fans will try to defend the "World Series Champs" by saying that this was just the same old sign-stealing that has happened for the past 100 years. This time is worst though as the Astros used technology and trash cans to relly information. This is cheating. As a baseball fan and an Astros despiser, I felt like it was my duty to read the book that explained the "great" ways the Astros won/cheated.
Astroball was written before the cheating allegations were ever brought up. The "great" World Series Champions, the Houston Astros, were once the worst team in baseball. By the worst team, I mean that they lost more than 105 games in a three-year span (2011-2013). They were awful. From the Butt Slide to the losing records, they were the worst team. It wasn't until the Astros drafted key players with there draft picks, that they were good. The lineup that was so bad, ended up becoming one of the best lineups in the game. They also made huge trades that would bluster their rotation which needed some help. The acquisition of Justin Verlander at the Waiver trade deadline was enormous. While everyone thought that Verlander was declining as a pitcher in his mid 30's, the Astros picked him up in one of the biggest waiver trades in a long time. Between the hits that they had in the draft and the acquisitions between trades and free agency, this Astros team would become something amazing. It would only take three years to rebuild from a 100 lost team, into a "World Series Champion".
It's very sad that this book is somewhat irrelevant now after the Astros have been caught cheating, but at least this book had some interesting stories. What kept me reading this book was how interesting some of the stories were between Jeff Luhnow, AJ Hinch, and some of the players. Many players like Carlos Correa, George Springer, and Jose Altuve were nice to hear even though it is hard to believe some of the stories because of the cheating scandal. The most interesting story though was JD. Martinez's. Many don't know, but before JD was an All-Star with the Tigers, Diamondbacks, and the Red Sox's, JD was stuck with the Houston Astros and there 100 lost teams. Martinez was released by the Astros after he was slumping as a hitter. Martinez wasn't fast or could he field, so hitting was very important for him. After being released, he would go on and fix his broken swing. Martinez is now with the Red Sox and is enjoying a nice contract with them. This book was good because of the great stories it had. Sometimes you have to listen to the players before you judge them on something.
This book is a lie for the most part. Of course, it isn't the writer's fault as he got information from the team. Ben Reiter couldn't have known that the Astros were cheaters as 3 years ago from now, some of us were hoping onto the Houston Astros Bandwagon (not me though). It wasn't until this year that we got information about the Astros cheating though. If the Astros didn't cheat though and all of the stories were true and correct, then this could have easily have been a 5 out of five books. The Houston Astros ruined baseball, but they also ruined this book by cheating!
Astroball was written before the cheating allegations were ever brought up. The "great" World Series Champions, the Houston Astros, were once the worst team in baseball. By the worst team, I mean that they lost more than 105 games in a three-year span (2011-2013). They were awful. From the Butt Slide to the losing records, they were the worst team. It wasn't until the Astros drafted key players with there draft picks, that they were good. The lineup that was so bad, ended up becoming one of the best lineups in the game. They also made huge trades that would bluster their rotation which needed some help. The acquisition of Justin Verlander at the Waiver trade deadline was enormous. While everyone thought that Verlander was declining as a pitcher in his mid 30's, the Astros picked him up in one of the biggest waiver trades in a long time. Between the hits that they had in the draft and the acquisitions between trades and free agency, this Astros team would become something amazing. It would only take three years to rebuild from a 100 lost team, into a "World Series Champion".
It's very sad that this book is somewhat irrelevant now after the Astros have been caught cheating, but at least this book had some interesting stories. What kept me reading this book was how interesting some of the stories were between Jeff Luhnow, AJ Hinch, and some of the players. Many players like Carlos Correa, George Springer, and Jose Altuve were nice to hear even though it is hard to believe some of the stories because of the cheating scandal. The most interesting story though was JD. Martinez's. Many don't know, but before JD was an All-Star with the Tigers, Diamondbacks, and the Red Sox's, JD was stuck with the Houston Astros and there 100 lost teams. Martinez was released by the Astros after he was slumping as a hitter. Martinez wasn't fast or could he field, so hitting was very important for him. After being released, he would go on and fix his broken swing. Martinez is now with the Red Sox and is enjoying a nice contract with them. This book was good because of the great stories it had. Sometimes you have to listen to the players before you judge them on something.
