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-handedpitching, 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 thatthe 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
