I finally finished Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game is Wrong. It’s a very cool read, but it’s very academic and only appropriate for hard-core baseball fans and statheads.
The Baseball Prospectus “Team of Experts” is given authorship credit. Apparently this is a group of guys that sit around and analyze baseball data for a living. What an awesome job!
In Baseball Between the Numbers, the experts weigh in a wide array of topics, from the conventional wisdom of the intentional walk and sacrifice bunt (not very wise), the success rate necessary to justify an attempted steal (higher than you’d think), the impact of steroids (lower than you’d think), the best indicators of pitching success (not ERA), the economic value of a win (about $1 million in 2005, unless it’s a critical win that guarantees postseason berth), the benefits of building a new ballpark (not a good ROI for taxpayers), and more.
In a way, all the number crunching and regression analyses reduce the game to a cold-hearted, bottom-line driven business. Which, as fans, we sometimes forget that it is a business. Most clubs are privately owned “entertainment,” in the words of economists.
The Baseball Prospectus statheads have computed the runs that each player produces, controlling for a million variables, how those runs contributed relate to actual games won, and the profit value of each win. The end result is an estimate of how overpaid (or underpaid) each player is. If A-Rod earns $20 million a year, do the Yankees generate $20 million in extra profit thanks to his on-field contributions?
Central to much of the book is the idea of VORP – one player’s Value Over a Replacement Player. A “replacement player” is a AAA call-up or someone similar — a fringe major leaguer — who can be expected to perform at an average level and make the league minimum. It’s a pretty interesting concept, but doesn’t take into consideration any intangibles. For example, even though Ken Griffey Jr is having a terrible year so far (hitting just .216 and slugging a lowly .243 with 0 HR and only 5 RBI), is real-life VORP is much higher than his calculated VORP. In theory, the Mariners could pay someone far less to play DH better. But the Mariners will sell lots of tickets this year to fans who want to come out and see Junior “one last time.”
Baseball Between the Numbers is very interesting but can be pretty dry at times. Think Moneyball, except twice as long and with way more detail — and without Michael Lewis’s storytelling skills. Like I said, it’s only for big nerds like me.
FTC Disclosure: If you buy Baseball Between the Numbers through the above link, Amazon will pay me 4% of the purchase price.
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