Not for baseball beginners. This book is basically an introductory course into advanced baseball statistics, or Sabremetrics. Anyone who has read Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis knows about the new wave of measuring players and the game itself by advanced statistics. This book is split into, strangely numbered, chapters that explain why classic statistics like ERA, W-L record, and RBIs are ridiculously bad at showing/measuring performance. It also introduces a bevy of "new" statistics that are sure to become prevalent in broadcasters jargon soon. This book assumes a certain level of baseball knowledge and throws around names and terms that most baseball fans would understand or at least recognize. It doesn't go so far into the math to scare off most baseball fans, but not quite far enough in some instances for me. Although my eyes did glaze over a few times.
A book for the true baseball geek.

echoed the arguments i read for years on baseball prospectus, so not exactly mind-blowing, but still quite well done. if you're not family with sabermetrics and like baseball, this book is well worth your time. some of it is slightly outdated but i actually enjoyed the nostalgia tour.

Good overview of current sabrmetric approaches.

This is a great look at baseball from a purely statistical point of view. Chapters taking a critical look at conventional wisdom on everything from how to make a batting order to the benefits of bunting will challenge the perceptions of many a traditionalist, but will be of interest to any true fan. Although some of the conclusions are more easily digested than others, its hard to argue against the statistical evidence. As always these guys have REALLY done their homework.

All of this makes a fine read for the open-minded and serious baseball fan although the heavy doses of statistical analysis can be tedious for those who aren't particularly mathcentric and the writing features less of the smart-aleck humor that marks the BP baseball yearbooks.

Great book for baseball fans who want to understand the game beyond the traditional old-school stats. Chapters on clutch hitting, the RBI, stolen bases, and what a pitcher truly controls were fantastic. Unfortunately, the book lost just a bit of steam in the middle when it discussed topics that left the baseball diamond like player values. That article in particular seemed to use an obviously insufficient body of evidence to surmise whether players earn their salaries.

This book may be best suited to reading a couple of chapters at a time with something else in between, but with the new baseball season getting fired up, I couldn't help but read it straight through.

Excellent work that makes very clear arguments against some conventional wisdom in baseball, a sport that has long been a battlefield between 'baseball' guys and 'stats' guys where the latter focus on numbers and the former largely eschew them.

Probably not the first book you should read on baseball unless you are very familiar with the sport and common stats in it. If you are, on the other hand, this is a must read.

Really good book. Loved the analytical look into different theories and widely-held views. Would've given it 5 stars but some parts get overly analytical and make logic leaps when it's too much of a stretch. But overall, I really liked it and would highly recommend it.

The real problem with this book is time. Not that the examples are old, but that the controversial thoughts are all conventional among a certain "smart set" who would be most interested in reading this book.

I mean, to pick on the most egregious examples, how interested could you possibly be in essays titled "Are Teams Letting Closers Go to Waste?" "Did Derek Jeter Deserve the Gold Glove?" "Is Alex Rodriguez Ovepaid?"

Yes. No. No.

The problem is that there are a lot of fans -- especially in 2006 and 2007 for whom this was revolutionary stuff. And even more the problem, if they want to explain more than they already do, folks like me who want to know more will still have trouble following. There's a math gap in a lot of scholarly and near-scholarly literature that is tough.

Anyway, they're all good. It's just become more of a "Baseball Between the Numbers: These Are Some Things that You Mostly Know."

In the introduction to this book, either Jonah Keri or Nate Silver states that the book is not about the numbers, it is about the meaning of the numbers and that there is not a lot of math involved. Don't believe them. There is a lot of math. I'm a huge baseball fan as well as a fan of and believer in sabermetrics, so this is of interest to me. Even so, I found it to be a lot of math.

This book came out in 2005, so the ideas espoused herein were pretty breakthrough at the time. Nowadays the ideas have either been accepted or further investigated and perhaps morphed into more complex ideas (not that these ideas aren't complex). If you are a fan of sabermetrics some of this may not seem very groundbreaking to you although it certainly was at the time.

All in all, it is a good look at the beginning of the sabermetric revolution and how the ideas that we know today to be true started. Just beware of the math.

I found it very interesting even though I hate baseball. I feel like they went easy on Bonds though. But of course, anything short of poisoning him and burying the body in OJ Simpson's old lawn in Brentwood (the one by the guesthouse that Kato Kaelin was staying in) is too easy for Bonds. Really glad he got no rings. No rings! Ramiro Mendoza, with a staggering WAR of 10.3, got 4 rings. Barry Bonds ain't got nothing except a huge head. Also CajoleJuice made me read this book.

A very interesting look into the stats that actually show a players value. It is an enjoyable read as there is not much time spent on statistics, but rather baseball talk about theories, history, and how they decided to use certain statistics based on what they believed is wrong with the standard statistics. Great book for anyone that has love for the game.

Bill James is great because he is funny, thought-provoking and understands when stats are venturing into the absurd. This book is none of the above. A lot of the essays also cover old ground for statheads like me.