Lives up to the hype!

An excellent, broad introduction to sabermetrics. It is a bit dated (2007), but nonetheless essential to familiarize yourself with the first generation of sabermetrics.

From this I learned that sabermetrics is as much economics as it is statistics. The concept of Value over replacement is a form of opportunity cost. Park factors are just like the Consumer Price Index. Of the twenty-seven chapters, five contained economic analysis.

I also stand in awe as I see Nate Silver's PECOTA predictions demystified before my eyes.

At the risk of over-generalization and dredging up Moneyball arguments, I think baseball fans generally fall into three categories: stat-heads, traditionalists (for lack of a better term), and those who are somewhere in between. This book aims for those who are somewhere in between.

If you're a stat-head, this book presents nothing new. You'll probably still find it interesting, but you'll be wanting a deeper explanation behind the numbers and probably be frustrated by the simplification of some of the findings and concepts.

If you're a traditionalist, don't bother with this book. My brother is one of those people who defends the NL's lack of a DH by arguing that it's somehow a "purer" and "better" version of the game. I loaned this book to him and he couldn't make it through a single essay before he just shut down and started arguing with me about clutchness not being quantifiable and how numbers can't tell you what's going to happen in any given at bat. I tried to point out that this book contains an essay about clutch hitting and whether its a statistical anomaly or a tangible skill, but he had already given up by the time he saw WAR, BABIP, and the other assorted acronyms of advanced baseball metrics. If you're entrenched in your belief that math nerds with their slide rules and calculators who have never played the game can't possibly explain things that happen on the field, this book can only serve as an irritant of the same magnitude as Joe Morgan is to anyone who knows what OPS stands for.

If you're somewhere in between though, this book is BP's attempt to sway you away from scouting reports and their descriptions of a player's "tools." With decades upon decades of box scores and new statistics being compiled every year, numbers can tell you a whole lot about a baseball player and his true talent level that the human eye might miss. This book sets up loaded questions (e.g. What's the Matter with RBI? or When is One Run Worth More than Two?) and breaks down the statistics and research that explain why the conventional thinking is wrong. If you're just starting to dabble in advanced metrics or want to challenge some basic assumptions about the game, you could do worse than starting here.

If you feel a need to understand baseball strategy, this is a great book. Otherwise, don't bother unless you are extremely interested in reading about some clever statistical techniques.

Interesting concept and format, but nothing especially memorable from this one for me

One of the best presentations of Sabermetric ideas ever written.

A statisticians dream for analyzing baseball. I'm not a big stats guy but reinforced a lot of what I intuitively felt about baseball, both from a front office standpoint and from a managerial standpoint.

I love baseball and this book reminded me so much of Bill James book I would buy every year. The book looks at the numbers and tends to dispel many of the myths even big baseball fans believe because they have been chirped in our ears so much over the years. If you don't like the new stats such as WAR, OBP or SP, you won't like this book. The writers show that these are the most important hitting stats. More so than BA, RBI or HRs.

I enjoyed the essays on managers letting their closers go to waste by only pitching them in the 9th inning. We saw this refuted by the Cubs use of Chapman this year. Maybe a little too much at the end. The use of four starters instead of five. Are SBs important? Should you put your top OPS hitters at the top of the order and bat them in descending order no matter who they are? Was Derek Jeter a good defensive shortstop? Does baseball need a salary cap?

These are conversations you can have with a buddy at the bar and by reading this book you will be prepared. Great read on a cold winter's night anxiously waiting to hear those words "Pitchers and Catchers report".

It takes some good cases, and answers them using at the time the best software they had. The problem is that some of the problems aren't really answered. It was more like "I want to make an argument, give me a subject about a washed up player." For example, the Kevin Mass story. They don't really dive into him, as much as explain the players around him that aged badly. Well yeah, but Mass didn't just fade, he burned like a star for 3 months, and then exploded into nothingness. They don't analyse it as much as use it as a pace to explain how players who do 1 or 2 things well, don't age well when that skill fades.

It's interesting for the Sabremetrics crowd, not much in there besides that.

One of the essential books for thinking baseball fans, Baseball Between the Numbers is a compendium of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays on multiple aspects of baseball's "conventional wisdom." The team at Baseball Prospectus tackles everything from the economics of a new stadium to the relative value of 100 RBI, the most effective ways to use a closer, four- vs five-man pitching rotations, and everything in between.

The opinions are all backed up with solid numbers, and the authors are very careful to put their findings in perspective. The limitations of statistical methods to some of the more esoteric aspects of the game are discussed, but the conclusions they reach are very interesting, and very challenging to baseball's status quo.

I definitely recommend the book to anyone who has ever wondered whether platooning is really a good idea, or what might have happened if the manager had let his hitter swing away instead of try for the sac bunt.

Some really interesting stuff in here, but its length isn't warranted. If you're a true fan of statistics, you can totally geek out on this one.

This book has a lot of statistics, but it's an interesting read.