Brew Crew Ball Book Club: The Extra 2% Chapters 7-9 Discussion

Before I add to this, I just want to mention I’ve been pretty upset about Ryan’s situation, and I’ve had trouble getting thoughts together on posting here.

But, I’ve been thinking about Keri’s work throughout the book, and, because I like his writing so much, I get the sense that if I had trouble with a lack of fluidity in this book, it must be tough to write about the Rays.

I can really imagine these as essays, too. I think a great place to have these would be as a weekly feature in a prominent magazine. I think it is also tough to see this and think “what am I not understanding that I need to understand?” Maybe it’s because I’ve got a picture and have formulated ideas about the Rays due to following them a bunch on t.v., blogs, articles etc…

A monthly or bi-weekly magazine feature would be more effective, because I think he’s still a gifted story-teller. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve picked up on what you and Kyle have mentioned about some of these things, too. So there are probably others who have thought about this. There are memorable things in each chapter/essay, but I feel forced to put all of this together, and I can’t! When a family member asked me about it last week, I couldn’t even figure out how to find a main theme. Upon finishing the book, I couldn’t even tell you if the Extra 2% is more a figure of speech (like Maddon’s 9 = 8,) or if I just didn’t get it! Errrgh.

I love to read, and I love to talk about books, but I’m having a tough time!

Rebranding and creative thinking seemed to produce a “feel” of improvement, but it didn’t actually seem to fix anything.

He basically makes the argument that the team would probably be a decent-drawing team if they played in a decent stadium in a reasonable location.

I mean, the concerts seem to be a bit of an anomaly, but I feel like Keri acts like the idea that giving things out to the fans draws a higher attendance was invented by the Rays.

Wilson played 90 games and had a UZR/150 at short under -20. He was -3.4 in about the same number of innings the next time he cracked the bigs in 2009.

But I don’t think anybody saw them falling as far as they did this year.

The marginal value of a win decreases as you get farther away from contention, but it certainly never drops to zero. I’d be curious to see the calculations for the $1.2 million figure.

there’s a pretty significant number of these contradictions/inconsistencies in the book.

As I mentioned in my post, there was the point about losing 10 of 16 and made it a big deal. Then the next page he talks about them going 16-12 (or something similar) on the month.

There was also a point talking about how it was a big deal because they were in a playoff race – and it was early June. I mean, in early June, pretty much everyone is in a playoff race – there’s still a lot of baseball to be played.

The more I read, the more I find these. This with the redundancies I mentioned above are starting to get on my nerves as someone who reads like a copy editor

You read through it expecting there to be a big moment which explains exactly what the “Extra 2%” is or something like Beane’s exploitation of market inefficiencies/on-base percentage usage which ran through Moneyball. Essentially, though, the “Extra 2%” is the accumulation of lots of minute things that make a small, but key, difference. I think this means that the book ends up reading like lots of separate articles each on a different topic and you never really get into sufficient detail on each issue (at least not for someone relatively familiar with lots of the issues). You’re constantly wondering why other teams don’t do what Tampa Bay did and how exactly they come to their decisions.

I should say that despite this I really enjoyed reading the book and Keri writes very well….