Off Base (Hardcover)

~ Torrez (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Torrez, a Harvard-educated lawyer, begins his dressing-down of old-time baseball philosophy with a sentence designed to inflame the fan's emotions: "Everything you think you know about baseball is wrong." If the claim is incendiary, so is much of what follows. He picks apart the game's clichés (good teams do the little things effectively; pitching and defense win championships) and reassesses traditional statistical measurements to come up with new ones more apropos to the way the game is actually played these days. Take batting averages, for instance. If you want a real measurement of a hitter's contribution, according to the author, add his on-base percentage to his slugging average for an altogether new statistic that indicates how often a hitter fails against the types of hits he gets when he succeeds. Torrez then presents reasonable new ways to judge pitching and defense too, before reexamining the roles of the field manager and the GM.

So how did baseball wisdom get so out of joint? Torrez points his finger at an unholy trinity of media, management, and decision-making based on bottom lines. Power counts more, starters don't go the distance, relief pitching is at a premium--but the mythology perpetuated by the "trinity" would have us believe little baseball carries the day. "Most people don't understand the way baseball in the 1990s differs from baseball in the '60s, '70s, and '80s," he argues. Every page of Off Base invites you--even dares you--to argue back. And isn't that America's other national pastime? --Jeff Silverman

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Duane Press; First edition. edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0942627431
• ISBN-13: 978-0942627435
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,006,720 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for any baseball fan!, September 6, 1999

By A Customer

This book provides a lot of unorthodox but well-reasoned insights into the game of baseball. Baseball writers and commentators tend to bombard us with meaningless statistics. Torrez shows how to get real value from just a few well-chosen stats. At the same time, his book is always amusing and fun to read.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't let the Expos Read This Book!, August 13, 1999

By A Customer

As a fan, I want to see my team in the hunt for the penant race. Like most arm-chair owners (fans), I know that do so so, a team needs to acquire the best talent. Managers also need to rethink what to do once they have that talent. Remarkably, Andrew Torrez offers a recipe for your favorite team to do both and build a dynasty.

Most importantly, this book is very readable. Not only is is written so that anyone can understand it, but Torrez's humor and wit make you want to see what's next. While many of his ideas are controversial, they all offer an intuitive logic. On par, Torrez is right on the money. this book should be required reading for all owners, managers, GMs and red-blooded fans! (Expos excluded.) It's a shame that Torrez dedicates most of his waking hours to practicing law, rather than writing more about the game.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended with an asterisk, January 7, 2000

By	NBO (Haslett, MI USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

What a book! When was the last time you laughed OUT LOUD while reading a book about baseball? I highly recommend this book. I believe Mr. Torrez had three goals in writing this book. 1) to get folks who like baseball to develop the capacity for independent thought -- instead of simply repeating the traditional dogma, 2) to remind folks that the game "belongs" to any and all fans, not just the self (and media) appointed baseball elites, and 3) to pursuade the reader that his independent thoughts are correct. He immediately succeeds on the first and second, and is variably successful with the third. The first two are obviously more important anyway. The only thing that prevents me from giving this a score of 5 is Mr. Torrez's poor understanding of statistical interpretation (from a scientific point of view) which is a significant part of the book. To his credit, he tries to point out the difference between irrelevant and relevant statistics but in the process contradicts himself repeatedly and is simply wrong too often on matters of statistical interpretation. Some of his arguments are also a stretch just from a logical point of view. An incorrect premise often leads to an incorrect (at least indefensible) conclusion. These can be a bit annoying at times, but in a way, they promote the primary aim of the book -- to get people to think about baseball. I began to wonder if he might have introduced some of these errors in logic on purpose to pick-an-argument of sorts with the reader. Whether you agree with Torrez's conclusions or not, this is an excellent and entertaining book.