Keith Law

This isn't just a useful book for baseball or sports analytics. Law's approach to making sense of data in the applied field of baseball points out the many flaws and pitfalls of any analytical pursuit. Cases of "managing to the stat" or simply relying on counting stats to the exclusion of useful context are profoundly atavistic, but Law keeps pointing out how these lay approaches persevere and thrive despite more coherent methods.

I generally don't get much out of sports analytics books--they show more tend to be introductory primers to many of the concepts analytics nerds are already deeply familiar with. Where Smart Baseball excels is that Law does more just than show the advantage of a contextual number over a mere counting stat. Instead, he spends a great deal of a time exploring how the fallacies that went into creating myths like the relevancy of a Save or Pitcher Win were inculcated into fan and even subject matter expert's understanding of the game. It's this constant refrain about the emergence of error in commonsense stats that makes the book an extremely useful polemic against the use of shallow approaches to big data and broader analytics. show less

Of course I thought this book was fantastic. If you always wondered about the statistics behind baseball, this is an excellent, easy to follow primer. Law first explains the statistics that have been used since the early days of baseball and basically shows one by one why they suck. Then, he addresses the new statistics we use today and why they are at least better and actually tell us something. Finally, the last third of the book addresses the MOUNTAINS of data that is being provided by show more StatCast (which apparently tracks every single movement on the field) and how interestingly, in some ways the analytical approach that used to be a competitive advantage has now been adopted by every team, and it's up to the individual teams to dig deep to find better ways to use the masses of data. It used to be you could be a kid with a spreadsheet to be part of a baseball analytics team; now you need a PhD.

Great read for lovers of the game. show less

I am curious about the perceived audience for this book - Law is merciless in his dead-horse beating of batting average and fielding percentage that ordinary fans will be put off, and the converted can only wince. He hits his stride in the last chapters, describing the current state of the game and what might be coming our way in the near future. Worth the read.

Fascinating, eye-opening, infuriating book on baseball statistics. This book is Moneyball on steroids, and while it does take some of the rough edges off of sabermetrics in the end it really doesn't make the more esoteric of them more palatable. Maybe I'm just too old school (or just too old), and while some of the new stats discussed are useful indeed, some are just BS, as is most of the discussion in the book on the HOF voting and player career evaluation solely on statistics. Still, a show more useful read. show less