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Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2001 Edition

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Jim Albert (Author)
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Jim Albert (Author), Jay Bennett (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars 14 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0387001937
ISBN-10: 038700193X
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 350 pages
  • Publisher: Copernicus; Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2001 edition (April 8, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 038700193X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0387001937
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsbaseball statistics interpreted by professional statisticians
By Michael R. Chernick on January 23, 2008
Format: Hardcover
Jim Albert and Jay Bennett share two traits that make them the perfect authors for this type of book (1) they are both baseball fans who know the game and have seen many games and much statistics from many angles and (2) they are both professional statisticians who understand probability and the subtle aspects that chance can have on statistics. By being professional statisticians they also know how sophisticated statistical techniques can add to ones ability to seriously address questions of strategy and comparison of player performance. That is what they accomplish in this book, teaching some basic probability and statistics along the way.
They also make it very interesting to the baseball fan by raising interesting baseball questions related to players that the fans relate to, namely the stars that the fans follow and the great clutch hits and clutch defensive plays that we baseball fans have imprinted in our memories, like Mazeroski's game winning home run in the 1960 World Series, or Willie Mays' famous over the shoulder catch of Vic Wertz's long fly ball in the 1954 series, or Bobby Thompson home run that won the 1951 playoffs for the Giants.

In the very beginning Albert and Bennett distinguish themselves from the sports statisticians that are hired by the teams. The sports statisticians collect the data and present it in various ways. However, this is merely exploratory data analysis. Albert and Bennett point out that a numerical difference in a hitting statistic such as on base percentage between Chuck Knoblauch and Kenny Lofton may be a real difference in ability but may also be a small enough difference to be merely due to chance.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing
By Mark on September 25, 2001
Format: Hardcover
This is a book that I was excited to buy but unfortunately I did not enjoy it as much as I had hoped for. The two main reasons for this are 1) the lack of major insights and 2) the huge quantity of typos (I stopped counting after around 20). The copy editor for this did an absolutely terrible job, I'm afraid to report (writing this guarantees a typo somewhere in my review :) ). Some of the players' names are spelled incorrectly, and some of the numbers in the charts are inconsistent. This is very distracting.

The book is divided into 12 chapters, starting with a fairly trivial look at tabletop baseball games. The authors devote much attention to evaluating offensive performance, comparing various measures such as batting average, SLG, OBP, linear weights, total average, runs created and a few other more obscure ones. There is also some discussion of clutch hitting and a look at "Did the best team win the World Series?"

One of the other problems I found was that the authors stop short of providing actual statistical formulas and get into hand-waving a few times. I see that they have all the academic credentials but it seems as though they took the "book sales are inversely proportional to number of equations in the text" relationship to heart. I felt the book suffered because of that.

I'm not sure who I could recommend this book to. I have a feeling that some of the concepts might be too advanced for kids, and not deep enough for those who have a decent understanding of statistics. If you are into baseball stats but you don't know much about real statistics you will definitely find some new concepts in here, so I guess that is the audience.
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4.0 out of 5 starsGood, but could be better
By Darren Glass on April 24, 2002
Format: Hardcover
I'm not sure who the target audience for this book is. At the beginning the introduce the most basic of statistics concepts as well as the most basic of baseball concepts. And at the end they seem to assume lots of knowledge of statistics. As both a baseball fan and a mathematician, I felt the beginning of the book very slow, but I also worry that someone who isn't knowledgable in both already might have trouble following some of it.
That said, the book was very well written, and posed some interesting ideas and questions. I wish it had been longer, as the last few chapters were really getting me into sabermetrics!
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4.0 out of 5 starsgood statisticians, pretty good writers
By Russell A. Carleton on February 6, 2007
Format: Paperback
This one is a book for the Sabermetrically inclined who already have a background in stats. In the first couple of chapters, the authors review some basic concepts through the lens of baseball before getting into some deeper analyses. To be honest, there's nothing in here that you can't get in Baseball Between the Numbers (although to the authors' credit, this book predates BBTN by 6 years) but it's a decent starter's guide. Worth the read, although those with a background in Sabermetrics will probably want to pass.
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4.0 out of 5 starsGood, but could have been better
By C. Pippin on December 31, 2004
Format: Paperback
As a statistician and baseball fan, I had high expectations for this book. Generally, those expectations were met, although I came away from this book feeling like an opportunity had been lost. The biggest problem with the book is that the authors can't seem to decide how much knowledge to assume of their readers. The first 100 pages or so are presented at a sub-high school level, while the last few chapters assume the reader to have taken higher-level college courses in statistics. Also, I do not expect any book to be written and edited perfectly, but the typos actually become an occassional distraction from the text.

On the whole, though, I would still recommend this book--it is by far the best contemporary statistical breakdown of the game of baseball. It is an especially good complement to Michael Lewis's "Moneyball," which is a more anecdotal presentation of similar material. If you enjoy baseball at all, and have even a passing interest in batting averages, ERAs, and HRs, you will be entertained by this book and will probably learn a lot, too.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsSTATISTICIANS PROBE BASEBALL STATS AND CHANCE IN THE NATIONAL PASTIME

Excellent book on the role of chance and probability theory as reflected by baseball statistics and also individual and team play. Read more

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4.0 out of 5 starsCurve Ball

Very good book. Most academic types write about sports as if they have never watched a game in their life, but not so in this case. Read more

Published on February 21, 2011 by Peter Rose
4.0 out of 5 starsManages to explore relatively uncharted territory

The world of sabermetrics is a much-explored one. Many topics have already been explored by some stat guy or another in the last 20 years. Read more

Published on February 5, 2009 by John Craven
4.0 out of 5 starsAn Important Addition to a Baseball Library

For anyone who wishes to understand cause and effect in baseball, this is a very insightful book. The authors clearly and convincingly demonstrate that many of the statistical... Read more

Published on December 29, 2008 by John A. Mitchell III
4.0 out of 5 starsNon Fiction

A look at baseball from a sports statistics and published mathematical analysis front. Interesting, but not as ground breaking as some of the amateur non university researchers... Read more

Published on September 2, 2007 by average
4.0 out of 5 starsFor people with serious statistical interest

I enjoyed this book a lot, but it's definitely for people who are serious about the use of statistics, not for fans looking to settle arguments about "who was better. Read more

Published on July 31, 2006 by D. G. Hulan
4.0 out of 5 starsInsightful look at the game

More than any other sport, baseball is a game of statistics. This book goes behind the numbers and looks at where the true patterns are and where the seeming patterns are just the... Read more

Published on June 3, 2002 by mrliteral
4.0 out of 5 starsInsightful look at the game

More than any other sport, baseball is a game of statistics. This book goes behind the numbers and looks at where the true patterns are and where the seeming patterns are just the... Read more

Published on June 3, 2002 by mrliteral
5.0 out of 5 starsA "must read" for all baseball fans and enthusiasts

Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics And The Role Of Chance In The Game provides the non-specialist, general reader with a sophisticated by accessible approach to statistics that can... Read more

Published on October 14, 2001 by Midwest Book Review

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