|
Basball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing & Winning with Statistics
Baseball Hacks isn't your typical baseball book--it's a book
about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's
an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's
a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is
designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In
short, it's a how-to book--one
that will increase your
enjoyment and knowledge of the game.
So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon
interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on
their performance in statistical categories that ownership
deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based
not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular
batter might fare against left-handed
pitching, for instance.
The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the
baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close
to free). Just as open source projects have made great
software freely available, collaborative projects such as
Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely
available. You can use these data sources to research your
favorite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the
game of baseball even more than you do now.
Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it,
and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a
number of sources for current and historical baseball data,
and explains how to load it into a database for analysis.
It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for
understanding data and forecasting results.
For the uninitiated baseball fan, author Joseph Adler walks
readers through the core statistical categories for hitters
(batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers
(earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and
fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon
these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like
career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons,
and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or
season-ticket holder to your favorite team, Baseball Hacks
is sure to have something for you.
Advance praise for Baseball Hacks:
"Baseball Hacks is the best book ever written for
understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read
for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike."
-- Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos,
San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles
"The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for
its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In Baseball
Hacks, Joe Adler not only demonstrates that
the latest data-mining technologies have useful application
to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the
reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated
baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the
game to a higher level."
-- Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and
Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals
|
