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Baseball Between the Numbers

By Dr. John D. Eigenauer
April 28, 2006

Baseball Between the Numbers by the Baseball Prospectus team of experts is revisionist history for baseball statheads; its beauty and its worth lies in the myths it debunks. It wipes away those myths gently, slowly removing layers of dusty, conventional, commonplace ideas about baseball. Every time you think that you know where an article will lead, it changes direction and gives a little statistical surprise. That makes the book a lot of fun.

It could have been written with a Jim Rome, know-it-all, smackdown attitude that proclaimed, “I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.” In fact, the subtitle, “Why everything you know about the game is wrong” leads you to believe that it will do just that. That is just posturing—necessary bravado aimed at selling the book. Once you get inside the book, you see that the authors write as if they held the myths as dearly as we do. Even the most outrageous chapters, such as “Why Doesn’t Billy Beane’s Shit Work in the Playoffs,” is careful, methodical, and revelatory. It’s meant to take you by surprise, not to embarrass you. By treating the myths as their own, the authors make the readers feel that they are discovering something with the authors, and that we were all deceived together.

Take, for example, the chapter titled, “What if Rickey Henderson Had Pete Incaviglia’s Legs?” It takes aim at the platitude that “you can’t teach speed,” which implies that speed is both valuable and irreplaceable. The author starts by contrasting Henderson and Incaviglia, making it obvious that no two players’ skills could have been less alike: Henderson constantly created offense with his blinding speed, and Incaviglia settled into slow trots around the base paths after long homeruns and slow walks back to the dugout after strikeouts. Next, he reduces Henderson’s value on the base paths during his 130 steal season to a whopping 2 runs! Had he stopped there, the author would have made his point. But he finds increasingly illuminating significance in statistics about base running and its value to offense. Every time he reveals a new insight, you get the feeling that you don’t mind having been deceived because it took some serious work to uncover the truth about Henderson’s speed—and about speed in general.

Every chapter follows this pattern: here is what we baseball fans believe; now, let’s scrutinize that idea with serious statistical analysis. That analysis always yields additional insights beyond what you expect: you start off reading about A-Rod’s obscene salary and end up learning about revenue sharing, the value of luxury boxes, the wisdom of building new stadiums, the true value of playoff appearances, and the surprising fact that certain wins mean more financially to clubs than others.

Because of these never-ending revelations, the book is a delight to read. Some of the statistical methods may sound overwhelming, but the authors always explain them well and make them secondary to what the statistics mean. If you love baseball analysis, get this book.

John Eigenauer can be contacted at jeigenauer@yahoo.com. A complete list of his reviews and more about him can be found here.