Late one night in 2002, writer Michael Lewis knew he had a winner. Lewis was spending his summer shadowing the Oakland A’s, reporting the story that would later be known as Moneyball. But an even better idea for a sequel popped into his head, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He even had a title picked out: Underdogs.
In Moneyball, Lewis uncovered a radical, data-driven approach the A’s used to build a winning team despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. But that story just scratched the surface. For Underdogs, Lewis imagined following the prospects the A’s drafted that year. He’d track them for a few seasons and examine how the players responded to being guinea pigs in this unusual experiment. That night, Lewis fired off an email to his editor, and soon after, he sold it as a two-book deal.
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