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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357640973
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Dutton Adult
Manufacturer: Dutton Adult
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: March 15, 2007
Publishing house: Dutton Adult
Release Date: March 15, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 22163
Studio: Dutton Adult
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Product Description:
Freakonomics meets Moneyball in this provocative exposé of baseballs most fiercely debated controversies and some of its oldest, most dearly held mythsexplained through the language of numbers and cool cash.
Two hot topics team up in The Baseball Economist, and the result is a refreshing, clear- eyed survey of a playing field that has changed radically in recent years. Utilizing the latest economic methods and statistical analysis, writer, economics professor, and popular blogger J. C. Bradbury dissects burning baseball topics with his original Sabernomic perspective, such as:
Did steroids have nothing to do with the recent home run records? Incredibly, Bradburys research, reviewed by Stanford economists, reveals steroids had little statistical significance.
Is the big-city versus small-city competition really lopsided? Bradbury shows why the Marlins and Indians are likely to dominate big-city franchises in the coming years.
Which players are ridiculously overvalued? Bradbury lists all players by team with their revenue value to the team listed in dollarsincluding a dishonor role of those players with negative values.
Is major league baseball a monopoly that cant govern itself? Bradbury sets out what rules the owners really need to play by, and what the players union should be doing.
Does it help to lobby for balls and strikes? How would Babe Ruth perform in todays game? And who killed all the left-handed catchers, anyway? The Baseball Economist knows.
Providing far more than a mere collection of numbers, Bradbury shines the light of his economic thinking on baseball, exposing the power of tradeoffs, competition, and incentives. Statistics alone arent enough anymore. Fans, fantasy buffs, and players, as well as coaches at all levels who want to grasp what is really happening on the field yesterday and in the coming years, will use and enjoy Bradburys brilliant new understanding of the national pastime.
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Rated by buyers 
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On Sunday, Dustin Pedroia made a dumb base running decision on the ball he hit off the Monster at Fenway Park, stopping after he rounded very first then continuing on to second. The Red Sox had one out and nobody on, but according to sabermetrics, it was a good at-bat as his on-base percentage went up! Economist and baseball fan, J.C. Bradbury has produced a good enjoyable book using sabermetrics and microeconomics. His look into the on-field probabilities, general managerial decisions and the economics of the league are not without problems but are intriguing and at times enlightening.
As a baseball fan, part one - "On The Field" - interested me the most. He opens the book looking into the difference of Hit Batsmen between the American and National Leagues. The varying rules regarding the DH allow him to use the law of demand and the ideas of opportunity costs, which should interest an economist in baseball and a baseball fan in economics as a tool for understanding more than money. His theories into the dearth of left-handed catchers are good: Bradbury feels that the demand for pitchers with good arms means that lefties are more likely at a young age to be pushed that way then to the tools of ignorance. However, he doesn't look into what I always thought was the greatest hindrance to lefty catchers, most batters are right handed, and therefore the throw to second is generally that much more difficult. I would like to see somebody compare SB percentages when there is a lefty at bat, before I become unconvinced of it.
As an economist, I am most interested in part four - "What Field?" - where Bradbury looks into the economics of baseball teams, tickets, etc. He looks to the theory of monopoly and competition to show the optimal prices of tickets, teams in the leagues and games played in a season. For ticket prices, he shows a great example of discriminatory pricing between teams, rather than the more obvious between seats. How can baseball as a whole discriminate in prices between Kansas City's $18 a seat average and Boston's $44? Despite the obvious, I'd never pay $44 to see the Royals; Bradbury also shows that any monopoly with a grasp of its buyers is able to do this and that baseball is an example of economics in general.
Where he gets off track is the same old problem many baseball fans have with sabermetrics in general. The very first is his look at the on-deck hitter. He tries to show that, in aggregates, the talent of the on-deck hitter does affect the pitches thrown to the batter. How does he make these decisions? You know, On Base Percentage! Yet, I have just two great examples of the fallacy of this. How many times was Roger Maris intentionally walked in 1961, when he hit 61 home runs? The answer is zero, because Mickey Mantle was batting behind him. The second example is a game I saw in 2001 involving the Red Sox. The Sox take out Carl "Dinosaurs Didn't Exist" Everett for Darren Lewis, as a defensive replacement in the seventh - .250 career hitter Darren Lewis. When the other team tied the game, between the 8th and 18th they intentionally walked Manny Ramirez four times, because Darren Lewis would just ground into a double play on the subsequent at-bat, and the Sox couldn't score. Yet, this would not be shown in his look at the stats, because Manny's OBP and OPS actually went up in the game! Surely had the other team had been able to score to win the game, part of it was because Everett wasn't batting behind Manny.
Here's the other problem OBP versus the ability to hit in the clutch. Bradbury says: "The problem is that hitting with RISP [runners in scoring position] is not a skill, or at least not much of one we can identify, but a statistical anomaly" (155). Further he argues: "If a hitting with RISP is something a hitter can purposely alter, I have a hard time believing he is holding something back in non-RISP situations" (156). I have two arguments against this idea. First, Pat Tabler, in his 12-year career Tabler hit .282 for his career. But, with the bases loaded he hit 43 for 88 (.488). Surely, over 88 at-bats there must be some sort of edge. My second argument is David Ortiz!
