Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong Author: Jonah Keri | Language: English | ISBN:
B0010O5MH6 | Format: PDF
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong Description
In the numbers-obsessed sport of baseball, statistics don't merely record what players, managers, and owners have done. Properly understood, they can tell us how the teams we root for could employ better strategies, put more effective players on the field, and win more games. The revolution in baseball statistics that began in the 1970s is a controversial subject that professionals and fans alike argue over without end. Despite this fundamental change in the way we watch and understand the sport, no one has written the book that reveals, across every area of strategy and management, how the best practitioners of statistical analysis in baseball-people like Bill James, Billy Beane, and Theo Epstein-think about numbers and the game. Baseball Between the Numbers is that book. In separate chapters covering every aspect of the game, from hitting, pitching, and fielding to roster construction and the scouting and drafting of players, the experts at Baseball Prospectus examine the subtle, hidden aspects of the game, bring them out into the open, and show us how our favorite teams could win more games. This is a book that every fan, every follower of sports radio, every fantasy player, every coach, and every player, at every level, can learn from and enjoy.
- File Size: 5814 KB
- Print Length: 496 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (March 6, 2006)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0010O5MH6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,866 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Baseball > Statistics
- #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Baseball > Statistics
Probably more than any other sport, baseball makes use of statistics. We see this with every baseball game on TV: not just the basic stats like batting average and home runs, but more detailed information like how well a particular batter does against a particular pitcher. The statistics on TV or in the newspaper, however, only scratch the surface. Baseball Between the Numbers provides a much more in depth look at the numbers behind the game and how to analyze them.
This process involves two parts. First, there is a look at the popular statistics to see how well they really track a player performance and contribution to the team. Batting average, for example, is not a really good indicator of performance; slugging percentage and on-base percentage provide a better reading. There is also a look at certain beliefs in baseball - such as the existence of clutch hitters - and whether they are based in reality or more of a myth.
The second part of this statistical analysis is coming up with new stats to provide more information. There are a lot of these, but the one that seems emphasized the most is VORP, Value over Replacement Player. In simple terms, VORP gives the value of a player compared to a replacement player of minimal major league skills (like a 0.200 batting average). If a player gets 200 hits in a year, he does not really contribute 200 hits to his team; instead, he contributes only the difference between his hit total and that of the replacement player; if this value is 110, then the player contributes 90 hits.
The purpose of all this analysis is two-fold. For one thing, it helps evaluate the potentials of players, so it is useful from a scouting perspective. It is also good for comparing players who played in different time periods.
"Baseball Between the Numbers" contains 29 provocative questions handled with numbers and critical thinking. One of the first topics involves deciding whether Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds is the best player. The first step was to determine how much each was relative to his league, after taking park effects into account. Doing so demonstrates that Ruth was the superior hitter relative to his time.
However, athletes are bigger, better than they used to be - eg. gold-winning time in the men's Olympic 100-meter swimming even fell over 40% between 1896-1996. At the same time technology has improved - baseball bats, gloves, and sports medicine and nutrition. Meanwhile, the U.S. population roughly doubled from Ruth's time til today, and blacks and players from Latin America have also been added to the player pool. (Foreign-born players now make up close to 30% of major league players; in '30 there were about 300,000 people/major league player - now it is close to 900,000.
The authors addressed these problems by tracking and comparing performance of players remaining in a league from one year to the next - generating an index of difficulty change, and also comparing one league to another. Doing so shows Bonds far superior to Ruth (even though he undoubtedly would have benefited from better nutrition and not drinking for his depression, while Bonds has benefited from surgery not available to Ruth). Two more adjustments later (for factors not well explained), it is concluded that Ruth was the better.
Then there is the question of steroids. Bonds' post 2000 performance was compared to that expected based on his stats to that point. Conclusion: Bonds produced 142 more H.R. between 2000 and 2004.
Bottom Line on Ruth vs.
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong Preview
Link
Please Wait...