My plan for this post was to cover as many of the new baseball books as possible, as I’ve done the last few Aprils. But this year, as I was reading and preparing, I realized that one book stood out and deserved to be discussed in greater detail. So the revised plan is cover that book here, and then in a week or two, I’ll write a seperate post covering the other new baseball books.
The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri
An over-zealous blurb or comparison is a dangerous thing. I’d read a lot of advance praise about Jonah Keri’s The Extra 2%, but when it arrived with not one but two Moneyball mentions on the back cover, I was worried. Michael Lewis’s book was so influential and so eclipsed the boundaries of the baseball book and business book genres that any comparison seems risky at best. On the other hand, it’s probably inevitable that any new baseball/business books will garner Moneyball comparisons, so at this point it’s probably best to just ignore them and evaluate the book on its own merits (if you’re interested, you can read my blog on Moneyball here).
The Extra 2% stands up just fine on its own, so its a bit of shame that, on the surface, it follows the Moneyball formula so closely – it is, after all, the story of how a small-market baseball franchise has challenged the status quo and competed with big market teams by applying unconventional strategies and creative solutions. The similarities really end there, however. Moneyball really centered around Billy Beane and his approach to player evaluation, and the rise of statistical analysis instead of traditional scouting. The Extra 2% is much broader – Keri covers the history of the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, the new ownership, the general manager, the players – really, every aspect of the organization. He looks at both the on-field turnaround as well as the business decisions by the new owners to build a fan base in Tampa/St. Petersburg. All these little decisions, the cumulative advantage built on doing just a bit more in every part of the business and the game – that’s the extra 2%.
More importantly, though, Keri is careful to distinguish between the current success of the Rays and the possibility of future continued success – when unconventional strategies work, they remain unconventional for only so long, and pretty soon the rest of the league (or most of it, anyway) has caught up. The Rays will have to be one step ahead of the Red Sox and Yankees off the field just to keep pace with them on the field. The MLB revenue-sharing policies help small-market teams to some degree, but unfortunately they also disincentivize growth and competitive effort on the part of small-market teams. How (and if) the Rays will continue to compete with the big market teams remains to be seen.
I also appreciated the balanced examination of the decisions made by the previous management compared to the current management of the (Devil) Rays. Not every decision made by the previous group was terrible – some of the players acquired and developed during that period made major contributions to the AL East-title winning Rays teams. Nor has the new ownership batted 1.000 on their strategies. But the difference isn’t simply in degrees of success – it’s the difference between a management group that vacillated between conflicting goals, and a management group that is committed to a plan, committed to follow the steps to rebuilding the franchise (and taking their lumps in the meantime).
If there’s a flaw in The Extra 2%, it’s that it lacks a central character that ties the story together. With the possible exception of manager Joe Maddon, none of the figures in the book are particularly intriguing or charismatic – they seem like guys you might want managing your retirement fund, but not someone you’d invite to your barbecue. It’s hard to blame the writer for this, however – people are who they are, and the story of the Rays’ success really is the story of a team, not a single charismatic figure.
In the end, The Extra 2% rightly deserves its own place in the library of baseball books, and it is my favorite new baseball book this year. I’ll cover some of the other new baseball books in a week or two — there are some excellent runner-ups this year.
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