The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First Hardcover – March 8, 2011

Before getting to the review of "The Extra 2%," here's a relevant story:I spent six years working for a professional sports franchise. There were good parts and bad parts about it, and one of the good parts was the chance to see a sports team from up close.And in this case, I learned that there were reasons why this particular sports team was mediocre. The organization as a whole had something of a commitment to mediocrity at the time. There was lip service to winning it all, of course, but generally the entire organization didn't put winning at the top of its priorities. And the results showed it.Jonah Keri never worked for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays or Rays, but he did the next-best thing. He interviewed all sorts of people with connections to the franchise, past and present. That includes the decade that the franchise spent wandering in the proverbial desert, and the time after that when they finally reached the oasis of postseason play.The resulting book, "The Extra 2%," is a terrific look at what the world of major league baseball was like in 2011.The then-Devil Rays did just about everything wrong in those early years. It started with the original owner, Vince Naimoli, who knew all about stripping businesses and selling them off at a profit but who knew nothing about the unique aspects of the baseball business. The team went from an emphasis on experience to youth to experience, depending on the whims of the moment. Sometimes the spending was merely wasteful, sometimes the checkbook was firmly closed.Keri has great fun in talking with some of the veterans of those times. Even the team's first general manager reviews his mistakes and miscalculations with good humor and candor. Everyone will love the story about how a lone scout thought a prospect was worth a flier as a draft choice. When his opinion went unnoticed, he left ... and the player soon started a Hall of Fame career. (No spoilers here.)Finally, and mercifully, former Wall Street workers Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman took control of the team in 2005. They accumulated smart people wherever they could find them, seemingly from a variety of walks of life. All of their work didn't produce results immediately, but the team eventually had a magical last-to-first season in 2008 that put the team in the World Series.The baseball business sure has changed in the last 20 years. Every team has a statistical department filled with people who probably could make huge money elsewhere if they weren't so busy having fun. Throw in the matter of regional sports networks, international scouting, stadium issues, and so on, and it's a complicated world. Sternberg and Silverman were looking for that extra two percent that would give them the edge over the competition, and they found it eventually.This could have been really dry material, but Keri works in real-life, first-person stories into the narrative. About the only part that drags a bit is a chapter that explains what the new ownership group did in financial circles -- but it's really necessary to the story.Keri is one of the smart people who used to work for Baseball Prospectus -- not that there aren't some bright folks there now. He's done a number of stories for a variety of publications about baseball and business. Keri knows his stuff, but he's also gone through a variety of sources -- from 175 interviews to checking out blogs and bloggers -- to find information.This was one of the best baseball books of its year. "The Extra 2%" is a superb case study about the baseball business.

Living in Orlando, I went to Devil Rays games from the beginning. I forced myself to be a fan of such a dismal team, so it was a real treat when the Rays turned it all around.There is a lot of ground covered about the short history of the franchise, and it is worth the read. I especially enjoyed the sections on Andrew Friedman, as I have met him and think he is a great GM and a good guy.However, has anyone counted how many times Mr. Keri wrote that the Rays can't match the money that the Yankees and Red Sox have to spend on players? I am sure he must have written that at least 100 times in this book. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 200 times. Maybe even more...Actually, I already knew that fact before I ever bought the book. I expect that most others who also read the book are baseball fans with some knowledge of the game, too. There was no need to repeatedly tell us that the Yankees and Red Sox have more money than the Rays.Other than that, I enjoyed the book and can recommend it.

