Review: Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old STATS That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think about Baseball

Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old STATS That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think about Baseball by Keith Law
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I seemed to have latched on to many of the raft of books about modern baseball statistics. In this, like many of the others out there, the author drills into the details of why old-school baseball stats are not good now, and in some cases were never good measurements or predictors. And, like most other books of its kind, it’s written in a snarky manner, which I forthwith dub “Snarklish”. This book goes in depth on the historic stats, like a pitcher’s won-loss record, defensive ratios, batting average, and the like. He dissects the backs of baseball cards and suggests better stats. As baseball statistical study is really hitting a golden age, with additional computing power, additional measurements being made and published, and new focus by the teams, this is a reasonable book to explain the state of affairs for those that aren’t well read on the sabermetric state of statistics. For those that religiously read Bill James, this will mostly seem very familiar, even the level of snark.

View all my reviews