THT has made available past issues of their annual.
Entries Tagged 'books' ↓
Past Annuals from The Hardball Times
January 11th, 2009 — MLB, books
Batting Order by The Book
December 10th, 2008 — books
The Book’s batting-order advice:
Your three best hitters should bat somewhere in the #1, #2, and #4 slots. Your fourth- and fifth-best hitters should occupy the #3 and #5 slots. The #1 and #2 slots will have players with more walks than those in the #4 and #5 slots. From slot #6 through #9, put the players in descending order of quality.
The Book admits a slight advantage in batting the pitcher eighth.
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
December 1st, 2007 — books
Catching up on the canon continues. The first section, “The Game,” is indispensable, but it sorely needs more photos.
Veeck–As In Wreck
October 21st, 2007 — books
Lies, but entertaining lies.
Baseball Hacks
October 7th, 2007 — books
home-field advantage
September 20th, 2007 — stats, books, Triple Play Baseball
One thing caught my eye in the Curve Ball book: batters playing at home hit 12 points better than on the road. Makes sense, but it’s almost as big as the lefty/righty match-up difference, which they say is 15 points. And yet, AFAIK, there are no adjustments in TPB to take home-field advantage into account.
A quick run of the Retrosheet game logs proves the home-field advantage for wins & losses:
HOME WINS ROAD WINS
-------------- --------------
1960-1969 8603 (54.03%) 7319 (45.97%)
1970-1979 10644 (53.78%) 9149 (46.22%)
1980-1989 10995 (54.12%) 9320 (45.88%)
1990-1999 11554 (53.52%) 10033 (46.48%)
2000-2006 9166 (53.93%) 7831 (46.07%)
1960-2006 50962 (53.86%) 43652 (46.14%)
It’s almost 8 points. Not as large as 12, but, of course, there’s more to winning than hitting!
2007-10-07: The Commish’s comment re capturing home-field advantage in Park Effects is very interesting. I might even replace the LHB/RHB categories with home/visitor.
Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game
September 18th, 2007 — stats, books
Didn’t expect it, but this book starts out with a simple analysis of All-Star Baseball, APBA, SOM & Sports Illustrated Baseball! Interesting point about the SOM method of splitting the rolls: the batter’s ability is purely additive, that is, there’s no direct interaction with the pitcher. You can get some of that with pitcher symbols in TPB, of course.
More to come…