Modern Baseball Strategy
Author : Paul Richards
Publisher :
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 49,95 MB
Release : 1957
Category : Baseball
ISBN :
Power Ball
Author : Rob Neyer
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 44,85 MB
Release : 2018-10-09
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0062853635
Book Description
“Winner of the 2018 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year.” The former ESPN columnist and analytics pioneer dramatically recreates an action-packed 2017 game between the Oakland A’s and eventual World Series Champion Houston Astros to reveal the myriad ways in which Major League Baseball has changed over the last few decades. On September 8, 2017, the Oakland A’s faced off against the Houston Astros in a game that would signal the passing of the Moneyball mantle. Though this was only one regular season game, the match-up of these two teams demonstrated how Major League Baseball has changed since the early days of Athletics general manager Billy Beane and the publication of Michael Lewis’ classic book. Over the past twenty years, power and analytics have taken over the game, driving carefully calibrated teams like the Astros to victory. Seemingly every pitcher now throws mid-90s heat and studiously compares their mechanics against the ideal. Every batter in the lineup can crack homers and knows their launch angles. Teams are relying on unorthodox strategies, including using power-losing—purposely tanking a few seasons to get the best players in the draft. As he chronicles each inning and the unfolding drama as these two teams continually trade the lead—culminating in a 9-8 Oakland victory in the bottom of the ninth—Neyer considers the players and managers, the front office machinations, the role of sabermetrics, and the current thinking about what it takes to build a great team, to answer the most pressing questions fans have about the sport today.
The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball
Author : Daniel R. Levitt
Publisher : Ivan R. Dee
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 46,25 MB
Release : 2012-03-09
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1566639050
Book Description
In late 1913 the newly formed Federal League declared itself a major league in competition with the established National and American Leagues. Backed by some of America’s wealthiest merchants and industrialists, the new organization posed a real challenge to baseball’s prevailing structure. For the next two years the well-established leagues fought back furiously in the press, in the courts, and on the field. The story of this fascinating and complex historical battle centers on the machinations of both the owners and the players, as the Federals struggled for profits and status, and players organized baseball’s first real union. Award winning author, Daniel R. Levitt gives us the most authoritative account yet published of the short-lived Federal League, the last professional baseball league to challenge the National League and American League monopoly.
The Theory of Modern Baseball
Author : Masaru Kanemoto
Publisher :
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 44,62 MB
Release : 2019-03-15
Category :
ISBN : 9781090562814
Book Description
The count is 3-2. Where should the pitcher target his pitch? How close does the pitch have to be for the batter to swing? Should the batter swing at all? Only sabermetrics can provide the answer to these critical strategic questions. But the amount of material on this subject is relatively limited, and until now, players and coaches have been left to guess.The Theory of Modern Baseball addresses this gap in the baseball literature. Using a straightforward sabermetric framework to measure the value of each pitch in each situation, the book presents the theoretically correct approach to each count, based on the skills and tendencies of actual MLB pitchers and hitters.With an understanding of how players approach an at-bat - and how they should - the book then analyzes some of the key strategic elements in modern baseball, including The Shift, The Opener, Hot and Cold Zones, pitch sequencing, platoon effects, weather adjustments, and more.While most of modern baseball strategy is based on sound principles, teams and players are still making massive strategic errors every single game, far worse than an extra sacrifice bunt or intentional walk or two. A dedicated coach or player willing to apply the knowledge contained in The Theory of Modern Baseball is likely to gain a significant edge over the competition.
Weaver on Strategy
Author : Earl Weaver
Publisher : Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 40,43 MB
Release : 1984
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN :
Book Description
The Book
Author :
Publisher : Potomac Books, Inc.
Page : 458 pages
File Size : 24,12 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Baseball
ISBN : 1597973653
Book Description
Baseball "by The Book."
Future Value
Author : Eric Longenhagen
Publisher : Triumph Books
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 43,85 MB
Release : 2020-04-14
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1641253975
Book Description
An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analysts For the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal. Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach. ?Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Author : Michael Lewis
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 38,96 MB
Release : 2004-03-17
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0393066231
Book Description
Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?
The Extra 2%
Author : Jonah Keri
Publisher : ESPN
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 20,68 MB
Release : 2011-03-08
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0345517652
Book Description
What happens when three financial industry whiz kids and certified baseball nuts take over an ailing major league franchise and implement the same strategies that fueled their success on Wall Street? In the case of the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, an American League championship happens—the culmination of one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history. In The Extra 2%, financial journalist and sportswriter Jonah Keri chronicles the remarkable story of one team’s Cinderella journey from divisional doormat to World Series contender. When former Goldman Sachs colleagues Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman assumed control of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2005, it looked as if they were buying the baseball equivalent of a penny stock. But the incoming regime came armed with a master plan: to leverage their skill at trading, valuation, and management to build a model twenty-first-century franchise that could compete with their bigger, stronger, richer rivals—and prevail. Together with “boy genius” general manager Andrew Friedman, the new Rays owners jettisoned the old ways of doing things, substituting their own innovative ideas about employee development, marketing and public relations, and personnel management. They exorcized the “devil” from the team’s nickname, developed metrics that let them take advantage of undervalued aspects of the game, like defense, and hired a forward-thinking field manager as dedicated to unconventional strategy as they were. By quantifying the game’s intangibles—that extra 2% that separates a winning organization from a losing one—they were able to deliver to Tampa Bay something that Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” had never brought to Oakland: an American League pennant. A book about what happens when you apply your business skills to your life’s passion, The Extra 2% is an informative and entertaining case study for any organization that wants to go from worst to first.
The Shift
Author : Russell Carleton
Publisher : Triumph Books
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 48,21 MB
Release : 2018-03-08
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1641250135
Book Description
With its three-hour-long contests, 162-game seasons, and countless measurable variables, baseball is a sport which lends itself to self-reflection and obsessive analysis. It's a thinking game. It's also a shifting game. Nowhere is this more evident than in the statistical revolution which has swept through the pastime in recent years, bringing metrics like WAR, OPS, and BABIP into front offices and living rooms alike. So what's on the horizon for a game that is constantly evolving? Positioned at the crossroads of sabermetrics and cognitive science, The Shift alters the trajectory of both traditional and analytics-based baseball thought. With a background in clinical psychology as well as experience in major league front offices, Baseball Prospectus' Russell Carleton illuminates advanced statistics and challenges cultural assumptions, demonstrating along the way that data and logic need not be at odds with the human elements of baseball—in fact, they're inextricably intertwined. Covering topics ranging from infield shifts to paradigm shifts, Carleton writes with verve, honesty, and an engaging style, inviting all those who love the game to examine it deeply and maybe a little differently. Data becomes digestible; intangibles are rendered not only accessible, but quantifiable. Casual fans and statheads alike will not want to miss this compelling meditation on what makes baseball tick.