This book is a lie for the most part. Of course, it isn't the writer's fault as he got information from the team. Ben Reiter couldn't have known that the Astros were cheaters as 3 years ago from now, some of us were hoping onto the Houston Astros Bandwagon (not me though). It wasn't until this year that we got information about the Astros cheating though. If the Astros didn't cheat though and all of the stories were true and correct, then this could have easily have been a 5 out of five books. The Houston Astros ruined baseball, but they also ruined this book by cheating!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 16, 2018
I really enjoyed this book. It is sort of similar to Moneyball, but with new tactics. If you are a baseball fan, check out this book.
August 2, 2019
It was fine. It was Moneyball 2. It was the author taking a victory lap after correctly picking the Astros to win it all years before anybody guessed they’d be good. I don’t know what I expected, so I can’t say why Astroball felt like a letdown.
One thing that did deliver was the research. As the Sports Illustrated reporter who wrote a glowing cover story of the club in 2014, Ben Reiter got incredible access for this book and it shows. His writing is filled with inside stories that peel back the recruiting process to reveal how the Astros’ front office used data science to transform the team.
In the book’s best moments, these examples of tough calls proving out - right or wrong - were really compelling. For example, the story of the struggling slugger JD Martinez.. He transformed his mechanics in the offseason only to be cut during spring training because the Astro’s data wonks didn’t believe it was possible. The numbers didn’t show it, but they were wrong. Martinez bounced back as a three-time All Star and won a title of his own with the Red Socks in 2018 after trouncing the team that traded him.
We get a solid peak behind the curtain with the Martinez story and a few others. Unfortunately, that insider access came at the expense of Reiter’s objectivity. The book is unreasonably one-sided in favor of the Astro’s front office. In every possible example of controversy, Reiter seems to go out of his way to exonerate the guys giving him the access, even in clear-cuts cases of bad-faith. Take, for instance, the Astros’ choice to sign known domestic abuser Roberto Osuna at a time when most teams wouldn’t touch him. Reiter suggests that Astros GM Jeff Luhnow was vindicated when Osuna’s victim failed to testify and charges were dropped. He quotes an unnamed rival GM basically saying that others in the league were envious of Luhnow’s foresight, given the outcome. That kind of one-dimensional storytelling seems cowardly to me, lazy at best.
I guess in retrospect Astroball’s topic itself has a pretty low ceiling. Like my friend Pat said when I told him I was reading this book: “Baseball teams are insurance companies now... epic.” I feel you, Pat.
One thing that did deliver was the research. As the Sports Illustrated reporter who wrote a glowing cover story of the club in 2014, Ben Reiter got incredible access for this book and it shows. His writing is filled with inside stories that peel back the recruiting process to reveal how the Astros’ front office used data science to transform the team.
In the book’s best moments, these examples of tough calls proving out - right or wrong - were really compelling. For example, the story of the struggling slugger JD Martinez.. He transformed his mechanics in the offseason only to be cut during spring training because the Astro’s data wonks didn’t believe it was possible. The numbers didn’t show it, but they were wrong. Martinez bounced back as a three-time All Star and won a title of his own with the Red Socks in 2018 after trouncing the team that traded him.
We get a solid peak behind the curtain with the Martinez story and a few others. Unfortunately, that insider access came at the expense of Reiter’s objectivity. The book is unreasonably one-sided in favor of the Astro’s front office. In every possible example of controversy, Reiter seems to go out of his way to exonerate the guys giving him the access, even in clear-cuts cases of bad-faith. Take, for instance, the Astros’ choice to sign known domestic abuser Roberto Osuna at a time when most teams wouldn’t touch him. Reiter suggests that Astros GM Jeff Luhnow was vindicated when Osuna’s victim failed to testify and charges were dropped. He quotes an unnamed rival GM basically saying that others in the league were envious of Luhnow’s foresight, given the outcome. That kind of one-dimensional storytelling seems cowardly to me, lazy at best.
I guess in retrospect Astroball’s topic itself has a pretty low ceiling. Like my friend Pat said when I told him I was reading this book: “Baseball teams are insurance companies now... epic.” I feel you, Pat.
July 21, 2018
This is the story of how the 2017 World Series champions, the Houston Astros, were built. This team exemplified tanking better than Chicago Cubs or anyone else ever did. What they did has now served as a model for my favorite team, the Chicago White Sox, and several other teams currently. The Astros tanked to the extreme, purging themselves completely of any veteran players so that their roster would consist entirely of low-cost, inexperienced players during the rebuilding process. They lost over 100 games three years in a row shortly before the new breed of players took over to become World Series champions.
