BG is pleased to introduce a GUEST COLUMNIST... Blez from Athletics Nation. Blez kindly agreed to lend an A's fan's perspective on the book.

If the mainstream media had its way, most people would believe that the book “Moneyball” is a more literate version of the 80s classic Better Off Dead. Billy Beane is John Cusack and Joe Morgan and company are the skiing bullies. Paul DePodesta is Cusack’s younger brother who is building a rocket in his bedroom.

I recently started reading Buzz Bissinger’s book 3 Nights in August and in the Preface, Bissinger says this:

“In this new wave of baseball, managers are less managers than middle managers, functionaries whose strategic options during a game require muzzlement, there only to affect the marching orders coldly calculated and passed down by upper management. It is wrong to say this new breed doesn’t care about baseball. But it’s not wrong to say there is no way they could possibly love it, and so much of baseball is about love. They don’t have a sense of history, which to the thirtysomethings is largely bunk. They don’t have the bus trips or the plane trips. They don’t carry along the tradition because they couldn’t care less about tradition.”

It’s assumptions like this that get an A’s fan such as myself all worked up and throwing three words at you…misunderstood, misinterpreted and mistaken. These three are embodied by the book’s most outspoken critic, Morgan, the ESPN Sunday Night Baseball color commentator, who misunderstood who wrote the book (and once claimed that Billy Beane wrote it), misinterpreted its overall message and is mistaken in the application of the so-called “on-base or station-to-station” baseball outlined in Lewis’ novel.

What many in the baseball world missed is that Moneyball is first and foremost a business book. It shows us the blueprint of how a team or company with a third of the revenue can find creative and innovative new ways to compete with monstrous baseball “corporations” like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. It’s someone outlining how a Mom and Pop Shop can compete against Wal*Mart (not that $50 or $60 million is exactly Mom and Pop).

But what people fail to recognize is that the A’s have adjusted since then and are always trying to stay one step ahead of whatever baseball skill happens to be undervalued at the time. The book points to the A’s offensive philosophy, but it’s more what Billy Beane did this past winter in moving two stud pitchers, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, that shows that in order to actually play a game of Moneyball, one must think ahead in order to wind up ahead. These preemptive moves were made in large part because insanity reined supreme on the open market this past offseason. Starting pitching became hugely overvalued, especially when you look at the insanely ridiculous contracts of Jaret Wright and Kris Benson. So, Beane could see the market moving. He acted to build up the A’s organizational depth while acquiring pitchers who were major league ready or close to major league ready. He also acquired bullpen help in the form of the very valuable, very underrated Kiko Calero.

Ultimately, you’d think Moneyball would be an easy book to interpret. It’s not Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea. It’s straightforward in that the message is simple: find a market opportunity and attempt to exploit it. It doesn’t have to be about OBP or walks or bullpens made of misfit toys. The Twins have their own version of Moneyball. But instead of exploiting the market opportunity known as patience at the plate, the Twins approach it by working the draft and playing small ball.

Ranting Interlude: The point of the A’s offensive philosophy isn’t to go for a walk every time someone comes to bat, like Joe Morgan and many of the A’s critics claim. It’s actually to be patient and wait for the right pitch to hit. If that results in a walk, so be it. The endgame isn’t to try and get a walk. It’s to get a pitch to drive. A good example of this philosophy in action is the Boston Red Sox. It also isn’t to avoid the stolen base or bunt, but to use it in the best-case scenario and to put the A’s in position to win.

Another component of the book is the look at the 2002 draft and the strategy of avoiding high school players in favor of college players. This philosophy has served the A’s well because they currently have one of the deeper teams in baseball due to their penchant for taking college players. Huston Street was drafted in 2004 and he is already contributing to the A’s bullpen. He got his first major league win Sunday. The A’s also drafted Kurt Suzuki, a catcher from Cal State Fullerton who will likely be a part of the A’s roster in the near future. Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton are only a few years removed from the draft in the book. Ultimately, the A’s draft these kids not because they don’t have faith that some high school kids will work out, but they don’t have the luxury of waiting around for them to develop. And high school kids usually take longer to develop.

Lewis will explore this in an upcoming sequel to Moneyball that’s scheduled to publish in 2007. He’s been following the draft class of 2002 for the past three seasons.

Moneyball’s lasting impact is up for debate. But I believe that years from now, people will look at the book as a landmark not necessarily in offensive philosophy, but in how to rethink the conventional, stagnant rules of any business. People are already doing that today.

As for the baseball impact, I do expect the A’s to win a World Series before Beane’s time with the team is up in Oakland. And people will claim they won it for one reason or another, something having nothing to do with Beane. But then again, isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be with underdogs? Billy winning the K-12 race, one ski and all with Steve Schott chasing after him screaming, “I want my two dollars!”

Blez runs AthleticsNation.com and has interviewed both Billy Beane and Michael Lewis. Lewis will also be sitting down to talk with Blez again in the next three or four weeks, so check in for an update on the progress of the follow-up to Moneyball, Underdogs. Billy Beane will also be stopping by AN a few times this season. When Blez isn't writing about the A's, he dotes over a three-month old Baby Blez and dreams of starring in a remake of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

BBC will continue on Friday with a discussion of sabermetrics.