The Library: Required Reading For Advanced Baseball Analytics
“What do you mean it’s not a bunt situation?”
“Why the heck is he pinch-hitting him right here, the guy’s hot!”
“What’s the meaning of life?”
By reading a few of the books listed below, at least two of those questions can be answered for anyone interested in increasing their knowledge on not only the statistics and (some) thought process behind the decisions made by the Rays and other ballclubs but also the history and how the statistics we know and love (or at least come to accept as better than others) came to their existence.
We’ll start from the beginning, at arguably the flashpoint of this whole SABR movement that took place over the past 40+ years.
The Hidden Game of Baseball by David Reuther, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer
This was before Moneyball, before expansion gave us our favorite team, before the advent of Google or Statcast.
The Hidden Game of Baseball was published in 1984, with new editions coming out periodically, and a recent edition published in 2015 including a new foreword by Keith Law (someone we’ll get to later).
It laid the groundwork for so many amazing numbers that we use today; it established the concept of Linear Weights, which eventually led to wOBA, WAR, and plenty of other statistics you hear spoken about on numbers-driven baseball shows, and it talks about “normalized” stats that give context to past performance (which you may now recognize in the ERA+, FIP-, wRC+, etc. in modern statistics).
The text also establishes scoring tables for the variety of base-out situations that occur throughout a game (something that comes up in pretty much every other book on this list).
The book mainly focuses on trying to put past performances from legends in the context of the “modern” game (well, modern as in 1984) while giving the reader the explanations for why batting average, RBIs, wins, and saves are all fun and nice little novelties, but shouldn’t be used for actual analysis for evaluating players.
For those seeking a more modern approach to the game, perhaps this isn’t for you, but it’s a fun read for anyone interested in the history of the analytics movement and where it began, or for those (like myself) looking to sink their teeth in to get a better grasp on these concepts, and it includes a dense encyclopedia-like set of tables throughout the text and at the very end of the book.
The formulas are a bit more limited than those in the rest of this list, but there is quite a bit of math that can be a bit easy to get lost in if you’re not careful (at least for those who barely passed Algebra 2 in high school, like yours truly).
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
We can’t discuss baseball analytics books without mentioning that book that gave us Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill acting as front-office executives, right?
Even though it lacks the really intense tables, graphs, and big-picture discussion of analytical concepts that many of the other books mentioned bring up, it inspired a whole new wave of front-office executives in the game.
No, none of the stuff that Billy Beane was implementing was anything that many sabermetrically-minded folks hadn’t been preaching for years. However, it’s still an entertaining read that gives readers a little background as to how small-market teams have to find advantages on the margins to compete with the big powers of baseball.
Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong by The Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts
This is by far my favorite book in this collection.
A collection of essays from a variety of baseball experts of their time, Between the Numbers was published in 2006 in the midst of the steroid era being exposed and Barry Bonds chasing Henry Aaron’s home run record.
The authors include former Rays executive James Click and founder and editor of FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver among other experts from BP.
A must-read for anyone looking to learn more on this subject, it further expands on the work of The Hidden Game with its work in VORP (which eventually gets replaced by WAR) as well as other attempts to compare players across eras, even getting into stickier subjects such as trying to project how much steroids affected player performance and if stadium deals are ever beneficial for the general public (hint: they’re not).
The text is the perfect in-between for people interested in the subject but not trying to drown in pages of formulas and theoretical simulations (although there’s some of that, but they make it nice and accessible).
The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Andrew Dolphin, Mitchel Lichtman, and Tom Tango
By far the most analytically-driven book in this list, it can be a bit difficult to sit down and comb through these pages if you’re not ready for a crap-ton of formulas, tables, and analytical discussion.
For those a little less interested in the nitty-gritty of why managers and front office execs make the decisions they do, this book might not be for you, but it does a tremendous job of taking on the basic assumptions people make about baseball situations and making people recognize that playing “by the book” is not always the wisest course of action.
Sacrifice bunts, intentional walks, it covers everything, and it even has little summaries at the end of most sections that give readers a nuts-and-bolts way of evaluating managers’ decisions and whether to yell at your TV or not.
Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution by Brian Kenny
Ah, Brian Kenny. MLB Now. Those who watch MLB Network should be relatively familiar with BK and his role as baseball’s provocateur when it comes to advanced analytics.