The story is interesting and the author was on it from the beginning of the team’s renaissance in 2014. The story of how the Astros became a Sports Illustrated cover story in 2014, just as they were starting to become good, is pretty incredible.
As good a job as the front office of the Astros did, they also made some big mistakes. They had the #1 overall pick three years in a row, but were unable to sign one of them. They gave up on one of the best sluggers is the game, J.D. Martinez, just as he was completing his transformation from a nondescript outfielder to the powerful slugger he is today.
The Astros were and are heavy users of analytics. But analytics have gotten even more sophisticated than those chronicled in Moneyball. You learn more about Trackman and other modern tools in this book.
A very solid piece of work.
The story is interesting and the author was on it from the beginning of the team’s renaissance in 2014. The story of how the Astros became a Sports Illustrated cover story in 2014, just as they were starting to become good, is pretty incredible.
As good a job as the front office of the Astros did, they also made some big mistakes. They had the #1 overall pick three years in a row, but were unable to sign one of them. They gave up on one of the best sluggers is the game, J.D. Martinez, just as he was completing his transformation from a nondescript outfielder to the powerful slugger he is today.
The Astros were and are heavy users of analytics. But analytics have gotten even more sophisticated than those chronicled in Moneyball. You learn more about Trackman and other modern tools in this book.
A very solid piece of work.
May 2, 2021
With all due respect to Ben Reiter: what an utterly regrettable book to have published, and in my case, to have read. I tackled this one in 2019, before the Astros sign-stealing/trash can-banging fiasco came to light, and while I appreciated the narrative arc of the loser team transformed by analysis and patience into a World Series winner - the ultimate purposeful tanking story, redeemed by a clutch of high draft picks all blossoming at the same time - it really did feel like a massive glorification of McKinsey/consultant thinking, and I came away less awed by the Astros’ feat than I was going into it. The Astros come off as exhibit A for the demonization of the capitalist suits and the arbitrage-seeking number-crunchers, and that was before the scandal that showed them for what they really were. Now, of course, I look at the Astros’ success and see asterisks everywhere, and players like Altuve who were among “my favorite guys” and now dead to me. I suspect Reiter wishes he’d chosen a different topic to spend two years of his life on.
August 25, 2018
I finished Astroball by Ben Reiter last night while watching the Astros beat the Angels!! It’s a fascinating look into how the Astros built a championship team! Reiter does a good job of explaining how the Astros and particularly GM Jeff Luhnow and former rocket scientist Sig Mejdal evolve the “Moneyball” process by using big data in conjunction with some personal observations about personality and other “hard to quantify” characteristics. Reiter also makes it an entertaining read with background stories about some of the major players like Carlos Correa, Alex Bergman, and Jose Altuve. As a long time Astros fan who follows the team pretty closely I loved learning about some of the behind-the-scenes work that makes them who they are. This is a great book for anyone interested in the Astros, general baseball, or big time analytics being used in sports!
January 3, 2019
I read this based on the reviews that it would be interesting even for those who are not into baseball at all. I can't agree with this. Reiter goes into far too much detail on player biographies, and random statistics and game details without any context. The characters aren't very memorable, and the central thesis—that the Astros managed to integrate human judgement with statistics, and that this will be a model for all sorts of organizations in the future—is largely unproved, and hardly even seriously investigated. Michael Lewis's "Moneyball" was much better. This was, however, interesting as a sequel to "Moneyball," showing how quickly baseball teams reacted to that story.
February 4, 2020
All built on lies. It turns out they treated employees like dirt and cheated to win. Astroball has tarnished the game.
