Ben Lindbergh

In 2015, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, a pair of sportswriters, bloggers and podcast hosts got the owners of an 4-team independent baseball league* to agree to allow them to apply the relatively new ideas about baseball that are generally housed under the broad term, "sabermatrics." Sabermatrics is the philosophy/practice of developing rosters and considering in-game strategy that is based on deep dives into performance stats and probabilities rather than going by old-school, we've always show more done it that way attitudes.

* Independent leagues are the lowest level of professional baseball. The leagues are "independent" because they have no affiliation with major league teams.

The book is, basically, a co-memoir. The two men take turns writing chapters. Together, they describe their progress through the season with their team, the Sonoma Stompers. While they don't get to create the team's entire 22-man roster, they are able to add several players of their own choosing for which they study databases of players who had remained undrafted by major league organizations and whose stats indicate potential success based upon the "new" theories. The writers describe the coming together of the team, their struggles to gain the respect of the players and coaching staff for their roles in the team's performance, their growing understanding of the dynamics of clubhouse culture and the specific problems of players performing at such a low level of organized ball. As the season progresses, the two writers, together, weave together a very engaging story and they don't stint in self-examination, either. There's a lot of learning done.

There is also a very interesting section of the narrative about the coming out of one of their pitchers, Sean Conroy, to become the first openly gay ballplayer in American professional baseball. When Conroy starts on the mound for the team's Pride Night that June, the program for the game, signed by every team member, ends up in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The biggest part of the story, in a way, is Conroy's teammates' easy acceptance of his sexuality.

Lindbergh and Miller are both quite good writers, so the book flows very nicely and remains interesting throughout. It's a study of baseball, certainly, and as such is more or less of interest to baseball fans only. But this is also an interesting and acute study of human nature.

A personal note that the town of Sonoma is, you'll not be surprised to learn, in Sonoma County, California, just a touch south of where I live in Mendocino County. Yet I'd never even heard of the team, or the league, until I happened to notice an article online about their having fielded the first women players in organized baseball. (They did that the next year, after Miller and Lindbergh had ended their active participation in the organization.) That led me to the team's website, and to their "products" page, which features this book. I was looking forward to driving down to take in some games this summer. Oh, well.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book, though for baseball fans only. show less

A pair of stats geeks with a podcast are given the opportunity to run a baseball team to see if they can test the concepts of sabermetrics - the empirical analysis of baseball - in a real world setting. The team they get to try this on is the 2015 Sonoma Stompers who play in the low level independent league, the Pacific Association. They face challenges of having a manager and players go along with their unorthodox suggestions for playing baseball, as well finding talented players to sign to show more the team, since the Pacific Association doesn't attract the best talent. To surprise of many, the Stompers do very well, dominiating the league in the first half. The authors are honest enough to admit that it wasn't always their ideas that contributed to the overall success. But sucess has its downside as it leads to many of the Stompers' best players getting signed to contracts on teams in better leagues, leaving the Stompers weakened for the second half and postseason. Nevertheless, I did find myself drawn into their account and caring very deeply about how the Stompers would do that season. The book is an interesting case study of putting sabermetrics into action and the real life challenges it may face, as well as just being an interesting baseball story. show less

Library Thing Early Reviewer copy.

The older I get, the better I am at finding books I like to read. So I can scan a review and go 'yeah' or 'naw' in a few lines. I knew I was going to like this book. It is even better than I had hoped.

Ben and Sam are baseball writers, both Editors-in-Chief (like Attorneys General) of Baseball Prospectus - Sam current, Ben emeritus, my go-to site for daily baseball browsing.

Through an unlikely series of events, they were able to 'take-over' an unaffiliated show more minor league team last summer, given mostly free-reign over decisions by the team's GM and owner.

The authors showed up to spring training armed only with spreadsheets and baseball geek connections, and had to figure out how to make it all work over an 80 game season. They mostly succeed, with a few (foreseeable) difficulties integrating the data into the various humans affected.

BenandSam (run-on intentional) are also podcast hosts for the (mostly) daily Baseball Prospectus podcast. I hope they eventually - maybe next off-season - go into a lengthy, chapter-by-chapter out-take - because I have some questions. One is did they change names, because some of the portrayals are less than flattering. They may have burnt some ships.

Like life, the events last summer didn't all work out as planned. At best, the existential gale quieted for a few innings here and there. But that is more than enough reward for the reader. This book is like your favorite sandwich at your favorite sandwich shop - you look forward to it, despite knowing what to expect, and devour it down every time, pickles and all. Five stars. show less

I expected page after page of strange and innovative stratagems, with layers of rationalizations and displays of brilliance. I expected PitchFx in the minors, 5 man infields, long relief closers, castoffs identified through spreadsheet manipulations. All that’s there. But, that’s not the book. While the authors initially set off on an exciting adventure of experimentation, they soon became a couple of guys in an uncomfortable position, slow playing innovation because of the barriers they show more encounter that I should have seen coming. It’s the Goonies. They find a map, get wrapped up in the adventure, and realize it’s serious. It’s a story of baseball, but it’s more a story of people interacting with people, struggling to get by, somehow winding up in the same tale, temporarily connecting, only to diverge along a new path a few months later. It’s an interesting read, but it’s not the story I expected to read. It’s the story I should have expected to read. show less