The team essays are, as in the 1987 edition, focused on the teams; most, frankly, are pretty dull. The Twins essay did a fine job of dissecting their success, though, and a followup essay skewered the notion that the Twinkies were unusually dependent on two pitchers. The Oakland chapter is largely devoted to trying to understand LaRussa’s quirks, which turned out to be an ongoing sabermetric theme. The excellent Cards essay triggered a second excellent essay which used Herzog as an excuse to examine the field manager’s job. And the Astros essay is one of the finest analyses of a team’s season anyone’s written.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
May 12th 2012
I originally read Win Shares just after the book was published, then studied it a year or so later when I adapted its framework for a minor league research project. I found that the practical application was really helpful to understanding how the pieces fit together (although, sadly, it didn’t much help my project). This decade-later read benefits from familiarity, now, and from watching other folks apply Bill’s methods. Nonetheless, this is a difficult book.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
May 3rd 2012
The book’s enjoyable if you’ve some background in academic statistics, but it’s likely difficult reading if you’ve not encountered that notation and vocabulary. I worked my way through the discussions, but was rummaging through four-decade-old memories from time to time. It’s certainly an essential book if you’re seriously interested in serious baseball analysis.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
April 28th 2012
The best stuff is classic. BP published Voros McCracken’s “How Much Control Do Hurlers Have?”, likely the most influential sabermetric essay published in this century; it’s here, as are several author’s reactions. Rany Jazayerli’s delightful, twelve-part exploration of the free agent draft is reproduced as written; it’s fun and informative (though this is one of the places where a the book’s web origins really show; a rewrite would surely make things more coherent). Keith Woolner and James Click explore the areas sabermetrics had not, as of their essays, examined; everyone should read these essays for an overview of the discipline’s landscape. There’s a representative selection of Christina Kahrl’s delightful Transaction Analysis columns; I always looked forward to those. Joe Sheehan, Doug Pappas, Nate Silver, Gary Huckabee, Jonah Keri, and Dayn Perry are all represented; Derek Zumsteg, sad to report, is not.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
April 28th 2012
Magical Reality comes to Polish immigrants in early-1950s South Philly. Faith, family, love, and baseball. And a cockroach or twelve.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
April 9th 2012
I like the V1 camera. I like it a lot. It takes excellent photographs, is light weight, and is generally easy to use. It’s reasonably flexible. But there are issues. What follows is largely a discussion of things I wish Nikon had done differently, so there’s some danger you’ll think I dislike the camera. That would be a false impression.
Filed under
Picture Show
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
April 6th 2012
Anyway, the thing which strikes me about Baseball Between the Numbers is that it’s largely grown obsolete in just a half-decade. For almost 20 years, baseball management largely resisted serious statistical analysis. Management largely consisted of former players, and few were inclined to take outside analysis seriously. This was partly willful blindness–”He never played the game”–and partly statistical ignorance. But a generation later, baseball’s management’s (unexpectedly) become more businesslike, and a newer generation of baseball players–and coaches and field managers–includes a sprinkling of folks who grew up reading James, Pete Palmer, or authors influenced by James and Palmer. Some of those players have moved to front office jobs. And while fans still have blind spots, they’re generally more aware that many numbers are influenced by ballpark and batting order, and that there are legitimate reasons to debate baseball’s accepted wisdom.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Life's Stories
Posted on
March 30th 2012
Peter Morris reminds us of a handful of violent–or at least potentially violent–events which involved Major League Baseball during 2011, and uses those events as an opportunity to examine the history of violence in the sport. His discussion of the historical patterns of violence in baseball is generally convincing. He also explores some relationships with American culture, though he doesn’t pursue this very deeply. All in all, this is a good short essay on an unexpected topic.
Filed under
Miscellania
Posted on
March 30th 2012
This is a terrific book. The writing is lucid, the research–though predominantly from secondary sources–is excellent. If you plan to read one book about the ARPA computing effort, this should be that book.
Filed under
Bookworm Alley
History Scrapbook
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
March 30th 2012
Mark Lazarus takes a look at the defensive support received by major league pitchers, as measured by error rates. He’s aware of, and discusses, the weaknesses in this analytical method. Nonetheless, this study turned out to be far more interesting than I expected. The anomalies reported in the data are especially interesting. This topic deserves more study. Not sure that I’ve seen such a work.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
March 30th 2012