This is a decent effort about a decent team, but will really only be interesting to Rays fans and now Dodfer dans, now that the Rays former GM is running the Dodger Front Office. This is no Moneyball. It's not a revolutionary look at a different way to play the game. Many of the successes of the new team leadership detailed in the book are really defined by in contrast to the Rays original owner, Vince Namoli, and can be summed up with three words: "Don't be stupid." A major league owner who nickels and dimes fans is going to be hated; one who does that with an expansion team will lose; one who signs washed up veterans and loses games will be mocked. All of this we have seen before and most callers to talk radio shows could basically do half the job, or more. The Rays faced special problems, including the presence of the Yankees (both in their division, and literally their market), but some of those were neither the fault of the old owner, nor have they been fixed by the new owners. Indeed, the book while acknowledging some success by the old regime, ignores the fact that bad luck and choices that most good baseball people would make caused a good deal of the problems. By the same token, it seems to overly credit the new regime with moves, including draft picks, that the old regime made. It. Also gives great insight into Joe Maddon, a crucial part of the Rays success. But it ignores that Maddon's methods weren't Wall Street--they were simply basic principles of coaching and teaching. If other coaches run pointless drills during sprung training while Maddon's practices teach players how to play better, this is not a 2% solution--it's just a failure of most major league managers, where college and minor league instructors succeed. In the end, the only central thesis that holds is that Namoli was a bad owner.Interestingly, this book may give insight to the Rays regime as they spread into the rest of baseball. And combined with recent moves, it will cause worries. Friedman applies Wall Street strategies, as the title implies, in order to succeed in a tough situation. How does that apply to the rest of baseball? Not well. Player arbitrage and the like don't really work for a fan base. Moneyball was about finding value where others did not. It's premise was how could Billy Beane replace three high-priced talents that left the As for free agency, and then gets into explaining the fundamental difference in approach that the As used, which has largely revolutionized how front offices have looked at the game. But, even while it was a literary starting point, it revealed a truth--even Billy Beane would have re-signed Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon if he'd had the resources. And successful acolytes of his with vast resources--like Theo Epstein in Boston--have done just that. Indeed, the book mentions that the Yankees Brian Cashman and his baseball operations department are just as talented as Friedman and his team, and points out that after missing the playoffs and losing the division to the Rays in 2008, they took a very defective strategy and went out and bought the best talent available, steamrolling to another world championship the next year. The book does not give any hint that Friedman would operate effectively in such a scenario, and when compared to his early moves with the Dodgers, including a pointless salary dump of their best hitter, it suggests that he does not get it. In the end, it may really be an example of modernWall Street--hedge trade, arbitrage, but don't worry about real long-term value. The problem with that is that this was the Wall Street thinking when Steinberg, Sterner, and Friedman left the street for baseball, but just before that Wall Street thinking nearly destroyed the entire economy.A note on the writing itself. Like I said, the central argument of the book is overstated--the old regime not nearly so bad, and the new regime not nearly as good. But the writing also leaves something to be desired. Too many digressions within the writing--as if the writer had a good tidbit of information that he really wanted to tell you about, but not really on point. The style was sometimes awkward, making it necessary to re-read sentences or paragraphs. Maybe this was just being too clever. But the examples in the argument had problems. The same players and circumstances would be referenced multiple times, but sometimes for inconsistent reasons. Carlos Pena went from being smartly cast off, to being a lucky re-sign to plug a hole, to a star hitter at the core of the team, to being not a great player but a really good clubhouse presence. All of these were viewed as positive moves, but in the end, it is either evidence for inconsistent points about the new regime. Talented rookies were viewed as key players in re-establishing the Rays brand in Tampa and creating long-term connections with the community, but their trades two years later are labeled brilliant moves of baseball arbitrage.

Jonah Keri's The Extra 2% is the story of what happened when three financial industry experts took over a failing baseball team with an unpopular owner and tried to turn it round. As the full title reveals, they did rather well.The book came several years after the famous bestseller  Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game , itself the tale of a similar turnaround of a small and financially limited team into one that could compete with - and beat - vastly richer rivals.The Extra 2% is harder going than Moneyball for non-baseball fans, although the basic story - of spotting new ways of doing things in order to get a competitive edge - is of interest to more than just baseball fans.Whilst Moneyball gives much more detail as to how its protagonists found their edge, The Extra 2% does a great job at explaining how jaw-droppingly bad in many ways the previous Tampa Bay Rays regime was.This book also has the extra interest of the financial backgrounds of the three people who took over and revolutionised the Tampa Bay baseball franchise. Financial experts have a rather checkered reputation, to put it mildly, especially when they have tried to apply their values outside of the financial markets. So Jonah Keri's account is an interesting tale of both the pitfalls and benefits of taking basic financial attitudes such as seeking opportunities for arbitrage and applying them to areas very different from the financial markets.Keri's account shows how the wisest financial experts do not simply look to cut costs - the mistake made by the previous owner of the Rays - but rather look to make effective investments. Other than that, the book is rather silent on quite what the new team did to turn round the club so dramatically, perhaps in part because the publicity given to specific techniques in Moneyball made it easier for others to emulate them. The Rays team are wise in their reticence to explain the reasons for their own success.Still, it's an interesting book - and if you're interested in the wider lessons about how modern sport works and how attitudes of mind formed in the financial markets work elsewhere, then the lack of hard-edged baseball analysis isn't a drawback. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

