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Reddit mentions of The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Sentiment score: 12
Reddit mentions: 27

We found 27 Reddit mentions of The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball. Here are the top ones.

The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball
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Found 27 comments on The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball:

u/barkevious2 · 30 pointsr/baseball

(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.
u/JolIyJack · 12 pointsr/baseball

This is The Book

u/noitamroftuo · 8 pointsr/Sabermetrics

yes, and its not, read this https://www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1494260174

ask yourself this: why would a hitting strategy work better to win 3 out of 5 games than 100 out of 162 games? answer: it wouldn't. the commentators on these playoff games are bad

u/j3rown · 6 pointsr/sportsbook

Here are two that are sport specific (MLB) but really helped:

Betting Baseball by Richard Nichols

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango (I swear by this book, it's basically my bible)

u/mncoder · 6 pointsr/Sabermetrics

Take a look at wOBA. http://www.fangraphs.com/library/offense/woba/

Read The Book: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1494260174

And the world doesn't need any more offensive metrics, sorry.

u/DFSBettor · 5 pointsr/sportsbook

MLB resources, good luck with your prep

www.baseballreference.com

www.dailybaseballdata.com

www.fangraphs.com

www.xstats.org

www.fantasylabs.com (daily lineup projections)

www.sbrodds.com (historical lines)

www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1494260174

www.twitter.com/TheHandicaper/lists/mlb-beat-writers/members

u/Phildopip · 4 pointsr/baseball

If you're looking into the more advanced stats I'd recommend the following:

A good place to get started is the Fangraphs resource pages. Just follow the tabs below the search bar/"follow us" section of the page. For my money, Fangraphs offers the most complete and well-rounded advanced stats out there and they don't use black box proprietary stats like Baseball Prospectus.

If you want to dive in a little more deeply, "The Book" by Tom Tango lays things out really well.

"Baseball Between the Numbers" by Jonah Keri is a solid read too.

Have fun getting started!

u/Rhetorical__Answer · 3 pointsr/IAmA

Wondering if you have read "The Book"by Tom Tango, which really delves into this question in a lot lot more detail:
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1494260174

It really attempts to answer that question as scientifically (sabermetrically) as possible.

u/ruffyen · 3 pointsr/baseball

[The Book](The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball https://www.amazon.com/dp/1494260174/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_sOD.BbA9GN5CG) opened my eyes to several baseball ideas.

One such was the idea that batting order has any significant impact on games. Basically they price how it only adds a couple runs per year... Not wins... Runs... Fascinating read at times

u/[deleted] · 3 pointsr/KotakuInAction

Tom Tango, the person who literally wrote The Book on baseball analytics (No, not Moneyball, the other one) uses a pseudonym and is completely anonymous. I have no idea if this person is even a man. Their ideas stand on their own merits and not the identity or background of the person who wrote them. He is currently employed with MLB Advanced Media as their Senior Database Architect of Stats and is pretty much our generation's version of Bill James.


u/GarageCat08 · 2 pointsr/Cardinals

Of course! If you're interested in this sort of thing, I really recommend checking out The Book that I keep referencing. The author used to work for the Mariners, and has recently been working for the Cubs quite a bit as a statistical analyst. He also has a pretty interesting blog.

It has a bunch of analysis on stuff like this, and it's made me think about different aspects of the sport differently. I base a lot of my baseball comments on it now as well. I'm just finishing the last few chapters of it right now, and I love it

u/Major_Square · 2 pointsr/TexasRangers

Even with the bases empty a single could lead to man on second or even third. Tango and Lic....

...that was a nice play...

Anyway Tango and Lichtman figured this out based on how runs actually score. It's in this book, which is a heavy read but is very interesting. Maybe be available from your library.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1494260174?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ffsb-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1494260174

u/immoralminority · 2 pointsr/Sabermetrics

I strongly endorse The Book from Tom. It's a really great read.

u/Waaait_For_It · 2 pointsr/Sabermetrics

I just picked up The Book and its fantastic.

u/mattds1993 · 2 pointsr/Braves

The Book is about ten years old now, but it's where a lot of modern baseball stats and knowledge originated. I believe they do a chapter on bunting.

u/gilpdawg · 1 pointr/Sabermetrics

I can recommend several books.

Baseball Between the Numbers by the BP folks.
It's old, and some parts of it are outdated, but I cut my saber teeth on that thing. There's also another book in the same vein by the same group called Extra Innings.
https://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Between-Numbers-Everything-About/dp/0465005470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501900503&sr=8-1&keywords=baseball+between+the+numbers

The Book by Tango and MGL.
It's very nerdy, so it's not for everyone.
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1494260174/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1501900528&sr=8-3&keywords=baseball+between+the+numbers

The newer(ish) Keith Law and Brian Kenny books are pretty good too. I'm too lazy to link to those and they are easy to find.

u/modeledthat · 1 pointr/sportsbook

what you are describing is not a model. you are simply picking games using factors (some of which are not predictive in any way) in an unweighted manner. it's not possible to quantity your edge anyway using that method, counteracting the entire point of what modeling is for.


edit: this isn't really a constructive comment so let me offer something. start by reading the book if modeling baseball is something you are serious about.

u/NoBrakes58 · 1 pointr/baseball

Depending on how deep or not your knowledge is, Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample (paging /u/zackhample) actually includes some insights that non-players might never get, and is a pretty reasonable introduction to the game. Talks a fair bit about individual positions and strategies for various situations.

For a more statistically-oriented look, I recommend The Book: Playing Percentages in Baseball by Tango, Lichtman, and Dolphin. There's a lot of neat insights in there, and they actually show their work fairly well.

If you want something a bit more involved, get a membership to the Society for American Baseball Research and go raid the journal archives and the digital library. A lot of people think of SABR as being all about stats, but they do a lot of historical work, as well.

u/BloodyMummer · 1 pointr/baseball

I would spend a lot of time looking at K/BB rates on both pitchers and hitters. Also, keep in mind The Book says there's a 30 point platoon advantage on lefty/righty match-ups, and the amount of ABs needed to see for sure something different is closer to 1,000 than 50. There's a chance you might not want to change too much as you won't see enough ABs to see a statistical significant difference. I would recommend buying The Book to answer a lot of the questions you have.

u/mnemosyne-0002 · 1 pointr/KotakuInAction

Archives for links in comments:

u/jamesEkrueger · 1 pointr/baseball

Yep! If you do end up reading it I hope you enjoy it. It's such a fascinating work

u/theartfooldodger · 0 pointsr/Dodgers

My understanding is usually the data upon which the matchup is based is so limited that it is essentially useless and therefore you should always just play you best player.

My source is The Book by Tom Tango.