Reddit mentions of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

From across the pond, welcome to pretty much the best sport ever! We're glad you're here :) I'm gonna try to keep it general, cuz I think once you've got the basics down you can just watch some games and refine it from there. Also, I learned a lot of stuff about the game by playing video games like The Show, so if you can get a copy of that and wanna get more in-depth that's actually not a bad way to come at it from a different angle.

Let's start with the overall structure of the game. One of the things that's different from most sports is how many games there are in a season, and to accommodate that two teams will play several games in a row against each other. That's only really important if you don't want to look silly when talking to another baseball fan. As far as actual game structure, there are nine innings a game. Each inning has a "top" and a "bottom;" in Major League Baseball the away team gets to hit in the top of an inning and the home team defends ("fields").

Arguably the main competition happening within a game is between the pitcher and the batter. Whenever a batter steps up to take his swings, that's called an at bat or AB for short. During an AB, the batter will try to swing at pitches in what's called the strike zone. The strike zone (and correct me if I'm wrong on this guys cuz it has changed some) is the width of home plate and the height is between a batter's belt and his knees. It's important to understand the strike zone because then you can understand balls and strikes. A ball is whenever a pitcher throws outside the strike zone and the batter doesn't swing at it. However, if a batter does swing and either misses the ball or fouls it off, it counts as a strike. A foul is when the batter puts the bat on the ball but it goes out of bounds. This can be into the seats, behind the batter's box, outside the foul lines (those little white lines that go straight out from home plate, cross third and first base, and extend all the way to the edge of the outfield), etc.

The total number of balls and strikes in an AB is called the count. The count's important because once a batter gets 4 balls, he takes first base on a walk, which is also called a "base on balls" in ye olde lingoe and why the stat is abbreviated BB. But if the pitcher throws him 3 strikes, he's out! That's called a strikeout. However, a foul ball never counts as a third strike, it's only a strike out if the batter doesn't make contact (either swinging and missing or not swinging at a pitch in the strike zone).

There are other ways to record an out too; strikeouts are by far the least common. First let's talk fly outs. That's when a batter gets the ball in the air but it's caught by one of the fielders. There are two "special" fly outs, one being a pop fly. That's just a fly ball that doesn't leave the infield (i.e. usually it's caught by the pitcher or a baseman rather than an outfielder). There are also foul outs. Like I said before, fouls are balls that aren't in the normal playing field. But pretty much all stadiums have what's called "foul territory," which is space between the foul lines and the seats. If a fielder catches a fly ball that stays out of the seats, that's a foul out! Second, though, there are ground outs. A ball is considered "live" as soon as it touches fair ground. All that really means is that the batter-cum-runner isn't out yet. Anyway, if the batter hits the ball on the ground, one of the fielders can pick it up and throw it to first base. If the ball gets to the base before the runner does, he's out!

Obviously if every batter got out all the time the game wouldn't really have a point, so there are also hits! There are really only four flavors of hits: Singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. As the names imply, it's just what base the runner can manage to get to safely. If there's a runner on second or third base, we say he's in scoring position, which means that any hit has a pretty good chance of getting him home. Incidentally, that's how points or runs are scored: having a runner cross home plate.

A batter is credited with a run batted in (RBI for short) when he gets a hit and a runner makes it home. There are other ways to get an RBI, too: If there's a runner in scoring position (usually third base but sometimes second if the guy is REALLY fast) and the batter hits a fly ball far enough into the outfield, the runner can still score if he tags up and runs home. Since the ball hasn't hit the ground, it's not live yet. Once it hits the fielder's glove, though, we're off to the races! The runner first has to tag the bag he's on, then when the ball comes alive he can score. If he does, then the batter is out but he still gets an RBI. However, the fielders have a chance to throw the ball home and try to tag the runner out before he touches the base.

There are other sacrifice plays besides the sac fly. Batters can also hit sacrifice ground balls, but these aren't always to score runs like the sac fly is. Explaining this part requires a lot of strategy talk so I'll steer clear of a lot of it since I'm just trying to go through the basics, but a lot of the time it's just to move a runner into scoring position.

