The Extra 2%

How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First

De: Jonah Keri

Narrado por: Lloyd James

What happens when three financial-industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing Major League franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens - the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history.

In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team's Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. By quantifying the game's intangibles, they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay an American League pennant. This is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.

©2011 Jonah Keri (P)2011 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Jonah Keri has given us a fascinating look at how the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays became winners. The Extra 2% is a captivating book if you love baseball, but it's an even more captivating book if you love success." (Joe Posnanski, senior writer, Sports Illustrated)

"The Tampa Bay Rays - with their ma-and-pa-sized budget - have gone head to head with baseball's two superpowers, the Yankees and the Red Sox. In the superb The Extra 2%, Jonah Keri explains how and why in a way that will remind readers of Michael Lewis's Moneyball." (Buster Olney, senior writer, ESPN The Magazine)

"All baseball fans ever ask for is hope: hope not only for a season out of their dreams, but also for leaders smart enough and imaginative enough to figure out how to make those dreams reality. In The Extra 2%, Jonah Keri not only presents this blueprint followed to perfection but does so with a brilliant page-turner of a book that will satisfy fans of both baseball and first-rate writing." (Mike Vaccaro, columnist, The New York Post)

Great nuggets here; but you gotta like the Rays

Obviously this book is compared to Moneyball, and rightfully so. But Moneyball was really about Billy Beane and the emergence of advanced statistical analysis in mainstream baseball circles. This book isn't about any one personality or any global baseball change. Its about the changes the Rays went through in the mid 2000s, from all angles: ownership, front office, players, manager, ballpark.

If you find the Rays interesting and you wonder "where the hell did these guys come from?" when you look at their crazy season as they sit a few games back in the AL East in early September 2012, then you'll think this is a valuable read. I find myself sharing "tidbits" with fellow baseball fans constantly.

The whole thing about the "extra 2%" and "Wall Street Strategies" is completely irrelevant and unexplored. I have no idea why that stuff is on the book jacket. It should be called: "Tampa Bay Rays - The Exorcism that Took them Worst to First".

Rays Season Ticket Holder

As a Rays season ticket holder, I found this book entertaining and very enlightening. There was lots of info in here I'd never heard about, especially about past and present ownership. Who would have guessed that the new ownership used Disney to train their stadium workers? I've often questioned Maddon's decisions but the book has enlightened me on some of the decisions I thought were really strange in the past. Now I have a better understanding of why he makes the choices.

The one thing I really didn't like about the book was the fact the narrator/reader didn't do his homework on the pronunciations of players names ie. Jim Thome which ends with a long E sound he kept ending it with a long A sound. That's only one example of many.

If you like baseball, this is a good read. It's definitely a good follow up to the book Moneyball. But this book deals more with the AL East including the Yankees and Boston which the Rays are continually compared to. Enjoy!

Decent history of the Ray's.

Generally liked the book, it was more of a history than a strategy book. Most baseball fans will enjoy it. Hard to listen to the narrator mis-pronounce multiple player names.

A poor man's Moneyball

Keri is very knowledgeable about baseball, but has dumbed down the subject a bit too much. He also apparently did not have nearly the access that Billy Beane had given Michael Lewis, and so relies too much upon telling rather than showing or discussions from the relevant characters.

The title is a bit misleading, as it feels like the story he spins is 60% "Tampa Bay can never compete because of baseball's revenue gaps" or "Tampa Bay was a horribly run franchise for years", and only 40% (or less) on how the Rays manage to compete with the Evil Empire and the Sox anyway. He hints at issues between the Red Sox ownership and the Tampa ownership, but, with no access to any of the parties involved, he leaves it unexplored.

Unfortunately for Keri, I think any book of this sort will be compared to Moneyball, and the writer to Lewis. While Keri, undoubtedly, knows more about baseball than Lewis, myself, or 99.9% of all Americans, you wouldn't know it from this book. And Keri, while a better writer than I could ever hope to be (check him out on Grantland), may be better suited to essays and articles. He repeats points, arguments and jokes (3 times referring to different sums of money as "rounding errors" for the Yankees and Red Sox), and leaves the most interesting parts of the Tampa story relatively unexplored.

As for Lloyd James, pleasant voice, okay pacing, but either he knows next to nothing about the subject matter, or he mailed it in.

Interesting book, lousy narrator

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Great for baseball fans who enjoy behind-the-scenes and front-office narratives.

Would you be willing to try another one of Lloyd James’s performances?

No.

Any additional comments?

This book really needed a narrator who is at least a little familiar with baseball. Mispronounced names are jarring -- Tom GlaVINE, Cory Little (Lidle) a handful of others. Unforgivable is One to zero (game scores), Nine to six (a pitcher's 9-6 won-loss record) and three to two (a 3-2 pitch count). Not isolated instances, but constants throughout.