Rating: 
Summary: A Tad Too Much Stats
Review: A well written book by Neyer and Epstein but the use of stats goes a little too far for my tastes - I don't agree with their view that winning the World Series is not important in the consideration of dynasties because that is the true "test" of a dynasty, to be the champion on an occurring basis - dynasties that don't win World Series are only interesting to that team's fans.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book for any baseball fan
Review: Basically, if you read and like Rob Neyer from espn.com, then you will like this book. The book depends heavily on statistics in the decision-making process, including the use of SD score, which Neyer and Epstein developed for this book. It gives an accurate way to compare teams across generations. They also focuse on several seasons around one focus season, rather just looking at the one great season.Even for those not highly interested in stats, this is a good read. The team chapters gives great history, and the sidebars provide info on what was happening around the league in the given year, among other things. There is also a glossary provided to aid in questions about what various statistics mean. The concluding chapter allows the authors to compare and contrast the various teams, as well as to criticize their selections and methods. I feel this lends credibility to the discussion.. And you may be surprised at who they choose as the greatest team of all-time..
Rating:
Summary: Perfect!
Review: Buy this book if for no other reason than challenging your preconceptions of which are the greatest teams ever... Even though it sometimes wonders into complicated use of some statistics (as sabermatics will usually seem to do if you're not really into them), this book works wonders in presenting numerical and analytical justification for ranking the best dynasties in the game. This is not based on subjective reasoning ("they're my home team!"), but rather on deep study and discussion. You may not agree with all the choices, or with the final rankings (one per author), but you will not be able to say that Eddie and Rob (my favorite ESPN.com writer) didn't do their homework. You'll be surprised to learn lots of information from all these teams that you wont find in many other books (let alone ONE book), and it will leave you wanting more...wanting to see how YOUR favorite teams rank against these dynasties.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, but doesn't answer any age-old questions
Review: Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book, but I found the book to be lacking in continuity. It's a difficult book to read from cover-to-cover due to the abundance of statistical analysis, but all of the number-crunching done in the book is rather anticlimactic. The issue of "who is the greatest team of all time" is handled more as a sidebar than as the main theme of the book. I thought the authors would have been better served discussing the statistical quirks that were generated by the number crunching and different types of `dynasties' discussed (like the 1975-1985 Royals). Instead, we got a lot of different methods to conclude "Boy, those 1961 Yankees sure did hit a lot of homers", which isn't very interesting. In terms of personal opinion, I was disappointed that a 3-peat team like the 1972-1974 A's was left out of the book because they didn't win 100+ games in the regular season. It demonstrated that although there was a plethora of statistical references, the overall criteria as to deciding what constitutes a dynasty was as vague and unexplained as the authors' opinions on the greatest dynasty of all-time.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, but doesn't answer any age-old questions
Review: Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book, but I found the book to be lacking in continuity. It's a difficult book to read from cover-to-cover due to the abundance of statistical analysis, but all of the number-crunching done in the book is rather anticlimactic. The issue of "who is the greatest team of all time" is handled more as a sidebar than as the main theme of the book. I thought the authors would have been better served discussing the statistical quirks that were generated by the number crunching and different types of 'dynasties' discussed (like the 1975-1985 Royals). Instead, we got a lot of different methods to conclude "Boy, those 1961 Yankees sure did hit a lot of homers", which isn't very interesting. In terms of personal opinion, I was disappointed that a 3-peat team like the 1972-1974 A's was left out of the book because they didn't win 100+ games in the regular season. It demonstrated that although there was a plethora of statistical references, the overall criteria as to deciding what constitutes a dynasty was as vague and unexplained as the authors' opinions on the greatest dynasty of all-time.
