In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, baseball writer for The
Athletic and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an
era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in
modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned
from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game.
For years, Daniel Kahneman's iconic work of behavioral science Thinking
Fast and Slow has been required reading in front offices across Major
League Baseball. In this smart, incisive, and eye-opening book, Keith
Law applies Kahneman's ideas about decision making to the game itself.
Baseball is a sport of decisions. Some are so small and routine they
become the building blocks of the game itself--what pitch to throw or
when to swing away. Others are so huge they dictate the future of
franchises--when to make a strategic trade for a chance to win now, or
when to offer a millions and a multi-year contract for a
twenty-eight-year-old star. These decisions have long shaped the
behavior of players, managers, and entire franchises. But as those
choices have become more complex and data-driven, knowing what's behind
them has become key to understanding the sport. This fascinating,
revelatory work explores as never before the essential question: What
were they thinking?
Combining behavioral science and interviews with executives, managers,
and players, Keith Law analyzes baseball's biggest decision making
successes and failures, looking at how gambles and calculated risks of
all sizes and scales have shaped the sport, and how the game's ongoing
data revolution is rewriting decades of accepted decision making. In the
process, he explores questions that have long been debated, from whether
throwing harder really increases a player's risk of serious injury to
whether teams actually "overvalue" trade prospects.
Bringing his analytical and combative style to some of baseball's
longest running debates, Law deepens our knowledge of the sport in this
entertaining work that is both fun and deeply informative.
