Dolphin Posters: Dolphin Books: The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball
enlarge	Author: Tom M. Tango Publisher: Potomac Books Inc. Category: eBooks This item is no longer available Rating: 10 reviews Format: Kindle Book Media: Kindle Edition Pages: 386 Number Of Items: 1 Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357 Publication Date: March 10, 2007


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Editorial Reviews: Product Description "Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, The Book continues where the legendary Bill James's Baseball Abstracts and Palmer and Thorn's The Hidden Game of Baseball left off more than twenty years ago. Continuing in the grand tradition of sabermetrics, the authors provide a revolutionary way to think about baseball with principles that can be applied at every level, from high school to the major leagues. Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin cover topics such as batting and pitching matchups, platooning, the benefits and risks of intentional walks and sacrifices, the legitimacy of alleged ""clutch"" hitters, and many of baseball's other theories on hitting, fielding, pitching, and even baserunning. They analyze when a strategy is a good idea and when it's a bad idea, and how to more closely watch the ""inside"" game of baseball. Whenever you hear an announcer talk about the ""unwritten rule"" or say that so-and-so is going ""by the book"" in bringing in a situational substitute, The Book reviews the facts and determines what the real case is. If you want to know what the folks in baseball should be doing, find out in The Book."

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 10 1 2 Next » The best book of its kind - by far! June 24, 2007 King Yao 36 out of 39 found this review helpful Other sabermetric books have been written in the last few years, The Book is the best one by far. It is chock full of information, results from research and answers a lot of interesting baseball questions. The three authors, Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin have academic backgrounds and work for major league teams as employees or consultants. They use statistical methods to extract and comprehend information from a massive database of baseball games. For the layman, there may be too much math throughout the book. However, they do a fantastic job of summarizing each idea in plain English at the end of each section. For example, in chapter 2 on hot and cold streaks, after presenting data, explaining their process and interpreting results, they summarize the section with "Knowing that a hitter has been in or is in the midset of a hot or cold streak has little predictive value. Always assume that a player will hit at his projected norm (adjusted for the park, weather, and pitcher he is facing), regardless of how he has performed in the very recent past. A player's recent history may be used as a tiebreaker." Managers, players, fans and the media often put too much emphasis on results from small samples sizes. The authors warn against making this mistake. "One of the pervasive themes of this book is the danger of inferring too much from too little by underestimating the influence of randomness". For example, they summarize a section on pitcher-batter matchups with: "Knowing a player will face a particular opponent, and given the choice between that player's 1,500 PA (plate appearances) over the past three years against the rest of the league or twenty-five PA against that particular opponent, look at the 1,500 PA. " They aren't afraid to point out when general baseball wisdom is correct. On starting pitchers, they write, "pitchers perform best with five days of rest, and worst with three days of rest. To manage our entire starting rotation effectively, four days of rest seems to be the optimal point. The current MLB pattern of scheduling the starting rotation works." This book is at the top of my recommendation list for thinking baseball fans. I'm a bit surprised that I'm the first reviewer of this book on Amazon, since it has been out for three months. The sales ranking (currently #47,000 as I write this review) is disappointing for such an incredible book. The Book deserves to be at the top of the baseball best seller's list. Single Most Important Sabermetrics Book? November 1, 2006 Eric M. Van (Watertown, MA USA) 17 out of 23 found this review helpful Take it from a professional sabermetrician: this might be the best and most important single volume in our field. It's a splendid complement to Baseball Between the Numbers, addressing many of the same questions but in many cases digging deeper. The authors have impeccable reputations in the online sabermetrics community. While they can't match Bill James for wit or BP for snarkiness, the writing is clear and solid. I don't think that any of the findings here (some of which are truly eye-opening) will end up as the very last word on the subject: but more often than not they are the latest word. And that makes the book an essential purchase for anyone serious about understanding the game of baseball. Best math book on baseball ever. October 2, 2008 Elihu D. Feustel (South Bend, IN) 3 out of 3 found this review helpful The authors of "The Book" reveal truths of baseball derived from careful statistical analysis. The clear explanations are such that any person who can understand percentages will gain insight from the book. The conclusions (and data upon which they are based) are truly amazing. I have never read a book on baseball in this league. Every angle of the game is analyzed objectively. While it is presented such that "non-math" people can understand it, there is enough meat to the analysis that substantiate the conclusions without scaring the average reader. My purpose in studying baseball is from a sports betting perspective. The conclusions (such as run equity and win percentages given different situations) make this book a mandatory purchase for anyone who bets on Baseball live, or conducts a very thorough analysis of moneyline prices. There has never been a book on baseball so well written that targets all ranges of sabr-metric fans. This will teach you the subtleties in baseball that add small percentages to winning games and scoring runs. If you are a fantasy baseball player, a lot of this content is invaluable to you as well. fantastic baseball research August 15, 2006 Russell A. Carleton 11 out of 15 found this review helpful A strictly Sabermetric book (the table of contents has a listing of tables and figures... there's 100+ of them in here.) The work is strong, especially the chapter on Game Theory. If you liked Baseball Between the Numbers and are hungry for more, this is a good next step. If you're already into Sabermetrics, get this one. This is a model work. Step up from 'Numbers' November 17, 2006 J. Peterson (Anoka, MN USA) 8 out of 11 found this review helpful I wouldn't call it a complement to "Baseball Between the Numbers"--more like, if 'Numbers' is Algebra I, 'THE BOOK' is Algebra II. Where Numbers scratches the surface, THE BOOK goes much deeper, with a more sophisticated analysis, more evidence and more (yes) numbers. If you're new to sabermetrics, you might want to ease into it with Numbers, but THE BOOK is better. Showing reviews 1-5 of 10 1 2 Next »

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