THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thanks for the link, Tango.  Unfortunately, it’s not really suited for anyone who comes here.  It started because I tutor people in math and statistics, and found that using baseball or basketball always helped them understand better.

And, in using these sports as examples, I found that some people who had no idea what sabermetrics was, were able to grasp concepts they might find intimidating if presented in a different way.

So, this is a book designed to teach the casual, intimidated fan, some introductory saber-stuff.  Nothing too mind-boggling or sabergasm inducing, and I don’t even endorse some of the metrics in there as anywhere near end-all, but rather as something that a baseball fan can absorb and develop a new understanding.

If the book were for a different audience there would have been different types of analyses conducted in certain chapters, but the feedback has been positive from my target audience, so I’m happy.

Well, my order is already in.  At the very least, even if the hardcore readers of this blog won’t care for the book, at least I’ll have a book I can send those that are intimidated.  I have usually been sending them to BP’s Between the Numbers as a SABR 101 book.  Maybe your book can be 101, BP’s as 201, and then The Book as 301.

Yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it.  What I did was introduce concepts in different types of ways.  For instance, to introduce Pitch F/X and what we can/have done/will do with that, I discuss the idea that pitchers can improve with Tommy John Surgery… to discuss how useless Saves are, I recall the infamous Jim Caple article about the Complete Game Win-Saves, etc, and the segue into a potentially different way of looking at closers.

If anyone coming here is interested in writing a book, the two things I can say are:

1) ALWAYS do your footnotes as you compile them… or you’ll hate yourself like me after the fact.

2) Keeping audience in mind is really tough.  There were many times I had to go back and rewrite something because, even though I understood it, my mom, who knows a bit about baseball but not a ton, would not.

I’ll have to say I was lucky with MGL and Andy.  The way we worked is that one of us wrote a chapter, while the other 2 did the editing.  Worked out beautifully as far as that was concerned.

I also would suggest self-publishing, with lulu.com being probably the best choice for most people.  You need zero up-front dollars, which is fantastic for anyone dipping their toes in this thing.