Percentage Baseball [Paperback]

Earnshaw Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2003

As a result of a lunchtime conversation with Professor Wendell Garner concerning the productiveness of the sacrifice bunt, Earnshaw Cook took on the three-year task of presenting a formal analysis of baseball. His analysis, explained in terms perfectly clear to anyone with college freshman level mathematics, suggests that no one has ever known the true percentages, and if anyone did know them he could manage almost any team into the top ranks of major league baseball.Among other theories that Cook attacks with irrefutable mathematical findings are the benefits of the sacrifice bunt, the use of relief pitchers, the traditional batting order, the hit and run play, and the standardization of baseball itself.As with almost any serious innovation, the first edition of this book met with bitter controversy and criticism from some baseball fans, team managers, and sportswriters. James Gallagher in Sporting News wrote, "I do not understand how the Baltimore mathematicians reached their controversial conclusions, but in my book any generalizations about baseball have to be wrong." Yet in 1964 this "Baltimore mathematician," using his scoring index, K.2 factors, base-scoring equations, etc., predicted that the hometown Baltimore Orioles would finish in fourth place behind, in order, New York, Chicago, and Minnesota -- with perfect accuracy!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Earnshaw Cook knows more about baseball than anyone else in the world... baseball officials hesitate to consider his findings, and for a very good reason: if he is right, they have been playing the game all wrong for years." Frank Deford

"Right now... Earnshaw Cook knows more about baseball than anyone else in the world... baseball officials hesitate to consider his findings, and for a very good reason: if he is right, they have been playing the game all wrong for years." Frank Deford Sports Illustrated

"The most monumental, meticulous, and controversial analysis of baseball in the history of the national game..." Baltimore Evening Sun

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (March 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262532158
• ISBN-13: 978-0262532150
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,419,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sadly unheralded genius, January 10, 2008

By 

Lynn Walker "owlcroft" (Ritzville, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Percentage Baseball (Paperback)

Nowadays folk who talk of baseball analysis call it "sabremetrics" and speak of Bill James as if he invented it all. James was a great force in presenting and advocating ideas, many original. But the grand-daddy of meaningful analysis was Earnshaw Cook, and this book should be the very first thing anyone interested in how the game really works should read. After this, try Cook's next and only other baseball book, Percentage Baseball and the Computer, to see how he reviewed his early thoughts in the light of more powerful data access. Then you can go on to the moderns, starting with James.

Cook was a minor sensation in his time, after Franklin DeFord of Sports Illustrated gave him some publicity. Indeed, Cook was very close to a consulting deal with the then-Kansas City Athletics, but it fell through; too bad, as baseball history might have been very different otherwise. (Ironically, it was the Athletics, only now removed to Oakland and under new ownership and management, that first showed the practical uses of Cook's kind of analytic tools, much later to be called "Moneyball".)

Regrettably, Cook was his own worst enemy, being somewhat abrasive and testy when anyone didn't agree with him. Moreover, his writing style, as he himself readily concedes in the book, is not exactly pellucid, which kept his work from easy access by the everyday fan. But it's by no means particularly difficult material, and is eminently rewarding reading.