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31 Works 1,321 Membros 10 Críticas

About the Author

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Séries

Obras por Baseball Prospectus

Baseball Prospectus 2011 (2011) 43 exemplares
Baseball Prospectus 2010 (2010) 41 exemplares
Baseball Prospectus 2012 (2012) 34 exemplares
Baseball Prospectus 2001 (2001) 34 exemplares
Baseball Prospectus 2015 (2015) 32 exemplares
Baseball Prospectus 2014 (2014) 27 exemplares
Baseball Prospectus 2013 (2013) 25 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
n/a

Membros

Críticas

Seriously every baseball fan needs to go out and buy these books the day they come out every year.
 
Assinalado
beearedee | Feb 14, 2015 |
Much better-written than Baseball Between the Numbers--I would never call this one dreary as I would the earlier book. But still not as good as it really ought to be given the compelling stories here. The Baseball Prospectus folks seem to assume you've read and know well the previous literature (particularly Bill James) on many of these pennant race stories (for instance, events and people that this book doesn't describe are obliquely referred to as if they had been). The Prospectus folks have insights, but most of them don't have the gift of storytelling. When there is a single framework to hang all their insights on (like the Red Sox run to the World Series in Mind Game) this inability doesn't much matter--the one story tells itself through a process of agglomeration and the contributions of the couple of writers who *are* gifted storytellers.

When, as here, there are literally dozens of disparate stories to tell, this failing begins to tell.
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Assinalado
ehines | 2 outras críticas | Aug 18, 2013 |
This is a big, sprawling, two-volume book which offers a "best-of" selection from the Baseball Prospectus website. The work is generally of very high quality, and is well-organized, but the website origins of the essays occasionally cause some orientation issues. Moreover, the selection was deliberately biased toward more recent writings, apparently because the editors believe the context has rendered much of the older analysis obsolete--a belief I share, by the way.

The best stuff is classic. BP published Voros McCracken's "How Much Control Do Hurlers Have?" early in 2001, which is 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. Besides the current staff, Joe Sheehan, Doug Pappas, Nate Silver, Gary Huckabee, Jonah Keri, and Dayn Perry are all represented; Derek Zumsteg, sad to report, is not.

The first volume's largely about the game itself, often (but hardly exclusively) from a sabermetric perspective; the second volume could be said to be about the business side of the sport. Both are worth reading; both are often fun. A good book.





This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal.
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Assinalado
joeldinda | Apr 28, 2012 |
Knocked this book down a half-star on re-reading. It's a valuable book about baseball analysis, but a bit of a challenge to read. If this were a college text, it would be a 300 level course--you need some background in modern baseball statistics, but it doesn't venture far into advanced topics.

The BP crew shows the most direct Bill James influence of everyone doing baseball analysis in public, in that much of their work is built directly on James' work. They use different, and often more sophisticated, measures than was/is James' practice, but it's always pretty obvious that their work began with Bill. This is neither a strength nor a weakness; it's just the way they work. (One does wonder, though, why there's no similar congregation of writers influenced by Pete Palmer.)

The book is built around 27 questions (outs), organized into 9 chapters (innings)--questions like "Why are pitchers so unpredictable?" and "Is there such a thing as a quadruple-A player?" The 28th (extra innings) chapter is, unsurprisingly, about scouts and stats. The chapters usually have a single author, though there's some obvious cross-fertilization and two have co-authors. Each chapter explores the title question, and often related subjects, in some detail, testing hypotheses and discussing the results. The precise tools they've used are not usually directly displayed, but the authors show enough data that you can do a parallel analysis if you're so inclined. (Some of the tools are fully described in the Glossary or the notes, and it isn't hard to find the details on the web.) The results are occasionally surprising (ignore the subtitle, folks; it's a marketing ploy), but the explanation's usually convincing.

The book has endnotes which are tied to the text, but no pointers within the text to those notes. They're quite good, if you think to look at them.

Unfortunately, the book's pretty dull. Only Nate Silver writes clearly, though I rather like James Click's chapters. At the other extreme, Neil deMause says some valuable things about baseball economics, but I generally find him unreadable.

This review has also been published on a dabbler's journal.
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Assinalado
joeldinda | 4 outras críticas | Oct 6, 2011 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
31
Membros
1,321
Popularidade
#19,459
Avaliação
3.9
Críticas
10
ISBN
49

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