July 22, 2019
Ben Reiter does an excellent job recounting how the Astros went from being the laughing stock of baseball into a World Champion in four years. Under the leadership of Jeff Luhnow and his primary assistants, Sig Mejdal, Mike Elias, and David Stearns the Astros front office fulfilled owner Jim Crane's dream of a world title. (and a 1.5 billion dollar franchise). By 2019 most studious baseball fans are familiar with the analytical revolution, so much of the early chapters dealing with Big Data, and even a Director of Decision Sciences is not earth shattering. Most teams have followed the Moneyball example and copied Luhnow's strategies. But in 2014 and forward, the Astro path was eye opening. Luhnow could have played it safe, kept some big priced stars, made a few upgrades and held a gentleman C club with a .500 winning percentage. Instead he wanted to go bold: to hit on sixteen when the dealer had a seven showing. Luhnow wanted to build for the future a team that would contend for many years. To do that would mean several lean years, but he would reap the benefits of a last place team by getting a few first overall draft picks and then an incredibly lucky second pick to nab Alex Bregman.To do that he would eschew gut feelings, but he would not rely totally on his science tested analysis from his Science squad. He espoused the "process and growth" formula. He applied a mathematical process to verify the eyes and gut reports of scouts by regression analysis so that he could determine how well a particular scout's ratings actually turned out to be accurate. He and Sig used science data to evaluate a players abilities and even how much money they were worth. Sis and his squad played a large role in Luhnow's plan. They drafted Carlos Correa and George Springer #1 based largely on future projections and Sig's data and the "make up" of those guys as well as diminutive Jose Altuve and Bregman. That was the core. But the chapters about Carlos Beltran and Justin Verlander were the most interesting. Despite the scientific approach of the front office, Luhnow believed in team chemistry. While WAR can't quantify it, it does exist. I found it fascinating that in 2017 a research project by two economists and a psychology professor determined what they called The David Ross effect. (Ross had been a veteran catcher whose career was mostly as a defensive safety valve but was great for a team's spirit.) Luhnow correctly chose Beltran as a veteran who ultimately aided his team immensely by teaching bonding skills, and teaching the younger players how to study the opposition players as wwll as offer instruction to his teammates. I was amazed at just how much Beltran did offer, although I had heard about how he picked up Darvish's tipping of pitches. And honestly, the chapter on getting Verlander with literally two seconds left to spare before the August 31 waiver deadline was like reading a thriller piece of fiction. Just great writing and story telling. It was almost heresy for Luhnow to trade awat three prospects for a high priced older pitcher like Verlander, but Luhnow chose his gut over the admonition of his data wizard Sig. I must end this with a quote from the chapter on the 2017 World Series because I laughed out loud."As he sat in the stands, concerned fans watched horrified as Sig chewed on the terry cloth rally rags the club distributed to patrons. 'Is he all right?' they whispered to the placid Luhnow. There is a lot more to this gem of a story. Read it and enjoy.
August 6, 2018
I received my winning copy of ASTROBALL by BEN REITER last Thursday evening. When I opened the protective package it was shipped in , I spent the next hour being sucked into the history and story of The Houston Astros. I was unaware of the early years of the team because of my age at the time; 3 years old , but I do remember some of the good teams they had with Nolan Ryan as their ace and many of the Astrodome years of the team.
Let me say up front that I was not an Astros fan; Far from it. I cheered for another long time loser The Philadelphia Phillies.The Astro story however interested me. I am a baseball fan at heart and remember most of the names of the players mentioned in the book.I thought initially that it would be a somewhat dry read with endless stats and figures. It is nothing of the sort. It is a detailed timeline of how the executives of the Houston Astros started in the business and what influenced their decisions in turning around the fate and fortunes of the team they were now in charge of. If you are aware of a book and story tited MONEYBALL, you will have a clue on how the Astros rebuilt their ballclub.
It is no secret that data plays a HUGE part these days on determining who actually gets a roster spot on a major league baseball club. The Houston GM and his data staff called the NERD CAVE are followed closely by Ben Reiter and his informants on how exactly a modern day baseball team can win it all with a little luck and making sense of all the data created by a common ballplayer. Choosing the correct type of player to complement what you already know is a good core staff of pitchers and players is what this book is essentially about. You get into their head and their thinking as they make trades and get an insight of what actually goes into a trade and a release and sometimes a major mistake by the GM(D.J. Martinez) .
As a longtime Sports Illustrated subscriber,I remember that article on the Astros of 2014. I took it with a grain of salt at the time, as many predictions of championships never come true due to injuries, deaths, and circumstances like drug and steroid suspensions that will not let the hoped for fulfillment of hard work come to pass. Ben Reiter wrote that article and was intrigued enough with what he saw at the time to follow the actual story of the Astros through to a Word Series win just as he projected. The book reads just like a Sports Illustrated Article except that it is about 80,000 words long. Ben Reiter should get some kind of prize for not only his writing of the book , but for the Predicition of a championship 3 years down the line. Many people cannot tell you what will happen when it's down to the National and American league finals on any given year, let alone that long into the future.
If you are a hardcore baseball fan and want to know how to make your team a winner, peek behind the curtain and read this book. Every team now does this, the Astros, Cubs and Red Sox just do it better. Some of their secrets can be found in this book.
