Knocked this book down a half-star on re-reading. It's a valuable book about baseball analysis, but a bit of a challenge to read. If this were a college text, it would be a 300 level course--you need some background in modern baseball statistics, but it doesn't venture far into advanced topics.

The BP crew shows the most direct Bill James influence of everyone doing baseball analysis in public, in that much of their work is built directly on James' work. They use different, and often more sophisticated, measures than was/is James' practice, but it's always pretty obvious that their work began with Bill. This is neither a strength nor a weakness; it's just the way they work. (One does wonder, though, why there's no similar congregation of writers influenced by Pete Palmer.)

The book is built around 27 questions (outs), organized into 9 chapters (innings)--questions like "Why are pitchers so unpredictable?" and "Is there such a thing as a quadruple-A player?" The 28th (extra innings) chapter is, unsurprisingly, about scouts and stats. The chapters usually have a single author, though there's some obvious cross-fertilization and two have co-authors. Each chapter explores the title question, and often related subjects, in some detail, testing hypotheses and discussing the results. The precise tools they've used are not usually directly displayed, but the authors show enough data that you can do a parallel analysis if you're so inclined. (Some of the tools are fully described in the Glossary or the notes, and it isn't hard to find the details on the web.) The results are occasionally surprising (ignore the subtitle, folks; it's a marketing ploy), but the explanation's usually convincing.

The book has endnotes which are tied to the text, but no pointers within the text to those notes. They're quite good, if you think to look at them.

Unfortunately, the book's pretty dull. Only Nate Silver writes clearly, though I rather like James Click's chapters. At the other extreme, Neil deMause says some valuable things about baseball economics, but I generally find him unreadable.

This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal. ( )

Many legitimate and some non-obvious observations are painstakingly established here. But, there is a rather significant caveat: This book almost seems designed for the purpose of making you better appreciate Bill James: it's badly written.

Bill James should not just have been a figure to be acknowledged in the preface--his brevity and clarity should have served as a model for the Baseball Prospectus team.

Instead we get interminable lead-ins to simple and already well-known concepts like park factor. Other themes are ironically obscured by the authors "too much is never enough" approach to evidence and graphic depictions thereof.

The Baseball Prospectus team never establishes any kind of rapport with their readers. Where James makes you feel like he's engaging you in a bar-room conversation in baseball Valhalla, Baseball Prospectus makes you feel like a professor reading a rather interesting but unfortunately ham-handed term paper. ( )

Great book for the baseball numbers geek in all of us. What, you mean you're NOT a baseball numbers geek like I am??? ( )

I got stuck on the chapter about Leverage (I'll probably have to go back and read it again), but the rest of the book had some interesting observations...

My favorites:

* Players are better in their 'walk-year' of a contract

* 5 year "rebuilding" plans rarely work

* Branch Rickey's observation: "Luck is the residue of design" ( )

If you ever wanted to scratch the surface of advance statistical study of baseball, this is the first book I'd start with. Not a straight cover to cover book, but rather a grouping of essays about a variety of topics. They range from the humorous but thought provoking "What if Rickey Henderson had Pete Incavilia's legs?" to the argument inducing "Did Derek Jeter deserve the Gold Glove". Some essays can gloss over the eyeballs with the depth of statistical information, but the vast majority keep it interesting enough to rope in the more casual fan. ( )