<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Understandable
Review: I read MONEYBALL earlier this summer and really enjoyed it. So I am a bit interested in sabermetrics. But I am not sure that I am ready yet for Bill James since I have the impression that his work is kind of complicated. So I figured I would try FIELDER'S CHOICE since the author said he was trying to keep the math fairly simple. And I found that I enjoyed the book. I really enjoyed learning about some of the great early players that I had never heard of - guys like Rabbit Maranville, Everett Scott, Dave Bancroft, Bill Dahlen and George Davis. Of course, I had heard about Honus Wagner (who the book calls the greatest all-around shortstop) but these other guys were completely unknown to me.
Rating:
Summary: Understandable
Review: I read MONEYBALL earlier this summer and really enjoyed it. So I am a bit interested in sabermetrics. But I am not sure that I am ready yet for Bill James since I have the impression that his work is kind of complicated. So I figured I would try FIELDER'S CHOICE since the author said he was trying to keep the math fairly simple. And I found that I enjoyed the book. I really enjoyed learning about some of the great early players that I had never heard of - guys like Rabbit Maranville, Everett Scott, Dave Bancroft, Bill Dahlen and George Davis. Of course, I had heard about Honus Wagner (who the book calls the greatest all-around shortstop) but these other guys were completely unknown to me.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: If you enjoy learning about using numbers to evaluate baseball players, you should like this book. The author, a mathematician, creates formulas to tell us who were the best fielding shortstops of all time. I found this very interesting and very readable. And I could not argue with the results.But what I enjoyed even more was the second part of the book. Here the author deals with hitting skills and his new stat, BP (batting proficiency). He rates the most proficient hitters of all time and also looks at the current players. He does this essentially by using on base percentage, slugging average and runs created. And it seems to make a lot of sense. A good read for baseball fans who like numbers.
Rating: 
Summary: Look for another book
Review: The author might be an expert at mathematics, though I don't see it from the book. Anyway, he obviously doesn't know much about baseball. If you've been reading BaseballProspectus, BaseballPrimer, Bill James or someone like him for some time, this is just not for you. It's too naive and too superficial. And if you've not read sabermetric articles, don't start with this book. The author developed a few formulas which lead to unexplainable, implausible outcomes, just combining unrelated numbers in a awkawrd manner. He hasn't even adjusted for park effect. So he ranked Larry Walker as one of the best hitters of all time. It's ridiculous. Don't buy this one. If you want to see things like this, just search the web, and you'll find lots of better ones in 30 minutes.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Fielding Analysis
Review: Very few baseball books attempt to do an analysis of fielding skills. It is really one of the neglected areas of baseball research. That is why it is so good to see this analysis by a mathematics professor. In this book, Prof Hoban does a good job of analyzing who were the best fielding shortstops in baseball history. In so doing, he introduces us to some names that even serious fans may not have heard of: Everett Scott and Bill Dahlen, to name two. This is a very readable book - unlike so many of those articles on the web that only a statistician can understand. Ozzie Smith as the best defensive shortstop of all time is no surprise. But I was surprised to see how good a defensive shortstop Cal Ripken Jr really was! I just hope that the author does this analysis for the other positions. And the new hitting metric called Batting Proficiency is a bonus. An enjoyable book for the serious baseball fan.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Fielding Analysis
Review: Very few baseball books attempt to do an analysis of fielding skills. It is really one of the neglected areas of baseball research. That is why it is so good to see this analysis by a mathematics professor. In this book, Prof Hoban does a good job of analyzing who were the best fielding shortstops in baseball history. In so doing, he introduces us to some names that even serious fans may not have heard of: Everett Scott and Bill Dahlen, to name two. This is a very readable book - unlike so many of those articles on the web that only a statistician can understand. Ozzie Smith as the best defensive shortstop of all time is no surprise. But I was surprised to see how good a defensive shortstop Cal Ripken Jr really was! I just hope that the author does this analysis for the other positions. And the new hitting metric called Batting Proficiency is a bonus. An enjoyable book for the serious baseball fan.
<< 1 >>
| 
