The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.19 (732 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B01F9JYSQ8 |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 135 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-07-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Behind the Spreadsheet In the book "The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team", Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller recount a grand adventure to take command of an independent league baseball team, with the vision of trying every idea, sane or crazy, in an attempt to achieve a winning edge. Five infielders, four outfielders, defensive shifts, optimizing lineups - everything.It was really an impossible task. Professional sports at every level are filled with highly accomplished and competitive athletes, with real lives. Andrew Gargano said An Instant-Classic. As an avid listener of Effectively Wild and consistent reader of Ben and Sam's work, I know that they are statheads. I assumed this book would lean heavily on sabermetrics, the pages chock-full of numbers and advanced baseball analysis. I was wrong. This book offered much, much more.This is less of "The Book," by Tom Tango, and more of "The Soul of Baseball," by Joe Posnanski; it is more story than stat. Ben and Sam may have been the ones who got to run this indy-league baseball team, but through their writing you feel like you're righ. The best book I've read this year I absolutely loved this book. It reads like a top-flight novel, is packed with interesting stories and details, and brings the game to life. Many of us are armchair coaches and general managers, always making recommendations and second-guessing our teams' decisions. We have the dream and we put it on a pedestal. Ben and Sam explain just how difficult it is. Sam's note and prepared speech especially hit home.But even more interesting than the baseball parts are the psychological undertones: how Ben and Sam's relationship changes during
Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance. We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: It has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport's folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion?. It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies - with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics