{"id":2177,"date":"2016-04-30T15:58:13","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T23:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2177"},"modified":"2016-04-30T15:58:13","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T23:58:13","slug":"review-watching-baseball-smarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2177","title":{"rendered":"Review: Watching Baseball Smarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been trying to reconnect with major league baseball (MLB)for a while.\u00a0 Baseball is\u00a0 my kind of spectator sport.\u00a0 It’s essentially an excuse to sit in the stands and have a few beverages and jaw about the game.\u00a0 That game is paced to encourage speculation about strategy, rumination on the history, and statistical analysis of any aspect of it.\u00a0 Perfect for me.<\/p>\n

Lately, though, I’ve been noticing that there’s lots of little stuff that’s just understood about the game that I missed out on as a casual fan.\u00a0 I’ve been looking for a primer that I can use to fill some of those gaps.\u00a0 Something like David Benjamin’s The Joy of Sumo<\/em><\/a>, but for baseball.\u00a0 Zack Hample’s Watching Baseball Smarter<\/em> is a cut at it.<\/p>\n

Hample’s a hardcore fan who comes at the game from interesting angles.\u00a0 He’s also published a blog and book about the best ways to freely acquire baseballs used in games.\u00a0 For example, those works describe the best places and techniques for catching foul balls (I think).\u00a0 He’s not just a collector, though; he’s a student of the game and enthusiast.<\/p>\n

The good thing about Smarter<\/em> is that it covers a lot of ground without getting too deep into any one thing.\u00a0 That’s its limitation as well.\u00a0 Hample writes intelligently about everything from the basics of fielding and positions to the statistics fans quote most often.\u00a0 The stats description shows how the depth is set.\u00a0 Baseball is undergoing a revolution as amateur and professional analysts are mining MLB’s vast troves of data looking to understand and predict the game better.\u00a0 Smarter<\/em> recognizes this without attempting to lead the fan\/reader too deep into that area.\u00a0 I came away with a clear impression that there’s more to know and a good description of the most commonly used stats (as in the ones an announcer would mention).<\/p>\n

Of course, the broad coverage means that there are areas one would like to know more about that get short shrift.\u00a0 I expect that there are areas I want to delve into that were completely unmentioned.\u00a0 I don’t think of that as a terrible shortcoming. I came in with knowledge and ideas of what I want to know more about.\u00a0 More importantly, Hample’s focuses largely match my own.\u00a0 Overall I both enjoyed Smarter<\/em> and learned some things.<\/p>\n

Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been trying to reconnect with major league baseball (MLB)for a while.\u00a0 Baseball is\u00a0 my kind of spectator sport.\u00a0 It’s essentially an excuse to sit in the stands and have a few beverages and jaw about the game.\u00a0 That game is paced to encourage speculation about strategy, rumination on the history, and statistical analysis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2180,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177\/revisions\/2180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}