Customer Reviews

Baseball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you've ever been involved in a fantasy baseball league and gotten killed by people who seem to have time to do nothing but research obscure baseball players, Baseball Hacks is the book for you. In this book, Joseph Adler takes his love of baseball and combines it with an understanding of databases and data-mining technology to help fantasy-sports fanatics and baseball statistic junkies get their regular fix of the numbers that drive America's Game.

The great thing about this book is that the software used is all open source. Adler includes Access and Excel hacks for those who have Office at home or at work, but the main hacks in the book involve MySQL for database queries and R for graphic statistical analysis. I've used MySQL before, but R was new for me, and I really enjoyed using the program.

Adler also uses Perl. A lot of Perl. But he doesn't expect the reader to be Perl programmers; he shows how the program was written, and what everything does. More importantly, he includes the whole script so that it's a simple matter of copying, and making modifications if needed. He even shows how to modify the scripts.

Downloading a beginning stat database is as easy as 1-2-3. Hack 25 tells you how to spider websites for statistical data - including getting data from MLB.com. Detailed instructions on working with R are included in section 4 (hacks 31-39). Adler even includes formulas for calculating the more arcane statistics (at least to non-sports people like me) such as OPS (on-base plus slugging average) and ISO (isolated power - a measure of how well a player hits the ball).

It's obvious that Baseball Hacks is a book designed for fantasy sports fanatics. I've also pointed the book out to some computer applications teachers and statistics teachers - combining the study of stats and database construction with a subject that so many teenage boys enjoy studying is a great idea. Teaching database structure and analysis is tough, but give them something that they like to do, and they're all over it. This book does exactly that.

I recently purchased this book hoping to be able to apply some of my recent work-related statistics training to baseball stats. It promises step-by-step instructions that 'anyone' can follow. While the instructions are step-by-step, if you have no computer experience outside of Windows (like me) you will almost certainly be frustrated very early on.

My first hiccup was in hack #10, step 4, in which the author jumps to using Unix commands without mentioning that fact. Fortunately, I have a friend familiar with both Unix and MySQL who was able to get me through that particular hack by installing a GUI and importing the files through it. For those who are stumped on that particular step, jump to hack #18, install a GUI, and import the DataBank files as a script using the Query Editor.

I haven't proceeded much farther in the book, largely because I can already see the frustration to come from fumbling my way through Perl. The author gives very rudimentary instructions in the language, followed by more 'easy to use' scripts. The problem is the scripts are based on filenames and information that is more than a year out of date. This will require editing the scripts, something a programming illiterate such as myself will find challenging at best.

So after all these complaints, why did I still rate the book a 3? Because I'm trying to be fair. I've read through the rest of the book without trying to apply anything, and if you are at least familiar with MySQL, Unix, and Perl you'll probably get a lot out of it. The tools presented appear to be very powerful. Also, since I'm familiar with Access, the hacks for using it have been helpful. Unfortunately, the instructions in the book assume a basic level of programming knowledge on the part of the reader, despite the author's contention that they do not. If you can't tell a Unix prompt from a DOS prompt, this book is not the answer to your stat-processing prayers.

While I'm not a diehard baseball fan, there is a certain appeal (or perhaps nostalgia) about "America's Pastime". And there isn't another sport around that takes their statistics as seriously as baseball does. So if you're a computer geek who loves baseball and statistics, what do you do? You get Baseball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics by Joseph Adler. Even I, a non-baseball fanatic, can appreciate the appeal of this book.

Contents: Basics of Baseball; Baseball Games from Past Years; Stats from the Current Season; Visualize Baseball Statistics; Formulas; Sabermetric Thinking; The Bullpen; Where to Learn More Stuff; Abbreviations; Index

The author and his co-contributors have come up with 75 statistical "hacks" all related to baseball. In here, you'll learn how to keep a scoresheet in the traditional fashion as well as how to use a format that is generally used for computer entry and analysis. After showing you where to find downloadable stats and how to get them in a format you can use, they then take you through open source packages like MySQL and R (a statistical software offering) as well as standards like Access and Excel. By loading the data into these formats, you can then slice and dice with the best of them. Some of the hacks show you common statistical generation like batting average or on-base percentage, but there are more esoteric ones you can look into, like Park effect and Fan Save value. If you've always dreamed of combining your love of statistics and baseball into a single passion, this book will push you over the edge. Once you get done here, you should be able to figure out the batting average of Barry Bonds on Tuesday night games against left-handed pitching with two men on base... :)

Seriously, a very well-done book that will appeal to both the baseball fan interested in statistics, as well as the computer geek who loves his (or her!) baseball recordkeeping...