In The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First, Canadian author and wunderkid Jonah Kerri tells the story of baseball's Tampa Bay Rays and how new ownership too the team through a transition from a small market baseball team in a bad stadium with atrocious management on and off the field and turned them into contenders in baseball's most impossibly competitive division. Kerri begins by tracing the history of baseball in the Tampa Bay area as the team wanders in the wilderness trying to attract major league baseball into the region. At first Tampa is courted by fickle suitors who sweet talk the Tampa Bay baseball group with false promises of moving existing franchises into the region, only to be thwarted by local politicians (like the former Illinois Governor "Big Jim" Thompson) or team owners who are really posturing to get a better deal at home. When a deal to relocate the San Francisco Giants to Tampa Bay is nixed by major league owners at the 11th hour in 1992, it looks hopeless. Finally three years later, the region is awarded an expansion team under unconscionable conditions: an inflated expansion fee, penalization in the first few years of the baseball draft and slim pickings in the expansion pool.The team gets off to a rocky start. The managing partner of the owners' group, Vince Naimoli, is a penny-pincher who lacks any sense of the big picture and who manages to alienate the community while killing morale within the organization. Keri tells the many horror stories of how Naimoli offends local advertisers by threatening to sue small merchants who try to promote the team, how he invites a high school band to play the national anthem at a game and then insists that the band members first buy tickets to the game, and how his "no outside food" policy is so strictly enforced that a wheelchair bound woman is berated for trying to bring food into a game to stave off a potential diabetic coma. The petty Naimoli even goes so far as to surreptitiously surveil his ushers and dress down those who don't enforce the policy.Keri portrays General manager Chuck Lamar as a prime example of the Peter Principle, as Lamar signs aging veterans while trading away future prospects, hoping to nab a few more wins. A Rays scout who begs the team to sign a late round draft choice named Albert Pujols is ignored as the on field comedy of errors continues.Keri describes how the turning point comes with a change of ownership. New owner Stuart Sternberg replaces the climate of community alienation with one of a more fan-friendly park. He immediately fires Chuck LaMar along with most of the front office and replaces them with corporate whiz kids. Matthew Silverman is named the team president, and Andrew Friedman is given the role of Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations. Sternberg decides not to have a General Manager, calling the position "outdated." The new management in turn hires Joe Madden, probably the smartest manager in baseball. Keri describes how Madden is not afraid to go against conventional wisdom, for example walking a power hitter with the bases loaded, sacrificing a run in order to get an easier out. The book describes how the Rays adopt a more forward thinking approach to player selection, finding many diamonds in the rough. Declining players are traded while they still have value, and new players are acquired using the Wall Street strategy of "arbitrage" (risk-free profit at little or no cost). Keri details how the Rays parlay the new strategy into a berth in the 2008 World Series, despite having to battle in a division containing the embarrassingly cash-rich New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.The love of the Rays that the reader acquires through this tale is tarnished somewhat towards the end as we find Sternberg using the same tactics used by the owners who gave false hope to those trying to acquire a franchise in Tampa Bay, as he pleads poverty in an attempt to squeeze local taxpayers to get a new stadium, threatening to move the team if he doesn't get his way.This book is brilliantly written, with a lot of information at levels not available to even the most diligent fan. Whether you're a baseball fan, someone interested in how the sausage is made in business or just someone looking for an interesting story, this book finds the strike zone at every level.

タイトルにあるウォールストリートの話はあまり突っ込んで語られません。レイズの経営陣が、ウォールストリート出身という話や、球団がリスクを負わない球団が行使できるオプションが、リスク無しで利益を上げられる裁定取引に例えられている位です。ただ野球本としては、すごく面白い！レイズが強くなっていく過程が、丁寧に書かれています。１００敗を避けるための補強をしないとか、怪我の兆候を察知する専門家がいるなど野球ファン必読のエピソード満載です。ちなみに、広島バリントンのドラフト１位秘話が７９ページに載っていますので、そこだけでも是非読んでみてください。

For those of you who enjoy Jonah Kerri's writing style, you will love this book by reading the first 10 pages.Lots of insights from a basebal insider that has a passion for out of the box thinking and analytical approaches to baseball.

Great book about sabre-metrics and follow-up to Moneyball!