Baseball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics (Hacks) | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph Adler
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $7.25
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 27193
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 467
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0596009429
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357
EAN: 9780596009427
ASIN: 0596009429
Publication Date: January 31, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Good Condition, delivery time 10 to 12 Working days, via Priority airmail from UK
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Product Description
Baseball Hacks isn't your typical baseball book--it's a book about how to watch, research, and understand baseball. It's an instruction manual for the free baseball databases. It's a cookbook for baseball research. Every part of this book is designed to teach baseball fans how to do something. In short, it's a how-to book--one that will increase your enjoyment and knowledge of the game. So much of the way baseball is played today hinges upon interpreting statistical data. Players are acquired based on their performance in statistical categories that ownership deems most important. Managers make in-game decisions based not on instincts, but on probability - how a particular batter might fare against left-handed pitching, for instance. The goal of this unique book is to show fans all the baseball-related stuff that they can do for free (or close to free). Just as open source projects have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. You can use these data sources to research your favorite players, win your fantasy league, or appreciate the game of baseball even more than you do now. Baseball Hacks shows how easy it is to get data, process it, and use it to truly understand baseball. The book lists a number of sources for current and historical baseball data, and explains how to load it into a database for analysis. It then introduces several powerful statistical tools for understanding data and forecasting results. For the uninitiated baseball fan, author Joseph Adler walks readers through the core statistical categories for hitters (batting average, on-base percentage, etc.), pitchers (earned run average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, etc.), and fielders (putouts, errors, etc.). He then extrapolates upon these numbers to examine more advanced data groups like career averages, team stats, season-by-season comparisons, and more. Whether you're a mathematician, scientist, or season-ticket holder to your favorite team, Baseball Hacks is sure to have something for you. Advance praise for Baseball Hacks: "Baseball Hacks is the best book ever written for understanding and practicing baseball analytics. A must-read for baseball professionals and enthusiasts alike." -- Ari Kaplan, database consultant to the Montreal Expos, San Diego Padres, and Baltimore Orioles "The game was born in the 19th century, but the passion for its analysis continues to grow into the 21st. In Baseball Hacks, Joe Adler not only demonstrates that the latest data-mining technologies have useful application to the study of baseball statistics, he also teaches the reader how to do the analysis himself, arming the dedicated baseball fan with tools to take his understanding of the game to a higher level." -- Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., Founder, SportMetrika, Inc. and Baseball Analyst for the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Baseball Hacks, the "How to" manual for Moneyball April 7, 2008
Baseball Hacks: Tips & Tools for Analyzing and Winning with Statistics (Hacks), which comes with download able scripts from the O'Reilly site, shows how to do SABR metrics like the big league analysts.
If, like me, you wish to use only the free, or open source, programs on Linux, you are in for significant work. I could not get R, (the statistical analysis program much like S-Plus,) to work under Ubuntu. I was able to get it to work under the SuSE version of Linux. If exploring Baseball Statistics is like the Lewis and Clark expedition, Adler is your Pocohantuas!
What satisfaction comes from comparing baseball intuition with computerized analysis of the vast databases of baseball statistics! The American economy would be much more efficient if lessons from Baseball Hacks were applied to enterprise management.
 Tips & Tools For Analyzing Baseball Data February 25, 2007
This book takes a fairly different approach to baseball statistics. The author goes thru and explains most all of the newer statistics. The real meat of this work is teaching the reader how to build his or her own data bases free of charge by importing information from various websites. My sense is that to really benefit from the data base aspects the reader must have a pretty good acumen for dealing with computer programing. Even though the author provides precise step by step help with codes. Still, I would say most baseball fans who enjoy statistics will benefit from this.
Baseball/Computer Nerds Unite! January 19, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is uniquely geared toward the database-literate and technology-literate baseball fan. The author shows all kinds of ways to gather free baseball statistics over the Internet, load them into databases, and then to build reports and queries against them. If this sounds even vaguely interesting to you, this book will entertain you for hours - and it might help you with your fantasy baseball picks, too.