I'll finish out by just talking about a couple of the stats you'll hear a lot about. Ima start with hitting stats! The most common one you'll hear is batting average or just "average." This stat is just what percent of the time a batter will get a hit. Also, even though a lot of these stats are shown as decimals, they're really percentages. So like if a batter has a .250 average, chances are he'll get a hit every fourth AB. If he's got a .333 average, it'll be a third of the time. So on and so forth. If a player is batting over .300 that's generally considered really good. Jose Reyes right now has a .350 average and that's the highest in all of MLB, so that's really good. As an historical note, batting .400 is kind of a mythical achievement that not too many guys have managed.

I've already explained RBIs, but just FYI that's the other big stat that most media outlets highlight as the most important one. Home runs are usually the third stat that rounds out what they show you on TV when a guy steps up to bat. It's becoming more common, though, that a player's on base percentage or OBP is displayed. That's the average number of times a guy gets on base either by hits, walks, or being hit by a pitch (if a pitcher hits a batter with the ball the batter automatically gets to take first base no matter what the count is). Some people consider OBP to be the most important stat, but that's something you can read more about if you want.

And now here are some pitching stats! Probably the two biggest stats commentators highlight are earned run average or ERA and wins. The ERA is the average number of runs that pitcher would allow in nine innings. Say, for example, his ERA is 3.00. That means, were he to throw all nine innings of a game, he'd give up 3 runs on average. Anything lower than that is usually considered pretty elite. Wins are becoming more widely regarded as kind of a meaningless stat but, nonetheless, can be a big impressive number we like to ooo and ahhh at. The stat itself is just if one pitcher gave up fewer runs than the other. That's kind of a gross oversimplification, but I'm not sure I can really articulate the nuances much better than that. The pitching equivalent of OBP is the WHIP, or walks plus hits per inning pitched. I say "equivalent" because both are stats that are really important but only just starting to be talked about during an average broadcast. WHIP is a really crucial stat because it reflects how many baserunners the pitcher allows during an inning. A WHIP of less than 1.00 is suuuuper good, but becoming more common in the post-steroid era.

And with that, I think you should more or less have the tools you need to start watching and loving baseball! Welcome again!

EDIT: Wow thank you guys so much for the great feedback!!! This is my last day at my tearing-my-hair-out internship so I'll come back and change the things I got wrong later tonight. If you know of somewhere else where people might find this helpful, feel free to repost it wherever (though I'd really appreciate it if you tack my name on it)!

(1) Read, bruh. I can't vouch for it personally, but I've heard the book Watching Baseball Smarter recommended with high regard. And it's almost literally the exact thing you asked for. Here are some other good book recommendations:

• Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Hard to believe that the book is sort of old hat at this point, but it still serves as a very readable introduction to advanced statistics.
  
  
• The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James (mostly). This book is good toilet reading, if you have a massive toilet on which to perch it, and your bowel movements are glacially paced. James ranks the best players at each position, and goes on a witty, decade-by-decade jog through the history of the game.
  
  
• The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango. Are you a "math person"? Read this book, you'll like it. It's an introduction to sabermetrics that explains the important first principles of statistical analysis, builds an important statistic (wOBA) from the ground up, and then applies all of that knowledge to answer specific questions about baseball strategies and to debunk, verify, or qualify some of baseball's hoary "conventional wisdom."
  
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. This book is not about baseball, but it's still great and you should read it.
  
  (2) You'll want to start watching the game more, if you can. Find a method (like MLB.tv or, you know, your television) to do so. Massive exposure does help you learn, and it's a fun, if inefficient, method. Osmosis. That's just science.
  
  (2b) Depending on the broadcast crew, it's sometimes addition-by-subtraction to mute the television.
  
  (2c) If you have MLB.tv Premium and intend to follow your favorite team, I recommend watching the other team's broadcast. You know enough about [TEAM X] already. Learn something new about [TEAM Y], instead. Unless, of course, (2b) applies, in which case maybe your best bet is MLB.tv's option to overlay the radio broadcast on the TV video. Barring that, the liberal application of the DOWN VOLUME button is always an option, and then, like, listen to Chopin's Preludes. Don't be That Guy and lean too heavily on No. 15, though. There are 23 others. Expand your horizons.
  