Are you a baseball aficionado or fanatic who is interested in statistics and want to know how to load this data into a database for analysis? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Joseph Adler, has done an outstanding job of writing a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball.

Adler, begins by showing you how to watch and score baseball games, and how to find some simple baseball data on the Web. Then, the author shows you where to get databases of career statistics and introduces some tools that you'll find helpful in working with this data. Next, he shows you how to get data on current baseball games. The author then introduces R and shows you a lot of cool tricks that you can use to analyze baseball data with R. He continues by covering a few of the most popular formulas and a few favorites. Then, the author discusses many baseball problems, some classic and some new. Finally, he comprises a few random topics that didn't fit anywhere else: fantasy baseball, widgets, and other sports.

This most excellent book is an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. More importantly, this book is a cookbook for baseball research.

Winning sports bettors will spend whatever amount of time is necessary to collect data for analysis. The primary focus of this book is collecting data off the internet and analyzing it. It instructs on this task very well - inexperienced programmers will quickly be gathering the information they need.

In addition to providing actual source code (which is short enough to type in a project in just a few minutes), the author draws conclusions from the data he gathered. It's not exactly a treatise on Sabrmetrics, but it does make an otherwise dry topic more interesting.

If you do your own numerical analyses, this is an invaluable text - quite possibly the most useful book since Wong's "Sharp Sports Betting".

This book is uniquely geared toward the database-literate and technology-literate baseball fan. The author shows all kinds of ways to gather free baseball statistics over the Internet, load them into databases, and then to build reports and queries against them. If this sounds even vaguely interesting to you, this book will entertain you for hours - and it might help you with your fantasy baseball picks, too.

The book contains 75 hacks to help you acquire and analyze baseball statistics. O'Reilly publishes a whole series of hacks books and in this context, a hack is basically a solution to a problem. It is an idea or piece of code that can be used to further your understanding and knowledge of baseball. If you follow the daily baseball box scores, review historical statistics, or play fantasy baseball, you will definitely enjoy these hacks.

If you are a new baseball fan that likes the game but is befuddled by all the terms and statistics thrown around, Baseball Hacks can help. Even some long-term baseball fans don't understand things like slugging average, OPS, or DIPS. But Baseball Hacks explains them and how to derive them.

If you are an open source proponent, and a baseball fan, you'll definitely want to take advantage of hack #10, which shows you how to get a MySQL database of player and team statistics. Rather use Microsoft Access? You'll want hack #9.

Really. Baseball Hacks is a great book for the database/baseball nerd in all of us. If you are looking for a way to merge your profession with a hobby, look no further than picking up a copy of Baseball Hacks.

This book's purpose is to show you all the baseball-related stuff that you can do free of charge or close to free. Just as open source projects such as Linux, MySQL, Open Office, and R have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. This book shows you how to take advantage of these data sources to research your favorite players, to win your fantasy league, or just to appreciate the game of baseball even more. Many of the hacks in this book deal with statistics, and others will require that you install a baseball database. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1, Basics of Baseball - some easy hacks showing how to watch and score baseball games, and how to find some simple baseball data on the Web.
Hack 1. Score a Baseball Game
Hack 2. Make a Box Score from a Score Sheet
Hack 3. Keep Score, Project Scoresheet-Style
Hack 4. Follow Pitches During a Game
Hack 5. Follow the Game Online
Hack 6. Add Baseball Searches to Firefox
Hack 7. Find Images of Stadiums

Chapter 2, Baseball Games from Past Years - shows you where to get databases of career statistics and introduces some tools that you'll find helpful in working with this data.
Hack 8. Get and Install MySQL
Hack 9. Get an Access Database of Player and Team Statistics
Hack 10. Get a MySQL Database of Player and Team Statistics
Hack 11. Make Your Own Stats Book
Hack 12. Get Perl
Hack 13. Learn Perl
Hack 14. Get Historical Play-by-Play Data
Hack 15. Make Box Scores or Database Tables from Play-by-Play Data with Retrosheet Tools
Hack 16. Use SQL to Explore Game Data
Hack 17. Use Microsoft Access to Run SQL Queries
Hack 18. Get a GUI for MySQL
Hack 19. Move Data from a Database to Excel
Hack 20. Load Baseball Data into MySQL
Hack 21. Load Retrosheet Game Logs
Hack 22. Make a Historical Play-by-Play Database
Hack 23. Use Regular Expressions to Identify Events