Rating:
Summary: 15 of the Greatest Teams Ever
Review: I purchased this book because it was written by Rob Neyer, whose columns I'd been reading on the ESPN website for several years, usually with an equal mixture of fascination, amusement, and frustation. I was interested in seeing his sometimes-technical take on baseball applied to the great teams of the past, whereas co-author Eddie Epstein I knew not at all. "Baseball Dynasties" is on its face an examination of 15 of the greatest baseball teams ever, ranging from the deadball-era 1906 Cubs, to the "Team of the Century" 1998 Yankees. It's longer and more detailed than most commercially-available "best teams ever" books, and probably the first one I've seen that's not aimed at kids. "Dynasties" is equal part historical research and statistical argument and, depending on where your interests lie, some parts of the book will be more interesting than others. Neyer's sidebars and sidesteps tend to be the freshest. The historical research shows best in the articles with his name attached. His game recounts are fresh, his player biographies are original. The 1906 and 1912 World Series summaries come to life in a way that makes you believe Roger Angell was actually there and sending back reports. He's the first author I've ever seen detail just who Walter Beall was, beyond the fact that he pitched one inning for the 1927 Yankees. Neyer, and mostly Epstein, use the Standard Deviation of a team's runs scored and runs allowed, to compare the great teams of different eras. They never tell us how "SD" is calculated, so those of us with adding machines can't play along at home -- I neglected to take statistics in college but love calculating ERAs and Pythagorean theorems as much as the next baseball nut. I won't blame them for my math shortcomings but they did promise to provide the formula at an early point in the book. Epstein's portions are less interesting. His prose is dry and peevish. His elaborate defenses of Reggie Jackson and Davey Johnson seem unnecessary, his use of the data unoriginal. Boldly proclaiming that a batter with 563 career HRS and 10 different playoff appearances is "productive", strikes of myopia. Worst of all is his discounting of postseason games, and in spite of his saying "Games are not played on paper", he's still trying to reopen the books on the 1969 World Series. Another of the book's rare missteps is a sidebar castigating a factual error about the 1986 Mets in Doc Gooden's autobiography. Fine, fine, but in the same pages Neyer misreports the scores of two playoff games from that same year. On the whole "Baseball Dynasties" is a terrific fit on my baseball bookshelf. It's more interested in presenting the facts, anecdotes and numbers -- unindexed, it's not a handy reference tool, and is best consulted during slow games or phone conversations with friends. Their final rankings of the 15 teams seems desultory -- they reach a logical but unsexy result I've seen argued in other books -- but when it comes to teams such as these, any answer is the "right" answer.
Rating:
Summary: Good, straightforward analysis of super-teams
Review: I've never heard of Rob Neyer, but from reading other reviews here, he's apparently a modestly well-known figure from espn.com. I say that because I enjoyed the book with no prior expectations. The statistical core of the book is very simple and, contrary to what another reviewer stated, I understood the calculation process entirely from the discussion early on in the book. From this truly simple calculation (standard deviation of runs scored above a standard and runs allowed below a standard), the authors got a nice spreadsheet of team evaluations. And by sorting and accruing this data several different ways, they were able to make a book out of it. In truth, it makes a better statistical table than a book, but enough of the human aspects of each team are thrown in to make it more than just a table. So, for what it is (the results of a large spreadsheet calculation augmented by side stories about the teams), it pretty much does its job. The biggest fault to me is that the tables in the back of the book are awfully redundant. If you list the 50 highest-rated teams, based on five-year spans, why would you include the 1906-1910 Cubs, the 1905-1909 Cubs, and the 1907-1911 Cubs (these are not actual examples from the book, but there are dozens of similar cases)? I would have hoped that the authors would pick the best five-year run from one of those dynasties and eliminated all other dynasties with overlapping years. That would have given us 50 unique dynasties, rather than about 15 dynasties in varying degrees of permutation.
Rating:
Summary: Great read for stat heads
Review: If you are the type that thinks that pennants are won with 90% guts and a winning attitude, rather than talent, stay away. But if you are a Moneyball fan, you'll like this.
Rating:
Summary: Baseball Essential
Review: If you enjoy statistical arguments about the relative greatness of different teams, mixed with interesting historical anecdotes, this is for you. Well-written, intelligent and engrossing. I love it.
Rating:
Summary: Helps settle that age of question
Review: Messers Neyer and Epstein go to great lengths to show what made each team great and why they selected the team that they di as the Greatest of all-time. Even though the depend heavily on numbers they make them simple enough to understand and appreciate.
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