An unprecedented look inside the world of baseball scouting and evaluation from two of the industry's top prospect analystsFor the modern Major League team, player evaluation is a complex, multi-pronged, high-tech pursuit. But far from becoming obsolete in this environment—as Michael Lewis' Moneyball once forecast—the role of the scout in today's game has evolved and even expanded. Rather than being the antithesis of a data-driven approach, scouting now represents an essential analytical component in a team's arsenal.Future Value is a thorough dive into baseball's changing world of talent acquisition and development, a world with its own language, methods, metrics, and madness. From rural high schools to elite amateur showcases, from the back fields of spring training to major league draft rooms, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel break down the key systems and techniques used to assess talent. It's a process that has moved beyond the quintessential stopwatches and radar guns to include statistical models, countless measurable indicators, and a broader international reach.Practical and probing, discussing wide-ranging topics from tool grades to front office politics, this is an illuminating exploration of how to watch baseball and see the future.

Interviews eighteen of the writers who dominated sports reporting in the interwar period, including Dan Daniel, Paul Gallico, Red Smith, Marshall Hunt, and John Kieran

1982 edition. A new book with almost nonexistent edge wear. There is a small rough spot about 1/8 inch in diameter on spine. Still shiny. From private collection.

Move over, Moneyball -- this New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players.As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, every front office takes a data-driven approach to evaluating players, and the league's smarter teams no longer have a huge advantage in valuing past performance.Lindbergh and Sawchik's behind-the-scenes reporting reveals:How undersized afterthoughts José Altuve and Mookie Betts became big sluggers and MVPs How polarizing pitcher Trevor Bauer made himself a Cy Young contender How new analytical tools have overturned traditional pitching and hitting techniques How a wave of young talent is making MLB both better than ever and arguably worse to watch Instead of out-drafting, out-signing, and out-trading their rivals, baseball's best minds have turned to out-developing opponents, gaining greater edges than ever by perfecting prospects and eking extra runs out of older athletes who were once written off. Lindbergh and Sawchik take us inside the transformation of former fringe hitters into home-run kings, show how washed-up pitchers have emerged as aces, and document how coaching and scouting are being turned upside down. The MVP Machine charts the future of a sport and offers a lesson that goes beyond baseball: Success stems not from focusing on finished products, but from making the most of untapped potential.

Move over, Moneyball -- this New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players.As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, every front office takes a data-driven approach to evaluating players, and the league's smarter teams no longer have a huge advantage in valuing past performance.Lindbergh and Sawchik's behind-the-scenes reporting reveals:How undersized afterthoughts José Altuve and Mookie Betts became big sluggers and MVPs How polarizing pitcher Trevor Bauer made himself a Cy Young contender How new analytical tools have overturned traditional pitching and hitting techniques How a wave of young talent is making MLB both better than ever and arguably worse to watch Instead of out-drafting, out-signing, and out-trading their rivals, baseball's best minds have turned to out-developing opponents, gaining greater edges than ever by perfecting prospects and eking extra runs out of older athletes who were once written off. Lindbergh and Sawchik take us inside the transformation of former fringe hitters into home-run kings, show how washed-up pitchers have emerged as aces, and document how coaching and scouting are being turned upside down. The MVP Machine charts the future of a sport and offers a lesson that goes beyond baseball: Success stems not from focusing on finished products, but from making the most of untapped potential.

Time travel meets baseball in this “grand adventure” about a modern-day reporter who witnesses the birth of America’s favorite pastime (The Washington Times)Contemporary reporter Sam Fowler is stuck in a dull job and a failing marriage when he is suddenly transported back to the summer of 1869. After a wrenching period of adjustment, he feels rejuvenated by his involvement with the nation’s first pro baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. But American sports isn't the only thing to undergo a major transformation—Sam himself starts to change as he faces life-threatening 19th-century challenges on and off the baseball diamond. With the support of his fellow ballplayers and the lovely Caitlin O'Neill, will he regain the sense of family he desperately needs?Darryl Brock masterfully evokes post-Civil War America—its smoky cities and transcontinental railroad, its dance halls and parlour houses, its financial booms and busts. Equally appealing to sports fans and anyone who appreciates a well-told story, If I Never Get Back is a literary home run that "grabs you from line one on page one and never lets go" (San Francisco Chronicle).

