Josh's Reviews > The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball

Baseball has had a long time to build up a substantial encyclopedia of conventional wisdom about strategy and player analysis: when to bunt, for example, or what to make of a player on a hot streak, or how to set a lineup. Sit through any broadcast for a (usually overbearing) sample of it. But most of this stuff is just anecdotal. Managers or influential writers in the past felt like they'd gained some insight, and it stuck. But the brain plays tricks on your perceptions. Maybe you saw a player only once, and he made a great play. So is he awesome or did you catch him on a good day? That's why we keep statistics. So you can look back and see what he did over time, even when you weren't watching, to remove your biases. But with enough data, you can also tease out broader trends and actually prove or disprove all that conventional wisdom. That's what The Book is all about. It's a huge deep dive into the data to see what pops out.

I loved it. I learned a ton. Some of the data is a little dry, but not usually, and anyway when you get to feeling that way, skim to that section's conclusion, helpfully set apart in a box to illustrate in plain English what The Book Says.

Absolutely required reading for baseball nerds. Highly recommended for all baseball fans, though.