  (3) When you go to games, keep score. Sure, there's a guy a few seats over in a striped button-down and pre-faded jeans (Chad or something) who will mock you mercilessly for it. Sad for you, you've lost Chad's respect. But, oh, the things you'll gain. A free souvenir. A better grasp on the flow of the game. The priceless power to answer the "what did I miss" and "what the fuck just happened" questions that litter the air at ballgames, tragically disregarded and forgotten like the syllabi from Chad's last semester at Bromaha State. You can learn how to score ballgames here. Fuck Chad.
  
  (3b) Go to games alone now and then. Did I mention that, in some company, it's rightly considered rude to score a ballgame like a trainspotting anorak? Not in all company, mind you. But I like going to some games alone to avoid the messy politics of divided attention altogether.
  
  (4) Bookmark a few websites. Quick stat references include FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and Brooks Baseball. Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and the Hardball Times are all good. FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference both have subscription options that allow you to access enhanced content for a small fee, which is worth it if only to support the yeoman's work that they do compiling and sorting our beloved numbers.
  
  (5) German chess great Emanuel Lasker is believed (incorrectly) to have said that "if you see a good move, look for a better one." Good advice. Too much of the history of baseball analysis is the history of people getting stuck in comfortable places and refusing to interrogate their own ideas about the game. Sabermetricians have made careers out of just pointing this out, and even some of them do it from time to time. Also, on the level of pure self-interest, baseball ignorance and bad teeth have this much in common: Keeping your mouth shut hides them both. If you have a good opinion about a baseball topic, look for a better one.
  
  (6) Watch a some decent movies about baseball. Sugar is excellent and disturbing. Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns is available on Netflix and worth watching. You drink his nostalgic Flavor-Aid at your own peril: At times, Baseball is about as edifying as having a good, 19-hour stare at a Norman Rockwell painting. It's still in a class all its own as a baseball documentary. You should also watch Ed, starring Matt LeBlanc, because it'll teach you not to take strangers on the internet seriously when they give you advice.
  
  (7) When you go to games, wear whatever the hell you want. This has nothing to do with understanding baseball, but it annoys me when people make a big deal out of policing the clothing that others wear to sporting events. Sitting front-row at a Yankees-Tigers game in your best Steelers jersey and a pink Houston Astros BP cap? Whatever. You be you. You be you. I once watched as a perfectly innocent college student was denied a free t-shirt from a Nats Park employee because he (the student) was wearing a Red Sox shirt with his Washington cap. That was pretty fucked.
  
  (8) Take the EdX Sabermetrics course. Others have recommended this, with good reason. It's a wonderful introduction to advanced analytics, and you get a taste of programming in R and MySQL as well. You don't need a CompSci background. I sure didn't.
  
  Hope this helped.
  
  Footnote: Chad-hating is actually too easy. Truth is, I've never really been mocked for scoring games. Once, I even bonded with a Chad-esque guy sitting next to me at a Braves-Nats game here in Washington. He was pretty drunk, but we talked Braves baseball while he drank and I drank and I scored the game and he drank more. He seemed utterly engaged by the scoring process in that guileless, doe-eyed way that only the drunk have mastered. That's the Chad I loved.

It's almost as if the rest of the league is not valuing these assets correctly. Oh wait, where have we seen this before?

Depends how much effort you want to put into it.

For general baseball knowledge and history:

• Watch all of Ken Burns Baseball (its all on Youtube).
  
• Read Moneyball for an understanding of how modern analytics revolutionized the game and upended the status quo. (Some people are still fighting this fight, but among MLB front offices the nerds have already "won" basically).
  
• Read Baseball Between the Numbers for a good primer on modern analysis (though there has been more progress since that book came out of course)
  
  
  For Dodgers specific history:
  
  
• Watch the ESPN 30 for 30 on Valenzuela (Fernando Nation).
  
• Read Jon Weisman's book about the Dodgers for a great overview of team history.
  
• Read Molly Knight's book for a good narrative look at the current team and ownership group. This is great context for understanding how we got to where we are now.
  
