I heard about Moneyball from the Brad Pitt movie, but I decided to read the book before seeing the movie. The book is excellent - not often are stats nerds portrayed as being ground-breaking and innovative. I'm not surprised that changes in computer power, which provide both data through the internet to massive numbers of increasingly computer sophisticated users would result in new ways to look at baseball, which has always been seen as a statistics-rich sport.
What I was surprised about, was the lack of willingness of "the system" to understand and learn from the innovations. I had always assumed that each team would have a small department (either stand-alone, or attached to business or marketing) which would use statistical information to assist the teams. I didn't necessarily expect each team to employ a Ph.D. in statistics/economics/psychology (though, if a team is looking, give me a call), but I did expect that there would be constant chatter about innovations, even if the ultimate decision would be to rely upon "older" or existing statistics.
I was also surprised at the relative lack of ability to accurately track and rate fielding objectively, and the difficulty in separating the pitching/hitting/error stats (was it a legitimate hit? was it an error on a fielder? was it catchable?). It seems that even post-moneyball, there is still areas of exploration and understanding in baseball, and even moreso in other sports (I can imagine innovations in both football and hockey, just by extrapolating from the baseball-moneyball experience).
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