I've written (several thousands words) about Moneyball in the past so I worry I've referenced this upcoming point before. But the idea has been in my mind a lot recently and I thought I would just mention it briefly here.
In one section, Lewis describes an at-bat by Jason Giambi, the team's top slugger. A pitch comes in over the plate for a called strike but, as Lewis describes it, Giambi knew he couldn't do much with it and chose to let it go.
It's an underrated but remarkable portion of the book. For many baseball players, a strike is a pitch to swing at (for many, a BALL is a pitch to swing at!) but for Giambi, perhaps the poster child for the team's innovative strategy, taking a called strike was just another way to confirm the highly unusual approach the team took to the game.
There are probably more 'Jason Giambi' types running around than I realize. These people disrupt the 'carrots and sticks' model of incentives and punishments which inform so many of societies policies, procedures, and norms. Some of these people see 'sticks' as necessary transaction costs for a larger goal rather than consequences for harmful behavior: the hungry person who steals bread, the desperate driver speeding a sick friend to the hospital, the fair-skinned triathlete training long enough to get sunburned. Others notice the dangling 'carrot' but decide the work needed to grab it is not enough to justify the reward: the employee who goes home on time rather than putting in extra hours to earn a bonus, the diner who turns down the free dessert in order to stick to a diet, the philanthropist who doesn't bother to write off donations.