  For current news and analysis:
  
  
• Dodgers Digest is a great blog for level-headed, intelligent Dodgers analysis. The writers there know what they are talking about and aren't overly reactionary, as a general rule.
  
• True Blue LA, the Dodgers SB Nation blog, is run by Eric Stephen who is the most diligent Dodgers beat writer today. In the off season for example, he's writing a season review for every player who appeared for the Dodgers in 2015.

It's not about more or less insight, it's about the lens through which you interpret the information. MarkZ had an interesting short twitter thread about it.

In general, even people who spend all day watching and analyzing players' performances can be biased and have inaccurate perceptions of players' skill. One of the core motifs of Moneyball was precisely that. The old scouts who had played and scouted the game for decades were biased in particular ways that relative newcomers who weren't indigenous to baseball weren't.

I'm mostly a basketball guy so...


You don't need to have ever seen a basketball game to appreciate these first two books.

Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam which it probably the best NBA book. It follows the 1978 Portland Trail Blazers and gets way more access than anyone could get now. Plus Halberstam was a great writer so he gets the most out of excellent material.

The Last Shot by Darcy Frey this is probably my favorite basketball book. It follows high school basketball players and it works as biography as well as an exploration of sports culture, race, class, and youth. The Hoop Dreams of books. Great journalism on a great subject.

Freedarko's The Undisputed Guide to Basketball History Captures the visceral and intellectual thrill of watching basketball better than any other book. Manages to capture big picture and little picture.

Seven Seconds or Less Lifelong basketball writer follows one of the funnest teams in NBA history for a year


Pistol Biography of Pistol Pete and his insanely driven father. Manages the rare feat for a sports biography of not slipping into hagiography.


Baseball

Moneyball How baseball teams were run a decade ago. Really well written and somehow manages to make baseball and business really entertaining. Great for fans and non-fans.

1.)We have the History. We have 9 World Series titles, which is a lot, (3rd all time) but not to a point where we are spoiled.

2.)We are one of the two teams in the AL that hasn't changed our names.

3.)We are on the West Coast, and for 10 years had a minor league team in Vancouver

4.)We are invented, and are Moneyball

5.)Nerdpower

6.)We have a great young bunch of players coming up that thanks to brilliant people, will continue for years to come.

7.)You can't beat us, everyone loves the underdog, and our uniforms are some of the best.

8.) We won 3 straight WS in the 1970's with one of the craziest teams of all time. The only other team to win 3 straight WS titles? The Yankees. Trust me, you don't want to root for the Yankees.

I hope now you have enough info to make a decision!

Edit-Spacing

Here are a few books that I really enjoyed. The first couple are stats-oriented, while the third is more narrative-driven.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis

The Only Rule Is It Has to Work by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller

Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein

> What really fucks me off is the insistence on using a metric shitload of acronyms that are literally meaningless to a new spectator. It took me a fortnight to work out that K means strikeout. Why, for fuck's sake?!

It's actually because of Henry Chadwick, an Englishman who pioneered the statistical analysis of baseball. The "K" represents the last letter in "struck" (as in "struck out"). He used it because "S" was already taken up as a designation for "sacrifice" (as in "sacrifice hit"). It is still popular because baseball fans are creatures of habit, and, as others have mentioned, "K" makes it very easy when scorekeeping to differentiate between a swinging strikeout and a looking strikeout.

To address the broader issue: Baseball statistics have developed haphazardly over the last 150 years. Old statistics with old designations are layered under newer statistics with newer designations - all of them carrying little (or big) bits of information about the play on the field which, at one point or another, somebody thought it would be useful to remember - and the abbreviations and acronyms reflect the evolving requirements of newspaper layout editors, analysts, fans, and scorekeepers. There's really no easy way to learn it all, but I can assure you that just trying to do so will immeasurably increase your appreciation for the game.

I would suggest a two-pronged approach. First, take note of the statistics mentioned by broadcasters. These tend to be "caveman" stats - batting average, RBIs, ERA, pitcher wins, etc. - which are really crude measures of performance but are very popular and therefore are important to know. Second, pick up a book or two about sabermetrics - Moneyball and The Book are both good - and read a little bit about the more advanced approaches to stats and analysis that baseball watchers have taken over the past couple of decades. Also, surf Fangraphs and Baseball Reference. Soon, you'll be able to identify all the statistics that broadcasters throw around, and you'll be able to tell which of them are useful and which are useless.