Let me say up front that I was not an Astros fan; Far from it. I cheered for another long time loser The Philadelphia Phillies.The Astro story however interested me. I am a baseball fan at heart and remember most of the names of the players mentioned in the book.I thought initially that it would be a somewhat dry read with endless stats and figures. It is nothing of the sort. It is a detailed timeline of how the executives of the Houston Astros started in the business and what influenced their decisions in turning around the fate and fortunes of the team they were now in charge of. If you are aware of a book and story tited MONEYBALL, you will have a clue on how the Astros rebuilt their ballclub.
It is no secret that data plays a HUGE part these days on determining who actually gets a roster spot on a major league baseball club. The Houston GM and his data staff called the NERD CAVE are followed closely by Ben Reiter and his informants on how exactly a modern day baseball team can win it all with a little luck and making sense of all the data created by a common ballplayer. Choosing the correct type of player to complement what you already know is a good core staff of pitchers and players is what this book is essentially about. You get into their head and their thinking as they make trades and get an insight of what actually goes into a trade and a release and sometimes a major mistake by the GM(D.J. Martinez) .
As a longtime Sports Illustrated subscriber,I remember that article on the Astros of 2014. I took it with a grain of salt at the time, as many predictions of championships never come true due to injuries, deaths, and circumstances like drug and steroid suspensions that will not let the hoped for fulfillment of hard work come to pass. Ben Reiter wrote that article and was intrigued enough with what he saw at the time to follow the actual story of the Astros through to a Word Series win just as he projected. The book reads just like a Sports Illustrated Article except that it is about 80,000 words long. Ben Reiter should get some kind of prize for not only his writing of the book , but for the Predicition of a championship 3 years down the line. Many people cannot tell you what will happen when it's down to the National and American league finals on any given year, let alone that long into the future.
If you are a hardcore baseball fan and want to know how to make your team a winner, peek behind the curtain and read this book. Every team now does this, the Astros, Cubs and Red Sox just do it better. Some of their secrets can be found in this book.
May 26, 2019
Astroball is what Moneyball wanted to be. A deep, incisive look at a successful baseball franchise.
Moneyball failed as it wrote off the value of the scouts. The first chapter talked about scouts as if they were dinosaurs, adding no value to the process.
Astroball gets - as does the management of the Astros - that we are talking about human beings. And all human beings have something in them that a spreadsheet cannot show.
Which process is superior? Well, the Astros have a World Series Championship under their system and the A's do not.
Ben Reiter is a gifted author. His narrative style is engaging and well-paced. He takes a deep look into what makes the Houston process so successful.
This is an excellent baseball book. Just as George Will's Men at Work is an superb baseball book, Men at Work is at its core a book about excellence. Astroball is a baseball book, but also a book about upsetting a business model and a book about ideas.
You may not like baseball (although I have no idea why) and you could still learn from this book, as it about so much more than just the game.
This is Ben Reiter's first book. And it is perfect. I look forward to more work from this gifted young man.
Moneyball failed as it wrote off the value of the scouts. The first chapter talked about scouts as if they were dinosaurs, adding no value to the process.
Astroball gets - as does the management of the Astros - that we are talking about human beings. And all human beings have something in them that a spreadsheet cannot show.
Which process is superior? Well, the Astros have a World Series Championship under their system and the A's do not.
Ben Reiter is a gifted author. His narrative style is engaging and well-paced. He takes a deep look into what makes the Houston process so successful.
This is an excellent baseball book. Just as George Will's Men at Work is an superb baseball book, Men at Work is at its core a book about excellence. Astroball is a baseball book, but also a book about upsetting a business model and a book about ideas.
You may not like baseball (although I have no idea why) and you could still learn from this book, as it about so much more than just the game.
This is Ben Reiter's first book. And it is perfect. I look forward to more work from this gifted young man.
August 17, 2018
Astroball follows the Houston Astros as they rebuild their team around metrics and statistics as well as baseball insights to win the 2017 World Series. Ben Reiter was the sports illustrated author who wrote the article that Astros would win it all in 2017 and this book follow sup in an expanded sense on that article tracking how the “nerd cave” delved into baseball statistics and through the use of regression, big data and heuristics found a winning combination. The book is definitely for those who are into baseball with in-depth looks at the players who made it happen and the things done that drove them onto the performance that would win the World Series. It was a very interesting look at the future of baseball where data will help to shape the way that players preform and provide insight into other teams strategies. The person who uses this data the best will significantly increase their marginal ability to win. Overall a fun read!
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