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Sabermetrics, the search for objective knowledge about baseball through statistical analysis, has taken over the national pastime. The authors argue that this approach began as a useful corrective but has come to harm baseball. The book demonstrates that the so-called moneyball approach, based on sabermetrics, offers only limited guidance for assembling a team, managing games, and evaluating player performance. Equally important, the obsession with statistics and vision of the game as wholly predictable obscure baseball's spectacular improvisational quality. It is the game's unquantifiable and relentless capacity to surprise—the source of wonder so central to its greatest stories and personalities—that informs any real appreciation of baseball.
Preface 1
1 Where Moneyball Went Wrong 7
2 Where Sabermetrics Goes Wrong 34
3 The Third Wave 68
4 Two Cheers for Sabermetrics 92
5 What Makes Baseball 112
6 One Normal Crazy Season 124
7 Miscellany Matters 174
Conclusion 191
Selected Bibliography 197
Index 199
Anonymous
Posted March 19, 2011
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
Sabermetrics, the search for objective knowledge about baseball through statistical analysis, has taken over the national pastime. The authors argue that this approach began as a useful corrective but has come to harm baseball. The book demonstrates that the so-called moneyball approach, based on sabermetrics, offers only limited guidance for assembling a team, managing games, and evaluating player performance. Equally important, the obsession with statistics and vision of the game as wholly predictable obscure ...