Your list is great, so I'm just going to tack on some suggestions to what you've already got rather than start my own.

Numbers-y, science-y books
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First by Jonah Keri

Memoirs
Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit by Matt McCarthy

Veeck as in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck

Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big

and Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball by Jose Canseco

Fiction
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Non-fiction

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George F. Will

The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-Stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds

and The Good Stuff: Columns about the Magic of Sports

and The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski

3 Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager by Buzz Bissinger

The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn

The Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920 by Mike Sowell

Yes, I understand the irony of Joe Posnanski and Jose Canseco being the only author with multiple books. Just read Canseco's books. They're actually not bad.

There are more I'm forgetting. I must have read 50 books about baseball in my short life. I'll add them if I remember.

Calico Joe, and slightly different but an excellent sports book nonetheless, Moneyball.

Huge baseball fan..

this looks like a great read!

Buy Moneyball.
Non-fiction, about a moment that changed baseball history, by a writer that knows how to tell gripping non-fiction stories (see Flash Boys, The Big Short etc.)

Moneyball is a book. This book.

Moneyball is also the theories espoused in that book. The book basically introduced the idea to the general public, that by truly understanding baseball statistics, teams could get an edge up on their competition and succeed while spending less. The book led to a statistical revolution in baseball, leading to the popularization of new statistics (like WAR, FIP) that were better predictors of future success than the old statistics (Runs, RBI) were.

I think one thing to do is not only get your kid into the athletic side of sports, but also to the career or academic side of it. Rather than encourage your kid to be an athlete, you should be promoting the concept of becoming an athlete/coach or athlete/trainer or athlete/manager, etc.

Just having your kid trying to become the best athlete is very short sighted, and you're limiting the potential success of your kid through sports. Let's be honest, your kid isn't going to be the next Pacquiao. But he could become a great trainer with a bunch of gyms in the area he lives in, well connected to the boxing industry. He could become an executive or manager or trainer within the industry. You could have your kid learn math through sports for example. There's plenty of nerdy analysis in all sports, since Moneyball came out.

Here's some recommended reading:

• The Book - That's literally the name of the book. It's full of one-off chapters covering a variety of topics.
  
• Baseball Between the Numbers - This one is also a bunch of one-off type stuff
  
• Moneyball - Talks about how the 2002 Oakland A's capitalized on some offensive statistics that were being recorded but not heavily utilized to determine player values, and thus built a playoff team from undervalued hitters
  
• Big Data Baseball - Talks about the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates and their use of big data strategies to find defensive value where other teams didn't (primarily in pitch framing, ground-ball pitching, defensive range, and shifting)
  
  The first two of those are heavily focused on the numbers and will probably teach you more about the whys and hows, while the second two are more about the narrative but still give you some insight into hard numbers.
  
  Also, I'd recommend just joining SABR. It's $60/year for most people, but if you're under 30 it drops down to $45/year. There are a lot of local chapters out there that have regular meetings. For example, the Twin Cities have the Halsey Hall chapter. There's a book club meeting on Saturday (to talk about Big Data Baseball), a hot stove breakfast in a few weeks (informal meeting to just hang out and talk baseball), a regular chapter meeting in April for people to actually present research, and the chapter occasionally has organized outings to minor league games.
  
  SABR also has a national conference and a specific national analytics conference, as well. Membership also includes a subscription to Baseball Research Journal, which comes out twice per year and contains a lot of really good stuff that members have been written both from a statistics and a history standpoint.

>You put a lot on the table but I'd rather just try to parse the core contention I have with what you're trying to say, which still appears to be "One is good enough to judge what's good"

No, I'm saying that "one should not be interested in the rank of an advice-giver."

>How are people like this, who represent the vast majority of the game, supposed to stress test anything and come to an honest conclusion? How will they interpret the results? My core contention with what you're saying, to use very plain terms, is people are dumb, and you appear to be saying that people aren't dumb and can think for themselves, but then at times you seem to admit people are dumb also.

