New To Sabermetrics?Every now and then, someone gets turned on to sabremetrics, and they ask me where can they get more. The following is an incomplete list of books and/or sites that I recommend. Note: Feel free to send me links of your own for me to check out. I try to be in the loop 100% of the time, but I'm sure I miss quite a few. BOOKSMy kid is 2+, and we discovered something wonderful. Our local library has a separate closed-off area for children. Books, CDs, toys, everything! It's a marvel. And, just as good, they have a great park geared for kids that is right across the parking lot. We spend tons of time at the library. My kid even insists on going to the library, and is rather adamant in his refusal to eventually return home. We try to fool the little guy by taking the long way home, but, he catches on pretty quick. We're running out of long-way-home routes, too. He gets bored fast as well, so rather than buying a new book or DVD each time, we rent it for 2 weeks or a month, just enough time for him to want something new. Living in a 1-bedroom, space is very precious to us. Anyway, the library has tons of baseball books; if they don't have it, you can arrange for interlibrary loans. I started reading Bill James' Baseball Abstracts with the 1984 edition (maybe 1985: it was the one with the navy blue cover, anyway). Ebay comes through sometimes, but not always. I'm excited as today I'm going to pick up the 1982 Baseball Abstract at my local library! So, library or Ebay, take your pick. Here are the books that you should read, and in order, to appreciate sabremetrics:
I enjoy and greatly respect Bill James. I would not recommend Win Shares, from a sabremetrics point of view. WEBThere are tons of great sabremetricians out there. I am sure there are plenty of them that I have yet to discover. Just this year, I virtually-met one of the best (Andy Dolphin). There are plenty of bright guys like Andy that simply don't have their work published, and just good luck had my path cross his. Anyway, here are the guys that have given me at least one sabremetric orgasm, and some place where you can find them. [I have put my big O moments in brackets. Their specific work did it for me, though it may not work for you. I prefer Jessica Alba, and others prefer Carmen Elektra.]
There are dozens of others that I read and enjoy tremendously. But I'm still waiting for (and looking forward to) that moment. COMPILATIONSJames Fraser and Sylvain Cognet are compiling a tremendous resource of all research on the web. This would be a great place to start reading as well.You can also check out the quarterly By the Numbers for your fix. (Hmmm... I see they just posted something last week.) |