A fascinating look at how MLB teams find diamonds in the roughIn the plainest of terms, baseball scouts are tasked with seeing the future—a distant future, at that. Baseball’s long developmental arc leaves room for plenty of twists and turns on the way to The Show. Some prospects shoot like arrows toward their projected potential, while others fizzle out or chart an unexpected course.Joey Votto was a lightly scouted high schooler out of Ontario, Canada. Charlie Blackmon was once coveted for his left arm more than his offensive potential. Mookie Betts “lost interest in the draft” as he went unselected round after round. Jacob deGrom refused to relinquish his role as a shortstop. Lorenzo Cain never even put on a baseball glove until high school—and then wore it on the wrong hand.Smart, Wrong, and Lucky explores how first impressions measure up to their aftermaths: the draft, years of progression, and for a talented few, major league success. MLB.com writer Jonathan Mayo profiles a diverse range of modern stars and looks at them through the eyes of those who noticed them first as prospects.Featuring exclusive interviews with scouts, players, coaches, and more, this fascinating collection of origin stories is an ode to baseball’s endless possibilities.

Total baseball (A Baseball ink book) edited by John Thorn & Pete Palmer - 1989

Book by Okkonen, Marc

Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, The Book continues where the legendary Bill James’s Baseball Abstracts and Palmer and Thorn’s The Hidden Game of Baseball left off more than twenty years ago. Continuing in the grand tradition of sabermetrics, the authors provide a revolutionary way to think about baseball with principles that can be applied at every level, from high school to the major leagues.Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin cover topics such as batting and pitching matchups, platooning, the benefits and risks of intentional walks and sacrifices, the legitimacy of alleged “clutch” hitters, and many of baseball’s other theories on hitting, fielding, pitching, and even baserunning. They analyze when a strategy is a good idea and when it’s a bad idea, and how to more closely watch the “inside” game of baseball.Whenever you hear an announcer talk about the “unwritten rule” or say that so-and-so is going “by the book” in bringing in a situational substitute, The Book reviews the facts and determines what the real case is. If you want to know what the folks in baseball should be doing, find out in The Book.

Ty Cobb slides into third in a flurry of dust and spikes. Home Run Baker, young and strong, takes batting practice while his teammates stand in awe. Wee Willie Keeler and Cy Young, Babe Ruth and Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams--these and other American heroes take the field in Baseball's Golden Age: The Photographs of Charles M. Conlon.From 1904 to 1942, Conlon photographed it all, creating some of baseball's most famous photographs, but the photographer himself has remained practically unknown. This volume is the first publication to reproduce Conlon's photographs as fine art and to give his remarkable legacy its due. Selected and printed from the Conlon negatives in the archives of The Sporting News, 205 dazzling images fill the pages of Baseball's Golden Age.The glory of that time shines through in the text as well, as author Neal McCabe has assembled wonderful, evocative stories that bring these legendary baseball heroes to life. Baseball's Golden Age continues to please all fans of baseball--past, present, and future.Praise for Baseball's Golden Age:"This is an invaluable volume for baseball fans and American history buffs alike." --Sports Illustrated“A revelation in black and white, a time machine to the era of wooden ballparks, legal spitballs and manual typewriters . . . Roger Angell of the New Yorker called it ‘the best book of baseball photographs ever published.’”—Los Angeles Times

Exploring the history and variety of Cuban baseball, a unique exploration of this "last frontier" of American sport uses photographs, statistics, and baseball lore to trace the sport's history, from its origins in the 1970s to the current American love affair with their version of the game. 25,000 first printing.

The New York Times bestseller about what would happen if two statistics-minded outsiders were allowed to run a professional baseball team--now includes a new afterword by the authors.It’s the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies -- with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That’s what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule is it Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you've ever read.We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: it has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance.Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport’s folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion?It’s a wild ride, by turns provocative and absurd, as Lindbergh and Miller tell a story that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And they prove that you don’t need a bat or a glove to make a genuine contribution to the game.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The inside story of the Houston Astros, whose relentless innovation took them from the worst team in baseball to the World Series in 2017 and 2019“Reiter’s superb narrative of how the team got there provides powerful insights into how organizations—not just baseball clubs—work best.”—The Wall Street JournalAstroball picks up where Michael Lewis’s acclaimed Moneyball leaves off, telling the thrilling story of a championship team that pushed both the sport and business of baseball to the next level. In 2014, the Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century, but just three years later they defied critics to win a stunning World Series. In this book, Ben Reiter shows how the Astros built a system that avoided the stats-versus-scouts divide by giving the human factor a key role in their decision-making. Sitting at the nexus of sports, business, and innovation, Astroball is the story of the next wave of thinking in baseball and beyond, at once a remarkable underdog tale and a fascinating look at the cutting edge of evaluating and optimizing human potential.