Turning to pitchers, the road is even murkier. He looks to defensive independent pitching stats ERA, whereby if one looks not to a pitcher's ERA but to how he does when ball are out of play - walks, strikeouts and homeruns - we get a better metric of how good a pitcher is because he could have a good or terrible defense behind him. This is all well and good, but I've watched Pedro Martinez and Greg Maddux enough to know that there are some pitchers that when push comes to shove make better pitches in pressure situations. Strangely enough, these statisticians find the best pitchers who have the best ERAs have the best ERAs when the ball does not go into play. So?
Then there is the look at general managers. Specifically he looks to Bill Beane and his Oakland A's ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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I just finished reading The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed the other night. If you're not a baseball fan then you can skip the rest of this post without offending me. Besides being a book about something that I love, this book was written by a Wofford alum! All the more reason to reason to read it! The author J.C. Bradbury runs an interesting blog, Sabernomics, where he writes all sorts of interesting baseball articles. Sometimes they are specifically Atlanta Braves related articles, but they run the gamut from free agent player values to, and most recently, the steroid situation.
This book was absolutely fantastic and one that I would highly recommend to anyone that is either a fan of the game or loves statistics. Because the subject of the book is baseball, the regression analysis and formulas presented seem to flow naturally. The chapters are perfectly sized analysis in themselves that each make for an evening sit-down.
With chapters like "The Legendary Power of the On-Deck Hitter", "The Evolution of Baseball Talent", and "Scouts vs. Stat-Head" you know that you have something interesting in your hands. J.C. does a masterful job of laying statistical data to support his conclusions without losing the reader.
My personal favorite chapter, "The Extinct Left-Handed Catcher," looks at why there is no such thing as a left-handed catcher in baseball. J.C. looks for performance reasons and ultimately concludes "the benefits of using right-handed catchers are small, maybe the costs will yield some answers." These costs ultimately show their solution in the very simple revelation: "The biggest reason there is no left-handed catchers is natural selection. Catchers need good throwing arms. If you have a kid on your baseball team who is left-handed and has a strong arm, what are you going to do with him?" Any baseball person can easily answer this, he's going to pitch!
The entire book was filled with revelations similar to this! Every chapter brought statistical analysis into the equation to definitively prove relationships in baseball. Is any of this going to make me a better baseball player, coach, or fan? Probably not, but for anyone that has a passion for the sport I'm sure they will feverously consume this book with the same passion. It's obvious that J.C. also shares that passion and it carries through this work.
You can read my other reviews on my blog: http://doteduguru.com
Rated by buyers 
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I work with economic theorists all the time, but I am not going to tell you this is a good book. Pieces of it are. Bradbury dwells on the steriods issue, prattling on and on about the lack of evidence. Yet, no where does he accept the challenge of studying the relative performances of the individuals to determine the effect of steriods. Rather, he just says it has never been proven. He even blurs the distinction of taking steriods for performance reasons vs. health reasons (and he never considers the differences in the steriods themselves!)
Some of his economic observations are interesting, those where he really studies the game and statistics. I, for one, can find other, more rewarding but boring books to give me a Saturday afternoon snooze. And Bradbury should stick to his statistical analysis of the game (where he excels), not the policy points (where he only debates under the ruse of economic theories).
Rated by buyers 
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I'm a rabid baseball fan and have read most of the sabermetrics books and have enjoyed most of them. I bought and read all the Elias Baseball Analysts books (if you have to ask you're not a hard core fan) in the series. That said, I didn't care for the subjects or writing in this book. The books needs more punch to make it enjoyable and interesting. I got through the very first couple of chapters, then quickly skimmed parts of the rest of the book.
If you thinking about buying the book for a friend don't. If I didn't care for the book, I can't imagine casual fans even going past its cover.
Rated by buyers -
This quote starts chapter 13, and applies to this book as well. The Baseball Economist holds its own and then some when compared to most sabermetric stats books out there. It contains an ecletic but interesting collection of subjects like Freakanomics, presented within a baseball/economic context like MoneyBall. This isn't a book specifically about the economics of baseball, it is more about how the author applies economic methods to answer certain baseball related questions.
That sounds kind of dry, but the author is a better writer than I am, so the book is quite interesting. The very first section I found particularly convincing, as it applies principles of economics to identifying why the DH promotes more hit batsmen, why there are almost no lefty catchers, and the over-ratedness of the protection afforded by the on deck hitter. Latter chapters discuss how baseball differs from a true monopoly, and how this has worked to the benefit of the fans.
In the Epilogue, the author writes that he considered calling this book, "An Economist Ruins Baseball", which I'm glad he didn't. That would have done a disservice to this book. Very interesting book to the general baseball fan, and not just a number cruncher book. Probably the best baseball book I have read since MoneyBall.
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