The Extra 2%: A Review

There are a lot of sports books out there, so a good one needs to have something that makes it truly unique.  Especially within the increasingly overcrowded field of what I call "sports business books" (i.e., Moneyball), there's definitely a common formula that often produces repetitive, uninspired work.  In contrast, Jonah Keri's The Extra 2% is a near-perfect read for anyone who, like myself, has ever dreamed of running either the business or baseball side of an MLB club.

While Keri's work isn't exactly a literary masterpiece (it's about 250 pages long but you can blow through it in a few hours, and it's filled with language that puts it closer to The Giving Tree than The Great Gatsby), it is an excellent combination of factual data, insider perspective and baseball lore.  The book starts with a brief history of the Tampa Bay MLB franchise (to set the tone), walks the reader through the club's transformation from American League laughing stock to American League Champions, and outlines the future challenges the team will face as it fights to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox going forward.  Throughout the book, it's clear that Keri has spent a lot of time alongside the Tampa Bay owners, management and players, transforming The Extra 2% from an outsider's research paper to an insider's expose.  

Keri's book is a must-read for anyone who ever dreamed of running a pro sports team.

One of the most complicated aspects of baseball is the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement, which contains hundreds of pages of rules that regulate the amateur draft, arbitration, free agency and compensatory draft picks.  Keri explains all of these structuring elements clearly and briefly in the context of the Tampa Bay Rays' rise to prominence, explaining how the team's Wall Street-trained brass combined their baseball knowledge and business acumen to take advantage of Major League Baseball's complex CBA and topple their large market competitors.  While Keri may be guilty of hand-picking specific examples that illustrate his points, the author successfully creates a bridge between the Rays front office's actions and savvy management theory.

On Monday I start my summer internship at Major League Baseball's Labor Relations department, hopefully taking another step closer to someday running a professional sports franchise.  While even before reading The Extra 2% I knew that the Tampa Bay Rays have emerged as the model team for business- and stat-minded aspiring executives like me, Keri's book neatly highlights the team's strengths, weaknesses and challenges in an easy-to-read, fun 250 pages.  Do yourself a favor and spend some time this summer reading this book.