Personally, Kenny is a huge hero of mine, as his shows are both fun and informative. Having grown sick of the silly “LeBron vs. MJ” debates rehashed daily on ESPN and other sports media outlets, MLB Now not only talked about my favorite sport, but it did so in a relatively thought-provoking manner.
For those who are far smarter and more invested in these subjects than me, it all may seem elementary and silly, but for the rest of us mere mortals, the show is a nice way to interact with the material without getting a headache, and Kenny’s book is no different.
Citing the work of Bill James (sorry I didn’t include him in this list, but please feel free to respond to this post with any other work that would be appropriate for this library) and other SABR pioneers, Kenny focuses on trying to convince people of the futility of those silly statistics that The Hidden Game tried to convince people not to pay attention to while also advocating for strategies that the Rays and many other teams commonly employ, like “bullpening” and never bunting.
Worth reading for those interested in dipping their toe into the subject, it focuses on historical subjects such as past MVP races and the Hall of Fame, correcting mistakes made by past voters and offering solutions. Published in 2016, it’s a bit dated (as most of these books are), but it’s still another fun inclusion to learn about how far we’ve truly come in this area.
Here’s that Keith Law book I mentioned (and it won’t be the last), and it’s a bit redundant if you’ve read the past titles mentioned on this list, as it continues to take a proverbial dump on outdated stats and promote ones that are at least a bit closer to giving people a picture of who contributes to winning baseball.
It’s unnecessary to discuss this book too much, as the title sort of gives away what you’ll find in its pages, but I’d recommend it as another accessible way to find out more about modern baseball and the ways to keep up with all these different acronyms and numbers that make up our beautiful game.
The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik
The books listed up to this point have pretty much exclusively focused on analytics from the front office/fan perspective; how to make judgments about past players, stats to use to support your bar arguments about who was the better hitter, and reasons to complain about your favorite team’s manager (although you can’t complain about Kevin Cash too much, right?).
This book shifts to the idea of player development and how today’s group of ballplayers use technology and a little bit of analytics to better their skills.
The book doesn’t exactly reveal the secret of the Rays Way (how the hell did they turn Bob Steve into one of the best relievers in baseball last year?), but it’s an insightful look into the surface of the concepts many players use to improve their game.
It discusses the new “academies” players go to to hit for more power, to develop better stuff, etc.
If you’re interested in why everyone is always talking about spin rate, launch angle, and whatever the heck Driveline is, this book is for you.
It’s difficult to fully understand the modern game without knowing the basics about player development, so this book is a pivotal read for anyone trying to learn more about the game as it’s played today.
The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves by Keith Law
Here’s that other Keith Law book. The Inside Game isn’t about analytics or the cutting-edge methods used in player development, but more about the cognitive biases that have affected (and will continue to affect) decisions made by front offices in baseball.
Recency bias, availability bias, and more is covered in this book, mostly using baseball as examples but also expanding into other areas that people are unaware of these biases creeping into their decision-making.
It’s not as much of a must-read for this subject, but it’s still worthy of inclusion because Law has a snarky, sarcastic tone that can be entertaining, and it can further the understanding behind why having a solid structure of data to fall back on is essential to avoid making these types of mistakes.
Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball’s Home Run Revolution by Jared Diamond
Diamond’s first book, Swing Kings does a nice job of expanding and focusing on the hitting side of the player development revolution discussed in MVP Machine.
JD Martinez, Justin Turner, and many others are included in the text to show how launch angles and other previously novel concepts have become woven into baseball language.
Home runs are a currency, and this book gets to how players try to build up their bank accounts by hitting a bunch of them.
A Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics: Why WAR, WHIP, wOBA, and Other Advanced Sabermetrics Are Essential to Understanding Modern Baseball by Anthony Castrovince
The final book in this selection is arguably the easiest and most fun to read. Castrovince does a wonderful job of displaying the modern statistics that make up the game in an accessible way for everyone, even those well-entrenched in their ways.
For the more analytically-inclined, this would make a great gift for your older relative that argues with you about RBIs still being important.
But this book also serves as a great glossary of definitions and formulas, making the statistics easier to visualize and think about what they mean instead of just nodding and pretending you know what they mean (which is something I’ve been guilty of on more than one occasion).
It’s funny and engaging, making for probably the simplest read on this list.
And that’s it; if any titles are missing, apologies, and please recommend them, as reading has become a passion of mine and I’m starting to run out of new books to read.
