Customer Reviews

Winners: How Good Baseball Teams Become Great Ones (And It's Not the Way You Think)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I love Baseball Prospectus. I read it every day, including Dayn Perry's occasional columns. Bill James' Historical Abstract was my bedtime reading for about six months straight. I have my college degree in applied math and I love baseball stats, but also love baseball storytelling as in classics like The Glory of Their Times. I ought to be the demographic for this book. Unfortunately, it's just not very good. It reads something like this:

"According to Prospectus data, 70.2% of teams making the playoffs were in the top decile in MUS [made-up stat], but only 69.4% of playoff teams were in the top decile in MUSr. Thus MUS is clearly more crucial to success. Here's a list of the top 10 teams all-time in park- and season-adjusted MUS. As you can see, the '85 Blue Sox top both lists. Pinocchio Gippetto starred for the Sox as the one-legged, left-handed half of a DH platoon. Despite limited playing time, he ranked 8th in MUS for the season. [4-page digression on Gippetto's upbringing with the Sicilian mafia, his quirky batting stance, and his eventual pixie stick addiction and downfall. Gippetto is not referenced for the rest of the book.] Despite the new conventional wisdom, espoused by Billy Beane's braggadocio in Moneyball, that MUSr is paramount to playoff success, we see that MUS is a metric not to be ignored."

Perry doesn't seem to realize that spewing trivia on each team (and player) that ranks high on his considered stats doesn't amount to analysis. It's just trivia. He doesn't make arguments -- he just reports the stats where winning teams excel, but doesn't know what a significance test is (exaggerated above).

He does get off some nice one-liners, and his plain-English explanations of stats would be useful to those who don't already read Prospectus.

Other reviewers have said it, but it bears repeating. The book really doesn't answer How Good Teams Become Great Ones. Rather it's a list of TRENDS that good teams have in common and a series of essays about those teams, some of their players, and a number of recent statistical principles.

Much of the analysis is pretty poor and contradictory. Perry writes that ERA isn't a good measure of pitcher performance then repeatedly talks about pitchers' ERAs and their ERAs relative to league average. Why bother once you show that ERA is flawed?

I really like the statistical analysis of baseball and have read and enjoyed a number of books in this vein. If you want something along those lines, read the Baseball Prospectus or Hardball Times Annual. If you want good reading on interesting baseball questions backed up by numerical analysis, read Baseball Between the Numbers. And if you want to find out how to go from Good to Great, read Jim Collins book; it's about business not baseball but it has better scientific analysis and actually covers how "teams" IMPROVE over time.

Not sure that the title or subtitle of this book has anything to do with whats written inside. Instead, it each chapter begins with a listing of playoff teams who were good or bad in a particular obscure statistical area, and then goes on ad nauseaum about certain players on those teams, with no real synthesis or conclusion about what makes teams win. As a Tiger fan, I enjoyed reading about Chet Lemon, Darrell Evans, and Willie Hernandez. However, if I was an aspiring GM, looking for advice on how to build my team into a winner, this book would not help much (which is what it purports to try to do).

Let me start by saying that for almost any baseball fan, this book comes off as an interesting read. But the Pinocchio Gepetto reviewer said it best--trivia, not analysis.

I'd like to add that at no point does Perry actually either (a) define what is a "great" team (not to mention a "good" team) and (b) uses some needless or unsubstantiated invective in taking pot shots at certain players' ability or even character (if you're not going to say why you think Nolan Ryan is highly overrated then don't mention it - twice!).

What I was expecting from the front cover and from flipping through the chapters (each chapter is titled after a putative role on a 'winning' team--The Slugger, The Glove Man, The Speedster, etc.) was a sober analysis of winning elements of teams that have risen above their milieu. I even expected some controversial claims (as the cover says, "It's not what you think"). Instead, as Gepetto indicates, the book is just a collection of lists of characteristics of all 124 that have made the playoffs from 1980-2003. So what? They have about as much in common as the next best 124 teams that didn't make the playoffs, which is to say, not a whole lot. He would treat the 1984 Tigers and the 2005 Padres, for example, as equally 'great.'

Finally, as a sour Yankee fan, I ask, how can a book purport to answer the question of how winning teams win when and feature an entire chapter deriding the stolen base without even MENTIONING Dave Roberts' game- and series-turning steal against the Yanks and Mariano Rivera in the 2004 ALCS? I don't care if the stolen base only adds 3.6 runs to a team's total during the season...selectively applied, has it been or could it be a strategically useful device for a winning team? Perry never even approaches that kind of analysis.

Good read, but not worthy of the sabermetrics pantheon.

From the title, the tagline and the blurb, I expected the author to be putting forward a new, more revealing, way to assess performance and/or a unique insight into what factors on a team produces winners. You know, something that took a rational shot at tired old ways and proposed a new approach, a la "Money Ball". Something that might have applicability beyond baseball...