Chapter 3, Stats from the Current Season - how to get data on current baseball games. It's easy to get data on old games because they're already in databases. It's hard to get data on this year's games because you have to scrape it off the Web. This chapter shows you how.
Hack 24. Use Microsoft Excel Web Queries to Get Stats
Hack 25. Spider Baseball Sites for Data
Hack 26. Discover How Live Score Applications Work
Hack 27. Keep Your Stats Database Up-to-Date
Hack 28. Get Recent Play-by-Play Data
Hack 29. Find Data on Hit Locations

Chapter 4, Visualize Baseball Statistics - R is a free data analysis and visualization tool. This chapter introduces R and shows you a lot of cool tricks that you can use to analyze baseball data with R.
Hack 30. Plot Histograms in Excel
Hack 31. Get R and R Packages
Hack 32. Analyze Baseball with R
Hack 33. Access Databases Directly from Excel or R
Hack 34. Load Text Files into R
Hack 35. Compare Teams and Players with Lattices
Hack 36. Compare Teams Using Chernoff Faces
Hack 37. Plot Spray Charts
Hack 38. Chart Team Stats in Real Time
Hack 39. Slice and Dice Teams with Cubes

Chapter 5, Formulas - Formulas have a special place in baseball history. Many baseball writers have spent months or years searching for the perfect formula to measure some aspect of the game. This chapter covers a few of the most popular formulas.
Hack 40. Measure Batting with Batting Average
Hack 41. Measure Batting with On-Base Percentage
Hack 42. Measure Batting with SLG
Hack 43. Measure Batting with OPS
Hack 44. Measure Power with ISO
Hack 45. Measure Batting with Runs Created
Hack 46. Measure Batting with Linear Weights
Hack 47. Measure Pitching with ERA
Hack 48. Measure Pitching with WHIP
Hack 49. Measure Pitching with Linear Weights
Hack 50. Measure Defense with Defensive Efficiency
Hack 51. Measure Pitching with DIPS
Hack 52. Measure Base Running Through EqBR
Hack 53. Measure Fielding with Fielding Percentage
Hack 54. Measure Fielding with Range Factor
Hack 55. Measure Fielding with Linear Weights
Hack 56. Measure Park Effects
Hack 57. Calculate Fan Save Value
Hack 58. Calculate Save Value

Chapter 6, Sabermetric Thinking - discusses many baseball problems, some classic and some new.
Hack 60. Calculate Expected Runs
Hack 61. Calculate an Expected Hits Matrix
Hack 62. Look for Evidence of Platoon Effects
Hack 63. Significant Number of At Bats
Hack 64. Find Clutch Players
Hack 65. Calculate Expected Number of Wins
Hack 66. Measure Hits by Pitch Count
Hack 67. OBP, SLG, and Scoring Runs
Hack 68. Measure Skill Versus Luck
Hack 69. Odds of the Best Team Winning the World Series
Hack 70. Top 10 Bargain Outfielders
Hack 71. Fitting Game Scores to a Strength Model

Chapter 7, The Bullpen - comprises a few random topics that didn't fit anywhere else: fantasy baseball, widgets, and other sports.
Hack 72. Start or Join a Fantasy League
Hack 73. Draft Your Fantasy Team
Hack 74. Make a Scoreboard Widget
Hack 75. Analyze Other Sports

Appendix A, Where to Learn More Stuff
Appendix B, Abbreviations

This book is for the true baseball lover. If you love baseball, love statistics, and want to know of all the free web tools that you can use to analyze baseball data, this is the book for you.

It is not only a how-to, but the author's accessible writing style and wonderful Yankees vs. Red Sox examples give the book a wonderful color and humor.

Baseball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics (Hacks), which comes with download able scripts from the O'Reilly site, shows how to do SABR metrics like the big league analysts.

If, like me, you wish to use only the free, or open source, programs on Linux, you are in for significant work. I could not get R, (the statistical analysis program much like S-Plus,) to work under Ubuntu. I was able to get it to work under the SuSE version of Linux. If exploring Baseball Statistics is like the Lewis and Clark expedition, Adler is your Pocohantuas!

What satisfaction comes from comparing baseball intuition with computerized analysis of the vast databases of baseball statistics! The American economy would be much more efficient if lessons from Baseball Hacks were applied to enterprise management.

This book takes a fairly different approach to baseball statistics. The author goes thru and explains most all of the newer statistics. The real meat of this work is teaching the reader how to build his or her own data bases free of charge by importing information from various websites. My sense is that to really benefit from the data base aspects the reader must have a pretty good acumen for dealing with computer programing. Even though the author provides precise step by step help with codes. Still, I would say most baseball fans who enjoy statistics will benefit from this.