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

this is an interesting book about optimal strategy in baseball. It's certainly not for everyone, as it requires a non-trivial familiarity with statistics and an extreme interest not just in baseball but in baseball analytics.

But for those with such interests, this book presents interesting research in very readable form, particularly on the high value of platoons (given that pinch-hitters perform much worse than on days when they start), the optimal use of relievers (way more than they're used now, and based on situational leverage rather than inning), and game theory (that bunting, if not "worth it" in a static sense, could incentivize the defense to play sub-optimally close, and improve your hitting performance in the aggregate).

Recommended to baseball statheads, not to others.