Monthly Archives: October 2012

Percentage Baseball by Earnshaw Cook: a review

So why read the book? I can think of two reasons. You might want to mine the book for its equations; people have certainly done that, and found value. Or, like me, you might just want to read everything sabermetric. Unless you fall into those categories, you really don’t want to go there.

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Baseball Research Journal 1978 edited by Bob Davids: a review

The issue features two excellent sabermetric pieces. Pete Palmer’s essay concerned park effects in the American League, and is as good an introduction to the topic as I’ve ever seen. Pete’s later projects gained some sophistication, but this effort touches nearly all the basic issues. And Irv Matus, who apparently counted pitches for all the Mets’ games in 1976, authored an excellent examination of the impact of pitch counts on pitcher performance. I doubt this was the first time such an effort had been made, but if anyone published such a well-thought-through analysis before Matus I’ve not seen it.

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The Dancing Chain by Frank Berto: a review

This is a useful effort, and worth your time to complete if you want to understand how bicycles came to be what they’ve become. At its best, this book is absolutely delightful.

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