Astroball: A Revolutionary Strategy for Achieving Victory

Kindle Customer: Cracking read with many good insights. Of course, we now know a lot more about why the Astros won but that’s not a knock on a lot of the process

United Kingdom on Feb 22, 2021

Linc: The book was enjoyable (as a baseball fan), but it certainly didn't deliver the 'dingers' I expected.

No insight into the manager's working with the players in keeping a team together, no deep insight into the players' relationships, just continued down the same rabbit hole of sticking to the 'process' of the algorithms. Even then, 'the new way to win it all' wasn't able to identify Mike Trout, and they still relied on the good old fashioned 'gut' instinct (aka as luck).

Reading about the input, the class and humanity of Carlos Beltran was very enjoyable. We need more of that in this World.

The back-stories of the big name players was ok, albeit if you are an Astro's fan you would already know those stories (and if you are an Astro's fan you are buying the book anyway!).

Australia on Aug 06, 2019

Lucas Madill: This book has so many great little stories about the players and managers’ backgrounds, and it almost makes it seem like everyone was the MVP of the World Series to some degree.
It starts a little slow when it reviews he history of the franchise, but once it picks up it is so hard to put down. Highly recommended!

Canada on Jul 11, 2019

Reid McCormick: It was a dream coming true. Being a fan for over three decades, I was finally going to see a World Series game in person. My brother (somehow) scored some tickets and he invited me to come along. We arrived early and entered as soon as the gates opened. It was a surreal experience.

This was Game 2 of the 2017 World Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers easily took game one from the Houston Astros. Game 2 was going to be a great match up. Rich Hill and Justin Verlander were starting.

Going into the top of the ninth, the Dodgers were up by a run. In comes the most dominant closer in baseball at the time, Kenly Jansen. Everything was going smoothly. The Dodgers were 2 outs away from leading the series 2-0.
And then Jansen gave a home run to tie the game. The stadium went silent. In the top of the 10th, the Astros scored two. The stadium wasn’t just silent, it felt like a black hole of noise. In the bottom of the 10th, the Dodgers miraculously tied it up with 2 runs. The Dodger faithful, such as I, were ecstatic. In the top of 11th, the Astros put another 2 runs on the board. My body could not tolerate the chemical imbalance of such sudden highs and lows. Unfortunately,...

United States on Jul 10, 2019

Richie Reynolds: A must read for any sports fan looking to take a peak at the furture of sport

United Kingdom on Jul 03, 2019

Vintage Kerry: Personally, I did not like this book as much as anticipated. Given the supposed meat of an analytics based discovery of a "new way to win it all". It really is not, its a pom pom recount of what went down and frankly does a rather poor job articulating anything new and insightful about the Astro's approach.
More of a revisionist mapping of the past than a tool kit to recreate the Astro's success. Subsequently, a huge amount of the credibility associated with culture and unique Astro's mojo (articulated as foundational to success in the book), was submarined by the GM trading for Osuna.
The author, in his defence of said trade, came off as a shill.
If you are a die hard Astros fan, this is a good book. If you read with a measure of intellectual cynicism, you may find this book under whelms.

Canada on Nov 19, 2018

Gail Cornwall: 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,...

United States on Jul 11, 2018