Instead it's paragraph after paragraph of rambling anecdotes that I suppose are intended to support some point. But the points are never stated. However the does manage to garnish his aimless prose liberally with gratuitous little non sequiturs and self-important cleverisms that draw attention to the author. But I guess that's because he has nothing really to say.

Don't waste your money.

Non-stat heads: don't be scared off by the fact that Dayn is a contributor to the sabremetric-oriented site Baseball Prospectus. This is a book that is one to be enjoyed by both stat-heads and casual fans alike.

"Winners" takes a numbers-oriented approach to how successful organizations get that way and stay on top. Dayn takes a look at the 124 playoff teams since 1980 and digs into the numbers to see how they got there. Was it starting pitching? Speed? Power? Dayn tackles such issues with solid statistical data that even a layman like myself can understand.

I especially enjoyed the back story on guys like Pedro Guerrero, Ricky Henderson, and Dwight Gooden who enjoyed enormous on-field success and in some cases, a tragic post-baseball career. Some of his stances on the value of a stolen base in terms of producing runs and wins and the use / misuse of a team's bullpen could cause some controversy, but he explains his position quickly and concisely to the point where you can't really argue with his conclusions. Give it a shot!

While the title may be misleading - Perry doesn't really explain how good teams become great - this is still an interesting read for both casual and serious fans. It's a good look at the assumptions made about winning teams, and one that allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

The chapters are divided into topics like "the slugger" and "the closer," pieces that are assumed should be combined to make a great team. Perry then takes a closer look at what each of these items has contributed to teams that have made the playoffs over the past 25 years. There is very little in the way of heady mathematical formulas, and Perry isn't trying to push his own beliefs. Like the reader, he simply seems curious to know the role each of these items has played.

If there's a problem with the book, it's that there seems to be very little correlation between the items examined, and the actual art of winning. In most cases, good teams do tend to do the things we expect, but it doesn't always come across in impressive numbers. It might be unfair to say that there's not enough correlation - perhaps it's better to say that there isn't what I would say is overwhelming evidence, at least in most cases. There's some mathematical significance to many of the numbers, but little that will blow away the reader.

Despite this fact, the book is still one that I'd recommend. Perry writes with a good wit, but without the condesencion that sometimes creeps into efforts by the BP gang. He obviously has a good sense of humor, and it works well in combination with his equally obvious knowledge of baseball. He occasionally goes off onto tangents about particular players, like Pedro Guerrero or Cesar Cedeno, and these make for some of the best parts of this book.

If you're looking for answers, you're not likely to find them all here. However, if you want something interesting, and something that will make you think, this is a good read.

"Winners" is a pretty lively read. Dayn Perry discusses how playoff teams (excluding the strike-shorted 1981 season and the 1994 season where there were no playoffs) reached the playoffs. Were they starting pitching-rich? Did they have good hitters? A top-notch bullpen? A combination of all three? Perry breaks down how each team did it.

What weighs the book down are a couple things. First, the book is far too wordy. It's as if Perry wanted the reader to know how smart he was by using as many big words as possible. Second, he veers off topic at times by giving mini-bios of certain players. While some of them are interesting, others are irrelevant. For instance, what does John Rocker's 1999 Sports Illustrated interview or Pedro Guerrero's drug arrest have to do with builiding a winning team? While I appreciate Perry's attempt to spice up the text, some of it doesn't add anything to the book.

Overall this is a good, quick read. Mildly recommended.

Perry writes for Baseball Prospectus, but this is not the typical book one would expected to be come from one of BP's writers. Avid readers of BP may be disappointed as there will not be much new to them in this book. This book can serve as a good introduction to the intelligent way of looking at baseball statistics that is common at BP. Throughout the book, Perry refers to studies done by the folks at BP (Nate Silver and others), Bill James, Voros McCracken and others, and explains them thoroughly in English (as opposed to Math) that will make sense to everybody. Perry's subjects are the 124 teams that made the playoffs from 1980 to 2003. Throughout the book, he introduces biographical information about many different players and teams - to the point where the book is better described as a biographical look at the 124 playoff teams with a sprinkling of statistics rather than the reverse. This was not what I was expecting, but after getting over that surprise, the book is a fine read.

Overall I recommend it for baseball fans who are interested in learning more about the intelligent use of statistics. That audience is a much bigger audience than the typical BP subscriber, so the book should do just fine. The 5 stars I give this book is reflective of the target audience.

Perry deftly and entertainingly navigates through numerous topics focused primarily on the common attributes shared by teams that made the playoffs from 1980 - 2003. Perry avoids the common pitfalls associated with writings containing stats by providing compelling and enjoyable narrative to illuminate his statistical conclusions. In short, the numbers he uses are sound and the stories behind the numbers sufficiently support his points.

If you love baseball and you are interested in knowing more than the blather provided by the likes of Rick Sutcliffe and Joe Morgan, this book is for you. Simply put, read this book and you will know what you are talking about.