The book contains 75 hacks to help you acquire and analyze baseball statistics. O'Reilly publishes a whole series of hacks books and in this context, a hack is basically a solution to a problem. It is an idea or piece of code that can be used to further your understanding and knowledge of baseball. If you follow the daily baseball box scores, review historical statistics, or play fantasy baseball, you will definitely enjoy these hacks.
If you are a new baseball fan that likes the game but is befuddled by all the terms and statistics thrown around, Baseball Hacks can help. Even some long-term baseball fans don't understand things like slugging average, OPS, or DIPS. But Baseball Hacks explains them and how to derive them.
If you are an open source proponent, and a baseball fan, you'll definitely want to take advantage of hack #10, which shows you how to get a MySQL database of player and team statistics. Rather use Microsoft Access? You'll want hack #9.
Really. Baseball Hacks is a great book for the database/baseball nerd in all of us. If you are looking for a way to merge your profession with a hobby, look no further than picking up a copy of Baseball Hacks.
 NOT for programming novices January 6, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I recently purchased this book hoping to be able to apply some of my recent work-related statistics training to baseball stats. It promises step-by-step instructions that 'anyone' can follow. While the instructions are step-by-step, if you have no computer experience outside of Windows (like me) you will almost certainly be frustrated very early on.
My first hiccup was in hack #10, step 4, in which the author jumps to using Unix commands without mentioning that fact. Fortunately, I have a friend familiar with both Unix and MySQL who was able to get me through that particular hack by installing a GUI and importing the files through it. For those who are stumped on that particular step, jump to hack #18, install a GUI, and import the DataBank files as a script using the Query Editor.
I haven't proceeded much farther in the book, largely because I can already see the frustration to come from fumbling my way through Perl. The author gives very rudimentary instructions in the language, followed by more 'easy to use' scripts. The problem is the scripts are based on filenames and information that is more than a year out of date. This will require editing the scripts, something a programming illiterate such as myself will find challenging at best.
So after all these complaints, why did I still rate the book a 3? Because I'm trying to be fair. I've read through the rest of the book without trying to apply anything, and if you are at least familiar with MySQL, Unix, and Perl you'll probably get a lot out of it. The tools presented appear to be very powerful. Also, since I'm familiar with Access, the hacks for using it have been helpful. Unfortunately, the instructions in the book assume a basic level of programming knowledge on the part of the reader, despite the author's contention that they do not. If you can't tell a Unix prompt from a DOS prompt, this book is not the answer to your stat-processing prayers.
How to watch, research, and understand baseball January 4, 2007
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book's purpose is to show you all the baseball-related stuff that you can do free of charge or close to free. Just as open source projects such as Linux, MySQL, Open Office, and R have made great software freely available, collaborative projects such as Retrosheet and Baseball DataBank have made great data freely available. This book shows you how to take advantage of these data sources to research your favorite players, to win your fantasy league, or just to appreciate the game of baseball even more. Many of the hacks in this book deal with statistics, and others will require that you install a baseball database. The following is the table of contents:
Chapter 1, Basics of Baseball - some easy hacks showing how to watch and score baseball games, and how to find some simple baseball data on the Web.
Hack 1. Score a Baseball Game
Hack 2. Make a Box Score from a Score Sheet
Hack 3. Keep Score, Project Scoresheet-Style
Hack 4. Follow Pitches During a Game
Hack 5. Follow the Game Online
Hack 6. Add Baseball Searches to Firefox
Hack 7. Find Images of Stadiums
Chapter 2, Baseball Games from Past Years - shows you where to get databases of career statistics and introduces some tools that you'll find helpful in working with this data.
