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Loading... Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseballby Keith Law
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 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 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. 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 useful read. 'Smart Baseball', by ESPN's Keith Law, is off the charts great if you're a baseball fan and interested in the 'new' stats that are changing, and helping us understand, the game. Law is an ex-scout/front-office guy who is articulate, knowledgeable, and opinionated, and you don't need much more than that. I consider myself highly educated in all things baseball, but I learned a ton from this book. Highly, highly recommended. This an excellent book for those who either haven't followed the last twenty years of baseball analysis or are still holding on to RBI as their favorite stat. Really does a nice job explaining advances in player evaluation and projection without making you slog through a lot of spreadsheets and tables. Although there are some tables. Nothing new in here for me personally, but I like Keith so I wanted to read it! no reviews | add a review
Awards
"For decades, statistics such as batting average, saves recorded, and pitching won-lost records have been used to measure individual players' and teams' potential and success. But in the past fifteen years, a revolutionary new standard of measurement-- sabermetrics-- has been embraced by front offices in Major League Baseball and among fantasy baseball enthusiasts. But while sabermetrics is recognized as being smarter and more accurate, traditionalists, including journalists, fans, and managers, stubbornly believe that the 'old' way-- a combination of outdated numbers and "gut" instinct-- is still the best way. Baseball, they argue, should be run by people, not by numbers. In this informative and provocative book, the ESPN analyst and senior baseball writer demolishes a century's worth of accepted wisdom, making the definitive case against the long-established view. Armed with concrete examples from different eras of baseball history, logic, a little math, and lively commentary, he shows how the allegiance to these numbers-- dating back to the beginning of the professional game-- is firmly rooted not in accuracy or success, but in baseball's irrational adherence to tradition. While Law gores sacred cows, from clutch performers to RBIs to the infamous save rule, he also demystifies sabermetrics, explaining what these "new" numbers really are and why they're vital. He also considers the game's future, examining how teams are using Data-- from PhDs to sophisticated statistical databases-- to build future rosters; changes that will transform baseball and all of professional sports."-- No library descriptions found. |
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Great read for lovers of the game. ( )