I saw the first Men In Black movie too; people are dumb. But a person is smart. It's up to them to play through the solo queue grind, it's up to them to overcome obstacles in their path, and it's up to them to acquire the skills to get over those hurdles.

But why are people dumb? It's groupthink; what happens when people put acceptance of ideas over substance of ideas. That comes from fallacies, one of the largest being ad hominem/tu quoque. How'd the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton? They convinced themselves that the biggest scandal magnet in US political history is the "safer" (more likely to win) candidate than Sanders. How'd the Republicans nominate Donald Trump? They convinced themselves that the guy who has talked more about his dick in public than every candidate in US history combined will inspire voters to get behind him.

How do low bronzies stay bronze? They're not thinking or improving, and it's probably because they're letting someone else do their thinking for them. Not certainly, but you see what I'm saying; thinking for yourself will be of help.

>It feels like I should be agreeing with you when I'm reading what you're writing, but i don't know what it is, I just end up confused. I just think you're putting too much stock in the fluidity of what's good and what's bad in this game. I'm super pragmatic about things, I'm not going to crunch the numbers on 4x dagger rush on ADC's. I'm just going to go "Whelp, whatever the standard build is is probably really good and refined, and 4x dagger rush is probably garbage. I just won't run the numbers on that and risk missing out on the epiphany that the playerbase has it all wrong.

You should. You'll be surprised at what you actually can learn.

Here's a piece I wrote with a very clickbaity headline where I theorycrafted an item choice. I believed then and still believe now that it was right at the time, but the items have changed since then which make the article wrong today. For example, it was written before the Refillable Potion existed.

Feel free to read the comments to see people shit all over it. But, pay attention to this comment string. A Diamond player takes me on, makes some very fair points, and has more to say when I rebut. His final point is along the lines of "I agree with your point that if you do these other things that you mentioned in the article, your item build is better. It's just not that clear-cut," and I found that to be a completely reasonable answer.

This is of course in contrast to this diamond player who has a one-word reply, and his follow-up is proven wrong in the article.

>This is just one instance obviously, but this is my general approach to the entirety of the burden of knowledge in League and what I'd advocate to just about anyone.

Yeah, this isn't a simple game. But, it's not chess or go. It's not that hard, nor is i hard to put in the time studying if you're already willing to put in the time playing. Now, if someone is adverse to self-study, that's on them. I just hope they're not surprised when they haven't actually improved several months down the line.

>Your tl;dr appears to be "Think for yourself" mine is "Listen and copy high elo players blindly" Both have their flaws, clearly, but this just appears to be a difference in outlook.

Yeah, your description of my point is accurate enough. And, I seem to be correctly hearing yours. I just disagree with it very strongly. It's come up too often in my own experience to see it any other way. I'll spare you my life story, but I can provide general evidence.

A software developer from India, who has watched cricket and nothing else, has volunteered to coach his daughter's basketball team. He sees a basketball game for the first time. When one team scores, he noticed that they immediately retreat back to their own basket. A basketball court is 94 feet long, and they give the first 60 feet away for free! He thought it was retarded. Here's how it turned out.

A Major League Baseball GM for a low-revenue team is sick and tired of losing to his better financed opponents. Realizing that he can't compete in a bidding war, he looks for odd players that may be underpriced. He hears of a pitcher named Chad Bradford, who is posting amazing numbers in AAA ball, but no team is willing to promote him to the Show. He's a submarine pitcher; he throws funny. The GM wonders...this guy gets people out, but no one's willing to let him do it on the big stage just because he throws funny? He thought that was retarded. Here's how that turned out. I recommend the book instead of the movie.

Now, follow the meta all you like, but unless you've got something special, what makes you think you'll get different and better results than an average player? Hey, to make Platinum in NA, you've got to get past 90% of the entire ranked player base! You think that's gonna happen doing what the rest of the player base does, or by doing something different?

I just recommend starting to look for common things that seem retarded. I can assure you the player base of League of Legends will provide plenty of material for you.

But if you let other people do the looking...do you really think they'll see anything?

Probably the most famous book about baseball strategy is Moneyball, which covers the 2002 Oakland Athletics team.