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Baseball Hacks isn't your typical baseball book--it's a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In short, it's a how-to book--one that will increase your enjoyment and knowledge of the game.
So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on their performance in statistical categories that ownership deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular batter might fare against left-handed pitching, for instance.
The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close to free). Just as open source projects have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. You can use these data sources to research your favorite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the game of baseball even more than you do now.
Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results.
For the uninitiated baseball fan, author Joseph Adler walks readers through the core statistical categories for hitters (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers (earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons, and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or season-ticket holder to your favorite team, Baseball Hacks is sure to have something for you.
Advance praise for Baseball Hacks:
"Baseball Hacks is the best book ever written for understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike."-- Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles
"The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In Baseball Hacks, Joe Adler not only demonstrates that the latest data-mining technologies have useful application to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the game to a higher level."
-- Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals
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Customer Reviews
The great thing about this book is that the software used is all open source. Adler includes Access and Excel hacks for those who have Office at home or at work, but the main hacks in the book involve MySQL for database queries and R for graphic statistical analysis. I've used MySQL before, but R was new for me, and I really enjoyed using the program.
Adler also uses Perl. A lot of Perl. But he doesn't expect the reader to be Perl programmers; he shows how the program was written, and what everything does. More importantly, he includes the whole script so that it's a simple matter of copying, and making modifications if needed. He even shows how to modify the scripts.
Downloading a beginning stat database is as easy as 1-2-3. Hack 25 tells you how to spider websites for statistical data - including getting data from MLB.com. Detailed instructions on working with R are included in section 4 (hacks 31-39). Adler even includes formulas for calculating the more arcane statistics (at least to non-sports people like me) such as OPS (on-base plus slugging average) and ISO (isolated power - a measure of how well a player hits the ball).
It's obvious that Baseball Hacks is a book designed for fantasy sports fanatics. I've also pointed the book out to some computer applications teachers and statistics teachers - combining the study of stats and database construction with a subject that so many teenage boys enjoy studying is a great idea. Teaching database structure and analysis is tough, but give them something that they like to do, and they're all over it. This book does exactly that.
My first hiccup was in hack #10, step 4, in which the author jumps to using Unix commands without mentioning that fact. Fortunately, I have a friend familiar with both Unix and MySQL who was able to get me through that particular hack by installing a GUI and importing the files through it. For those who are stumped on that particular step, jump to hack #18, install a GUI, and import the DataBank files as a script using the Query Editor.
I haven't proceeded much farther in the book, largely because I can already see the frustration to come from fumbling my way through Perl. The author gives very rudimentary instructions in the language, followed by more 'easy to use' scripts. The problem is the scripts are based on filenames and information that is more than a year out of date. This will require editing the scripts, something a programming illiterate such as myself will find challenging at best.
So after all these complaints, why did I still rate the book a 3? Because I'm trying to be fair. I've read through the rest of the book without trying to apply anything, and if you are at least familiar with MySQL, Unix, and Perl you'll probably get a lot out of it. The tools presented appear to be very powerful. Also, since I'm familiar with Access, the hacks for using it have been helpful. Unfortunately, the instructions in the book assume a basic level of programming knowledge on the part of the reader, despite the author's contention that they do not. If you can't tell a Unix prompt from a DOS prompt, this book is not the answer to your stat-processing prayers.
Contents: Basics of Baseball; Baseball Games from Past Years; Stats from the Current Season; Visualize Baseball Statistics; Formulas; Sabermetric Thinking; The Bullpen; Where to Learn More Stuff; Abbreviations; Index
The author and his co-contributors have come up with 75 statistical "hacks" all related to baseball. In here, you'll learn how to keep a scoresheet in the traditional fashion as well as how to use a format that is generally used for computer entry and analysis. After showing you where to find downloadable stats and how to get them in a format you can use, they then take you through open source packages like MySQL and R (a statistical software offering) as well as standards like Access and Excel. By loading the data into these formats, you can then slice and dice with the best of them. Some of the hacks show you common statistical generation like batting average or on-base percentage, but there are more esoteric ones you can look into, like Park effect and Fan Save value. If you've always dreamed of combining your love of statistics and baseball into a single passion, this book will push you over the edge. Once you get done here, you should be able to figure out the batting average of Barry Bonds on Tuesday night games against left-handed pitching with two men on base... :)
Seriously, a very well-done book that will appeal to both the baseball fan interested in statistics, as well as the computer geek who loves his (or her!) baseball recordkeeping...
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