THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Sounds to me like the academics are answering the question “given their set of characteristics related to stealing bases, are younger siblings more likely to steal bases?” while Phil is answering “are younger siblings more likely to be base stealers?”...so just answering slightly different questions.

No, it sounds like the academics are making huge analytic errors, and/or manufacturing results out of whole cloth.  The authors claim that younger brothers steal at “ten times” the rate of older brothers.  Phil has shown there is actually a trivial difference in siblings’ SB rates. 

Alan Schwarz does great work, but failed to do due diligence here....