Baseball Hacks

Why Baseball Hacks?

Hack means something specific in a baseball context: it means “to take a bad swing at the ball.” However, that’s not what we mean by hack in this book.

The term hacking has a bad reputation in the press. They use it to refer to someone who breaks into systems or wreaks havoc with computers as his weapon. Among people who write code, though, the term hack refers to a “quick-and-dirty” solution to a problem, or a clever way to get something done. And the term hacker is taken very much as a compliment, referring to someone as being creative, having the technical chops to get things done. The Hacks series is an attempt to reclaim the word, document the good ways people are hacking, and pass the hacker ethic of creative participation on to the uninitiated. Seeing how others approach systems and problems is often the quickest way to learn about a new technology.

I wrote Baseball Hacks for all types of baseball fans—young and old, computer novices and geeks, baseball experts and neophytes. I’ve tried to resist the temptation to pontificate about baseball, focusing not on which players, strategies, and formulas are good and bad but on how to assess those values. I have years of experience working with data, so I have tried to share tips, tricks, and techniques that will make it easier for you, as a fan, to actively participate in baseball.