AOW 1/2: Moneyball 2

In this section of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis begins to chronicle the 2002 season of the Oakland Athletics. He describes the different events throughout the year from a day of trades to the end of the season with the playoffs. He shows Billy Beane's thought processes and how he is able to negotiate far-fetched trades and insert himself into a trade and make money to be able to pay a player. He details the history of sabermetrics and how they connect to his players. Throughout the story he shows the progress of the team how they steadily improve from a below .500 team to a 100 win team that put together a record setting 20 game win streak. Throughout the section Lewis uses the appeals to show the development of the Oakland A's new statistical approach to managing a low budget baseball team. He uses logos to show the difference between different players within the team. He uses statistics from different references and shows how they support Billy Beane's logical process and how they are able to justify the radical trades he made earlier in the season. He uses ethos to justify most of the moves that Billy Beane did throughout the season to manage the Oakland A's to over 100 wins and was able to do it the way he wanted to. The usage of ethos shows how Billy Beane is effective in running a team without money. When describing the players and staff he uses pathos to describe their fear and confusion with the entire system and operation. He gathers player's testimonies from that season and they say that Billy would congratulate them for odd feats such as taking more pitches even though they may go 0 for 4 that game and would criticize them even if they go 3 for 3 with 4 RBIs because they did not take pitches. With his usage of the appeals, Lewis effectively shows the radical system that overtook the Oakland A's and how it transformed the team into a winner.