The Hidden Game of Baseball
by John Thorn, Pete Palmer

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Book Reviews of The Hidden Game of Baseball

Book Review: Generally excellent and informative
Summary: 4 Stars

In such a comprehensive book you want to believe everything in it and accept it as some kind of Bible. But you'd better not. The book has a few flaws in it.

For example, it ranks Sandy Koufax as a non-entity. While admitting that his pitching was good, it rips him to shreds because he couldn't hit, and wasn't a great fielder either. My reaction is so what if he couldn't hit. And as for his fielding, first of all, when you strike out so many hitters you don't get as many chances to field the ball, and second of all, pitchers handle so few batted balls to begin with that the sampling isn't that significant. If your system ends up saying Koufax was nothing, there is something wrong with your system. Koufax was among the elite of baseball history. I rank him as the second best pitcher who ever lived, behind Walter Johnson. He was God on the mound, and you don't just brush that off. He was more devastating than Randy Johnson. He had the best curve ball I've ever seen. If you went against him, you lost. The SF Giants didn't want to match Marichal against Koufax. Why waste Marichal on an automatic loss. Believe me, they would have matched Marichal against anyone else. To put my comments in perspective, I was never a Dodger fan.

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