The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball (Paperback)

by Tom M. Tango (Author), Mitchel Lichtman (Author), Andrew Dolphin (Author), Pete Palmer (Foreword)
Key Phrases: pitcher performance, defensive indifference, wild pitch, The Book Says, Barry Bonds, Carlos Delgado (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"I can heartily recommend . . . The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, by a trio of talented sabermatricians." -- Rob Neyer

Product Description
Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, The Book continues where the legendary Bill James's Baseball Abstracts and Palmer and Thorn's The Hidden Game of Baseball left off more than twenty years ago. Continuing in the grand tradition of sabermetrics, the authors provide a revolutionary way to think about baseball with principles that can be applied at every level, from high school to the major leagues.

Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin cover topics such as batting and pitching matchups, platooning, the benefits and risks of intentional walks and sacrifices, the legitimacy of alleged "clutch" hitters, and many of baseball's other theories on hitting, fielding, pitching, and even baserunning. They analyze when a strategy is a good idea and when it's a bad idea, and how to more closely watch the "inside" game of baseball.

Whenever you hear an announcer talk about the "unwritten rule" or say that so-and-so is going "by the book" in bringing in a situational substitute, The Book reviews the facts and determines what the real case is. If you want to know what the folks in baseball should be doing, find out in The Book.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 386 pages
• Publisher: Potomac Books Inc. (March 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597971294
• ISBN-13: 978-1597971294
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,393 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book of its kind - by far!, June 23, 2007

By	King Yao - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Other sabermetric books have been written in the last few years, The Book is the best one by far. It is chock full of information, results from research and answers a lot of interesting baseball questions. The three authors, Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin have academic backgrounds and work for major league teams as employees or consultants. They use statistical methods to extract and comprehend information from a massive database of baseball games.

For the layman, there may be too much math throughout the book. However, they do a fantastic job of summarizing each idea in plain English at the end of each section. For example, in chapter 2 on hot and cold streaks, after presenting data, explaining their process and interpreting results, they summarize the section with "Knowing that a hitter has been in or is in the midset of a hot or cold streak has little predictive value. Always assume that a player will hit at his projected norm (adjusted for the park, weather, and pitcher he is facing), regardless of how he has performed in the very recent past. A player's recent history may be used as a tiebreaker."

Managers, players, fans and the media often put too much emphasis on results from small samples sizes. The authors warn against making this mistake. "One of the pervasive themes of this book is the danger of inferring too much from too little by underestimating the influence of randomness". For example, they summarize a section on pitcher-batter matchups with: "Knowing a player will face a particular opponent, and given the choice between that player's 1,500 PA (plate appearances) over the past three years against the rest of the league or twenty-five PA against that particular opponent, look at the 1,500 PA. "

They aren't afraid to point out when general baseball wisdom is correct. On starting pitchers, they write, "pitchers perform best with five days of rest, and worst with three days of rest. To manage our entire starting rotation effectively, four days of rest seems to be the optimal point. The current MLB pattern of scheduling the starting rotation works."

This book is at the top of my recommendation list for thinking baseball fans. I'm a bit surprised that I'm the first reviewer of this book on Amazon, since it has been out for three months. The sales ranking (currently #47,000 as I write this review) is disappointing for such an incredible book. The Book deserves to be at the top of the baseball best seller's list.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Single Most Important Sabermetrics Book?, November 1, 2006

By	Eric M. Van (Watertown, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: THE BOOK - Playing The Percentages In Baseball (Paperback)

Take it from a professional sabermetrician: this might be the best and most important single volume in our field. It's a splendid complement to Baseball Between the Numbers, addressing many of the same questions but in many cases digging deeper. The authors have impeccable reputations in the online sabermetrics community. While they can't match Bill James for wit or BP for snarkiness, the writing is clear and solid.

I don't think that any of the findings here (some of which are truly eye-opening) will end up as the very last word on the subject: but more often than not they are the latest word. And that makes the book an essential purchase for anyone serious about understanding the game of baseball.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Authors Illuminate the Guts of Baseball , December 4, 2007

By	Jeffrey Angus "Commander Scott" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the single most important math-centered analysis of baseball since The Hidden Game of Baseball came out over 20 years ago. I unreservedly recommend it for those already experienced with statistical analysis of baseball (the authors are much better at insight and explaining to the initiated than they are the Dick & Jane bits).

They attack a sequence of important subjects, mostly around game-tactics and, by consequence, roster-construction with hard data. And they are aware of an important bit of knowledge: (a) that not everything is measurable, and (b) that some aspects of the not measurable are important.

One star short of maximum because it's not a page-turner for most readers; the writing is more than adequate, but not energizing, so it's a book most will pick up, read 15 pages, put down to digest.

I'm very glad I read it. This is a keeper even for a limited-shelf-space baseball reader; I'm squeezing it in right next to "Hidden Game".