Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game
by Jim Albert, Jay Bennett
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jay Bennett, Jim AlbertEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-04-08
ISBN: 038700193X
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Springer
Accessories:
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Book Reviews of Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game
Book Review: Manages to explore relatively uncharted territory
Summary: 4 Stars
The world of sabermetrics is a much-explored one. Many topics have already been explored by some stat guy or another in the last 20 years. Some have been explored many times (clutch hitting, for instance). One of the best things about this book is that because the author isn't particularly immersed in sabermetrics, he manages to strike out (NO PUN INTENDED) into new territory and has some somewhat new insight on things that have already been looked at elsewhere.
Baseball game nerds will recognize the game at the beginning of the book as Ethan Allen's All-Star Baseball, one of the oldest on the market. It is, as noted, pretty basic, which is why it's so much easier to use as a model than, say, Strat-o-Matic or APBA (additionally, it isn't really, really awful, so it beats APBA there as well). He does return to the simulation from time to time, which is kind of fun but isn't really necessary: most statheads are well aware of the concepts of probability and random chance.
One area he does really strike some new ground in is in the category of consistency. It's really just an introductory look at the subject (to sum it up shortly, he demonstrates that Todd Zeile in the late 90s was subject to a lot more streaks and slumps than you'd expect by random chance) and as such it doesn't really *prove* anything, but it's definitely an avenue that deserves more look.
The book as a whole is worth nuggets of stuff like this. A full-on stathead will decry the All Star Baseball format because it doesn't truly model the way baseball works (as a guy who's done beta testing for a computer baseball game, I can confirm that people like this exist), but IMO that's a small criticism to make. A bigger one is that there are a lot of ideas tossed out but not a lot of proof made. However, if you already have TangoTiger's "The Book", subscribe to Baseball Prospectus, and have thrown away your Derek Jeter bobblehead because he sux, this is a good book to have on your bookshelf.
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