Baseball Hacks

Hacks 60–71: Introduction

I think that this chapter contains the most fun set of hacks in the book. I like scoring games, searching for data, and compiling databases. But the reason for doing all of these things is to learn more about baseball, which is what this chapter is all about.

The term sabermetrics comes from SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research (see http://www.sabr.org for more information). In 1974, Bill James, Pete Palmer, and Dick Cramer started a statistics committee to encourage the exchange of ideas on baseball. These three pioneers, and many other committee members, popularized thinking about baseball statistics and strategy. As described in Chapter 5, they developed some of the most famous formulas in baseball. Over time, this type of numbers-based thinking has come to be known as sabermetrics.

In this chapter, I examine some classic questions about baseball and some questions of my own. Some fellow baseball fans have contributed to this chapter, and I hope you enjoy reading their hacks as much as I did. These hacks aren’t designed just to answer questions about baseball, but to teach you how to answer questions about baseball.

Thinking About Baseball

Although it’s hard to see it at first, all of the hacks in this chapter follow a similar pattern. Each hack begins with a problem or question about baseball—for example, is bunting a good strategy?

Next, we formulate a hypothesis that we can test. In this example, we might hypothesize that bunting reduces the ...