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

** spoiler alert ** Perhaps some of you reading this book are former baseball players like me, just love baseball, or are simply interested in the world of baseball statistics and sabermetrics. This book offers a different way of approaching the sport. It is an approach that relies heavily on the statistical analysis of baseball, which has become dominant in the sport, and one that is different from the way a player or a fan approaches the game.

This book was a very tough read, but I appreciated it for what it was. Like I said, it presents a different way of thinking about the game of baseball, but ultimately leads to the same conclusions that someone who is versed in the sport would already know. Most of the book was just proving by numbers that what is already done in pro baseball is the correct approach.

What I did find fascinating, however, was the concept of batting lineup optimization. This chapter showed that there may be areas of the game where managers are not playing to their maximum efficiency. But again, for the most part, I felt that it was a restating of what is already known through statistical jargon. For example, anyone who has played or has any knowledge of baseball understands that left handed hitters perform worse against left handed pitchers. This is shown in the book statistically and is referred to as the “platoon advantage”.

I think this book would be great for anyone who is interested in learning about baseball statistical analysis. It shows interesting concepts like the batting lineup optimization mentioned above among many others that I did not mention. However, just be warned, it is a tough read.