Astroball
The New Way to Win It All
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4.5 • 176 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The inside story of the Houston Astros, whose relentless innovation took them from the worst team in baseball to the World Series in 2017 and 2019
“Reiter’s superb narrative of how the team got there provides powerful insights into how organizations—not just baseball clubs—work best.”—The Wall Street Journal
Astroball picks up where Michael Lewis’s acclaimed Moneyball leaves off, telling the thrilling story of a championship team that pushed both the sport and business of baseball to the next level. In 2014, the Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century, but just three years later they defied critics to win a stunning World Series. In this book, Ben Reiter shows how the Astros built a system that avoided the stats-versus-scouts divide by giving the human factor a key role in their decision-making. Sitting at the nexus of sports, business, and innovation, Astroball is the story of the next wave of thinking in baseball and beyond, at once a remarkable underdog tale and a fascinating look at the cutting edge of evaluating and optimizing human potential.
Customer Reviews
Really Strong Writing
This book was a lot of fun to read. It provided a good image of all the different angles at which the Astros succeeded. I really enjoyed the writers understanding of both baseball and analytics. Highly recommend to others interested in America’s Past Time
Who’s reading this in 2020?
If only everyone knew back then!
Great insight into an amazing story
As a lifelong Astros fan, the 2017 season was a thill ride that I never imagined could happen after such a long period of atrocious baseball and Ben Reiter captured it beautifully. I’ll never forget the SI cover with George Springer and the accompanying story. Like every other Astros fan, I was hopeful but skeptical of the “process” after so many terrible seasons. Kudos to Reiter for digging into the human side of the analytics because they were so key to the chemistry that made the Astros clubhouse so special. It was way beyond the totally quantifiable metrics that have been measured since the dawn of the Moneyball era. This is a Cinderella story that was no fluke, but one that seems sustainable with a commitment to the “process”. For any Astros fan (or avid baseball fan for that matter), this is a must read in order truly understand how the Astros captured the championship over three of baseball’s most icon franchises. Well done, Ben Reiter. Paul Frazier, Houston, Texas