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Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game | 
 enlarge | Authors: Jim Albert, Jay Bennett
Publisher: Springer
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $8.99
You Save: $10.96 (55%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 115561
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 038700193X
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357021
EAN: 9780387001937
ASIN: 038700193X
Publication Date: April 8, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"... a smart and energetic collection of essays on baseball statistics. Curve Ball doesn't play misty-eyed homage to baseball's traditions and conventional wisdoms.... This is great stuff.... Curve Ball makes clear how pleasurable [stats] can be, and arguably how important, to view the great American game with real precision." -- The Wall Street Journal "Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Must own!" -- Baseballnotebook.com "In [Curve Ball] Albert & Bennett explain the game in ways the conventional press - even titans such as Bill James - cannot." -- Baseball America "[The book] illustrates how statistical reasoning can be useful in teasing out the role of chance from performance in baseball to better assess ability.... Curve Ball represents another advance in the genre of baseball and statistics books." -- Journal of the American Statistical Association There is a fascination among baseball fans and the media to collect data on every imaginable event during a baseball game and to use these data to try to understand characteristics of the game. But patterns in baseball data are difficult to detect due to the inherent chance variation that is present. This book addresses a number of questions that are of interest to many baseball fans - including how to rate players, predict the outcome of a game or the attainment of an attainment, make sense of situational data, and decide the most valuable players in the World Series. Curve Ball is directed to a general audience and does not assume that the reader has any prior background in probability or statistics, although knowledge of high school algebra will be helpful.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 baseball statistics interpreted by professional statisticians January 24, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Jim Albert and Jay Bennett share two traits that make them the perfect authors for this type of book (1) they are both baseball fans who know the game and have seen many games and much statistics from many angles and (2) they are both professional statisticians who understand probability and the subtle aspects that chance can have on statistics. By being professional statisticians they also know how sophisticated statistical techniques can add to ones ability to seriously address questions of strategy and comparison of player performance. That is what they accomplish in this book, teaching some basic probability and statistics along the way.
They also make it very interesting to the baseball fan by raising interesting baseball questions related to players that the fans relate to, namely the stars that the fans follow and the great clutch hits and clutch defensive plays that we baseball fans have imprinted in our memories, like Mazeroski's game winning home run in the 1960 World Series, or Willie Mays' famous over the shoulder catch of Vic Wertz's long fly ball in the 1954 series, or Bobby Thompson home run that won the 1951 playoffs for the Giants.
In the very beginning Albert and Bennett distinguish themselves from the sports statisticians that are hired by the teams. The sports statisticians collect the data and present it in various ways. However, this is merely exploratory data analysis. Albert and Bennett point out that a numerical difference in a hitting statistic such as on base percentage between Chuck Knoblauch and Kenny Lofton may be a real difference in ability but may also be a small enough difference to be merely due to chance. Finding ways to analyze the baseball data to make probabilistic inferences like answering the question of whether Lofton is better at getting on base than Knoblauch is the focus of what professional statisticians do and is the theme of the book.
In the course of reading the book you will learn many things about baseball. Some may agree with previous notions and some will be surprises. You will learn about the massive amount of major league baseball data available, about SABR a society for baseball research and more. You will be opened up to the hinden world of professional statistics where probability models have been used for over a century to handle military, engineering, energy, environmental, agricultural and medical problems. These same tools in recent years have been used to handle baseball questions also.
They start with simple table top baseball games like All Star Baseball to introduce concepts. They then move on to baseball data and probability. Then they look at statistical questions, situational effects in Chapter 4, hot hitting in Chapter 5, methods of measuring offensive performance in Chapter 6, more sophisticated measures in Chapter 7, simulation models in Chapter 8, measures of clutch play and team value in Chapter 9, ways to predict performance in Chapter 10, analyzing World Series results in Chapter 11 and final comments in Chapter 12.
This is a great book for any one who loves baseball and baseball statistics. It also is a great way to learn and become interested in the techniques of the professional statistician.
For statisticians that teach statistics, it provides a wealth of interesting examples to help illustrate important statistical concepts in basic or even advanced courses, including the value of Bayesian methods, the need for overdispersion models (e.g. batting averages) and the value of linear and nonlinear prediction models.
Non Fiction September 3, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A look at baseball from a sports statistics and published mathematical analysis front. Interesting, but not as ground breaking as some of the amateur non university researchers came up with not too much later. A bit of an overview.
good statisticians, pretty good writers February 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This one is a book for the Sabermetrically inclined who already have a background in stats. In the first couple of chapters, the authors review some basic concepts through the lens of baseball before getting into some deeper analyses. To be honest, there's nothing in here that you can't get in Baseball Between the Numbers (although to the authors' credit, this book predates BBTN by 6 years) but it's a decent starter's guide. Worth the read, although those with a background in Sabermetrics will probably want to pass.
For people with serious statistical interest July 31, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book a lot, but it's definitely for people who are serious about the use of statistics, not for fans looking to settle arguments about "who was better." You don't have to be a statistician, but you need to have some understanding of the basis of the math of statistics to understand this book.
Good, but could have been better January 1, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a statistician and baseball fan, I had high expectations for this book. Generally, those expectations were met, although I came away from this book feeling like an opportunity had been lost. The biggest problem with the book is that the authors can't seem to decide how much knowledge to assume of their readers. The first 100 pages or so are presented at a sub-high school level, while the last few chapters assume the reader to have taken higher-level college courses in statistics. Also, I do not expect any book to be written and edited perfectly, but the typos actually become an occassional distraction from the text.
On the whole, though, I would still recommend this book--it is by far the best contemporary statistical breakdown of the game of baseball. It is an especially good complement to Michael Lewis's "Moneyball," which is a more anecdotal presentation of similar material. If you enjoy baseball at all, and have even a passing interest in batting averages, ERAs, and HRs, you will be entertained by this book and will probably learn a lot, too.
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