The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed [Hardcover]

J.C. Bradbury (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 15, 2007

Baseball fans have seen it all. They've seen the stats. They know what is really going on out there on the field, right? Well, maybe.

Now comes The Baseball Economist exposing the shadow game behind all the baseball stories in the news. Find out what is really happening on the field-and off it. Economics professor J.C. Bradbury, one of our most popular baseball bloggers and the authority sports reporters love to quote, delivers eye-opening revelations in this his first book:

Did steroids have nothing to do with the recent home run records? Incredibly, Bradbury's research reveals steroids had little statistical significance.
Which players are ridiculously overvalued? Bradbury lists all major league players by team with each player's value in revenue to the team listed in dollars-including a dishonor role of those players with negative values.
Is the big-city versus small-city competition really lopsided? See why teams like the Marlins and Indians are likely to dominate big city franchises in the coming years.
Is major league baseball a monopoly that can't govern itself? Bradbury sets out what rules the owners really need to play by, and what the players' union should be doing.

Does it help to lobby for balls and strikes? How would Babe Ruth perform in today's game? And who killed all the left handed catchers anyway? The Baseball Economist has lucid powerful insights into all the old and new questions about the great game.

Providing far more than a mere collection of numbers, Bradbury shines the light of his training in economic thinking on baseball exposing the powers of tradeoffs, competition, and incentives. Statistics alone aren't enough anymore. Fans, fantasy buffs, and players-as well as coaches at all levels-can use and enjoy Bradbury's new Sabernomic perspective comprehensively presented here for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Subjecting recent baseball debates to plentiful regression analyses, Kennesaw State economist Bradbury gamely fuses our national pastime and the "dismal science" somewhat in the spirit of Steven Levitt (Freakonomics), Michael Lewis (Moneyball) and Bill James (Baseball Between the Numbers). Like the latter, Bradbury offers a front-office perspective on labor (that's the players), salaries, managerial influence, steroids, market size and the like. Like a scrappy role player, Bradbury's enthusiasm is evident (he's a Braves supporter); he offers a chapter on managers' ability to work the umps ("it appears that most managers don't seem to have any real impact in arguing balls and strikes") and investigates top pitching coach Leo Mazzone's contributions. A blogger at his Web site sabernomics.com (a play on the acronym SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research), Bradbury, while not forging new ground, shines in the closing chapters, in which he convincingly bucks the conventional wisdom that Major League Baseball behaves like a monopoly. While the numbers crunched are more of the Financial Times than the box score kind, the issues the book deals with are those discussed in many a barroom. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Bradbury would be the first guy to tell you that baseball fans are the most statistically minded sports fans out there. And he should know: he is an economics professor and a baseball addict (and a popular blogger, too). Here, he tackles some of the game's most cherished truisms and controversies. Is being left-handed really a disadvantage for a catcher? What role, really, do steroids play in being a home-run king? (You may be surprised at the answer.) How can we effectively evaluate a player's value to his team? Ball fans may be shocked at how relevant economics is to their favorite game, and economists may find an exciting new application for their specialty. Like John Allen Paulos, author of such "popular math" books as A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Bradbury writes with a smooth, accessible style and makes the tricky game of numbers seem both straightforward and exciting. Like Bill James' Abstracts (2003), this volume could become essential reading for baseball fans. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (March 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525949933
• ISBN-13: 978-0525949930
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,012,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Economist J.C. Bradbury is Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Exercise Science and Sport Management at Kennesaw State University in metropolitan Atlanta. From 2004-2010 he operated the baseball economics blog Sabernomics.com. He is the author of two books, The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed (2007) and Hot Stove Economics: Understanding Baseball's Second Season (2010). He has contributed numerous academic articles to the fields of economics and sport science (in journals such as Economic Inquiry, Journal of Sports Economics, Journal of Sports Sciences, and Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research) and is a frequent commentator on sports economics issues (in outlets such as The New York Times, ESPN Magazine, and Fox Business Network). He lives in Marietta, Georgia with his wife and two daughters, and is a life-long Braves fan.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An economist writes about baseball June 2, 2007

By King Yao

Format:Hardcover

Bradbury is an associate professor of Economics. He wrote this book with an economists' viewpoint on baseball. He may have gone too in-depths in economics for some people's taste, but being an economics major in college, I enjoyed it and re-learned a few concepts. He covers some topics that have were previously discussed by folks like Bill James, Voros McCracken, Michael Lewis and Jay Gould (and gives them due credit). Topics that were new to me that I found interesting included the effect of "protection" by the on-deck hitter, managers lobbying for balls and strikes, and the baseball monopoly.

I enjoyed this book and I recommend it to baseball fans that are not afraid of charts, numbers and economic concepts. I would be the first in line to buy his second book if Bradbury expands his economic analysis and writing into other sports.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting look at baseball from a unique perspective April 10, 2007

By Joy Avery

Format:Hardcover

Very accessible, very interesting look at baseball. Bradbury tackles both high-profile issues in baseball (steroids, spending disparity amongst teams) as well as ideas you might not have even considered. (What can we learn from trends in hit batsmen?) I recommend this book to baseball fans with an interest in learning more about the inner-workings of the game as well as economists with even a passing interest in the sport.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Inquiring Minds Wander from This Book August 25, 2007

By Paul Bohannon

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I work with economic theorists all the time, but I am not going to tell you this is a good book. Pieces of it are. Bradbury dwells on the steriods issue, prattling on and on about the lack of evidence. Yet, no where does he accept the challenge of studying the relative performances of the individuals to determine the effect of steriods. Rather, he just says it has never been proven. He even blurs the distinction of taking steriods for performance reasons vs. health reasons (and he never considers the differences in the steriods themselves!)

Some of his economic observations are interesting, those where he really studies the game and statistics. I, for one, can find other, more rewarding but boring books to give me a Saturday afternoon snooze. And Bradbury should stick to his statistical analysis of the game (where he excels), not the policy points (where he only debates under the ruse of economic theories).