Hack 8. Get and Install MySQL
Hack 9. Get an Access Database of Player and Team Statistics
Hack 10. Get a MySQL Database of Player and Team Statistics
Hack 11. Make Your Own Stats Book
Hack 12. Get Perl
Hack 13. Learn Perl
Hack 14. Get Historical Play-by-Play Data
Hack 15. Make Box Scores or Database Tables from Play-by-Play Data with Retrosheet Tools
Hack 16. Use SQL to Explore Game Data
Hack 17. Use Microsoft Access to Run SQL Queries
Hack 18. Get a GUI for MySQL
Hack 19. Move Data from a Database to Excel
Hack 20. Load Baseball Data into MySQL
Hack 21. Load Retrosheet Game Logs
Hack 22. Make a Historical Play-by-Play Database
Hack 23. Use Regular Expressions to Identify Events
Chapter 3, Stats from the Current Season - how to get data on current baseball games. It's easy to get data on old games because they're already in databases. It's hard to get data on this year's games because you have to scrape it off the Web. This chapter shows you how.
Hack 24. Use Microsoft Excel Web Queries to Get Stats
Hack 25. Spider Baseball Sites for Data
Hack 26. Discover How Live Score Applications Work
Hack 27. Keep Your Stats Database Up-to-Date
Hack 28. Get Recent Play-by-Play Data
Hack 29. Find Data on Hit Locations
Chapter 4, Visualize Baseball Statistics - R is a free data analysis and visualization tool. This chapter introduces R and shows you a lot of cool tricks that you can use to analyze baseball data with R.
Hack 30. Plot Histograms in Excel
Hack 31. Get R and R Packages
Hack 32. Analyze Baseball with R
Hack 33. Access Databases Directly from Excel or R
Hack 34. Load Text Files into R
Hack 35. Compare Teams and Players with Lattices
Hack 36. Compare Teams Using Chernoff Faces
Hack 37. Plot Spray Charts
Hack 38. Chart Team Stats in Real Time
Hack 39. Slice and Dice Teams with Cubes
Chapter 5, Formulas - Formulas have a special place in baseball history. Many baseball writers have spent months or years searching for the perfect formula to measure some aspect of the game. This chapter covers a few of the most popular formulas.
Hack 40. Measure Batting with Batting Average
Hack 41. Measure Batting with On-Base Percentage
Hack 42. Measure Batting with SLG
Hack 43. Measure Batting with OPS
Hack 44. Measure Power with ISO
Hack 45. Measure Batting with Runs Created
Hack 46. Measure Batting with Linear Weights
Hack 47. Measure Pitching with ERA
Hack 48. Measure Pitching with WHIP
Hack 49. Measure Pitching with Linear Weights
Hack 50. Measure Defense with Defensive Efficiency
Hack 51. Measure Pitching with DIPS
Hack 52. Measure Base Running Through EqBR
Hack 53. Measure Fielding with Fielding Percentage
Hack 54. Measure Fielding with Range Factor
Hack 55. Measure Fielding with Linear Weights
Hack 56. Measure Park Effects
Hack 57. Calculate Fan Save Value
Hack 58. Calculate Save Value
Chapter 6, Sabermetric Thinking - discusses many baseball problems, some classic and some new.
Hack 60. Calculate Expected Runs
Hack 61. Calculate an Expected Hits Matrix
Hack 62. Look for Evidence of Platoon Effects
Hack 63. Significant Number of At Bats
Hack 64. Find Clutch Players
Hack 65. Calculate Expected Number of Wins
Hack 66. Measure Hits by Pitch Count
Hack 67. OBP, SLG, and Scoring Runs
Hack 68. Measure Skill Versus Luck
Hack 69. Odds of the Best Team Winning the World Series
Hack 70. Top 10 Bargain Outfielders
Hack 71. Fitting Game Scores to a Strength Model
Chapter 7, The Bullpen - comprises a few random topics that didn't fit anywhere else: fantasy baseball, widgets, and other sports.
Hack 72. Start or Join a Fantasy League
Hack 73. Draft Your Fantasy Team
Hack 74. Make a Scoreboard Widget
Hack 75. Analyze Other Sports
Appendix A, Where to Learn More Stuff
Appendix B, Abbreviations
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