Twitter / @KenTremendous: One time a ball hit a pigeon. So "Moneyball" is crap.

The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball

Also known as The Beauty of Short Hops: Sabermetrics are for Nerds

about 1 year ago bluenm 6 comments 0 recs |

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I nominate this book for the RR Book Club

I’m not sure if I’m being serious or joking about that. Ken Tremendous has a few zingers about this book on twitter today. Here’s one of my favorites:

Short Hops GM: “I read about Schrodinger’s Cat. Then I signed Brad Ausmus to a 30 year deal, because the future is unknowable.”

by bluenm on Mar 12, 2011 12:21 AM EST reply actions

The book sounds like a joke

The Beauty of Short Hops demonstrates that the Moneyball approach is doubly doomed. First, it fails on its own terms: it cannot make baseball a predictable game wholly understandable in numerical terms. Indeed, the teams which use this approach have not fared well.

Yeah, the Red Sox and Rays have really done horribly.

You may know me as NYRoyal.

by Scott McKinney on Mar 12, 2011 12:39 AM EST reply actions

Exactly

Is the argument of this book “Sabermetrics can’t predict everything, therefore they should be ignored?”

by bluenm on Mar 12, 2011 1:13 AM EST up reply actions

Yeah, I don’t know if the marketing link was accurately portraying what the book was about, but it painted Moneyball and sabermetrics as saying that stats can “make baseball a predictable game wholly understandable in numerical terms.” And of course that isn’t anywhere close to true. Sabermetric analysis is about understanding the game better. It’s just more (and often better) information. And “Moneyball” was really about thinking outside the box and utilizing market inefficiencies. Hopefully the whole book isn’t about setting up a straw man and then defeating it.

You may know me as NYRoyal.

by Scott McKinney on Mar 12, 2011 9:14 AM EST up reply actions