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It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book
by The Baseball Prospectus T, Jonah Keri
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Basic Books (2008-02-25)
ISBN: 0465002854
EAN: 9780465002856
Dewey Decimal #: 796
Paperback: 480 pages
SKU: 080603024
Condition: New
Comments: 0465002854 New, never read, may have minor wear on cover.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The best team in baseball statistics takes on one of the great unanswered questions: Why do teams win pennant races? Pennant races are arguable the most important aspect of baseball. Players, teams, and franchises are all after one goal: to win the pennant and get into the post-season. But what really determines who wins? Statistical analyses of baseball abound: different ways of breaking down everyone's individual performance, from hitters and pitchers to managers and even owners. But surprisingly, team success--what makes some teams winners over an entire season--has never been looked at with the same statistical rigor. In It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over, The Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts introduces the Davenport Method of deciding which races were the most dramatic--the closest, the most volatile--and determines the ten greatest races of modern baseball history. They use these key races (and a few others) to answer the main question: What really determines who wins? How important are such things as mid-season trades, how much a manager overworks his pitchers, and why teams have winning and losing streaks? Can one player carry a team? Can one bad player ruin a team? Can one bad play ruin a team's chances? This is a fascinating and illuminating statistical analysis of the game that will change our perception of it.
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Customer Reviews
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Plenty Of Data
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-10-27
As would be expected coming from the statistical Baseball Prospectus group this entry is chock full of data and analysis concerning a number of past close pennant races. Thirteen seasons are discussed. There are plenty of what might have been type discussions. Sprinkled thruout is much talk about the effects of racial integration in baseball. There are by my count twelve contributors to the book. Some of the chapters have multiple authors. This allows for some uneveness in content. But, all in all, it's definitely a worthwhile read.
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another Baseball Prospectus homerun
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-17
Baseball Prospectus is a premium web-site that engages in both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The authors come from a variety of different backgrounds, including (but not limited to): a meteorologist, a Chicago economics grad, a MBA, a German Romantic scholar, and a dermatologist. This is the third non-annual BP book (Mind Game (2005) & Baseball Between the Numbers (2006)).
The book is dedicated to "Branch Rickey, our spiritual father." Mr. Rickey created the farm system, forged three championship teams (the Cardinals of the 30's, the Dodgers of the late 40's/early 50's and the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates), and of course, integrated Major League Baseball by signing Jackie Robinson.
The book describes the greatest 14 pennant races over 13 different chapters (the 1948 & '49 AL are combined). The criteria that the authors used to determine the greatest pennant races is outlined in the introduction, but can be simply reduced to (1) "the longer a race remains undecided, the better a race is" and (2) "a three-team race is better than a two-team race."
The 1967 season bats lead-off. Jay Jaffe goes into great detail about how Yaz and the Red Sox won a four-team race and breathed life into a new generation of Red Sox fans. This season was the founding of the modern Red Sox franchise and its rabid followers.
There are a number of articles at the end of each chapter. There is a fascinating bit about "The Braves Dynasty That Wasn't." It laments the fact that the Milwaukee Braves only won one title in the late 50's, despite having Aaron, Mathews, Spahn, Burdette, Adcock and Logan (part of the problem was a couple of terrible trades).
Steve Goldman, a historian turned baseball writer (who also writes on-line for and about the Yankees), has two outstanding chapters on the 48-49 AL and the 1908 NL races.
The collapse of the 1964 Phillies gets a chapter. Dick Allen is redeemed (he hit .341/.434/.618 from September 1 on) and Gene Mauch is eviscerated for his handling of the pitching staff.
There is an outstanding chapter about The Shot Heard Round the World (`51 NL), in which Mr. Rickey's team lost to the Giants (and the Dodgers old manager, Leo Durocher) in a three-game playoff. Mr. Rickey's 1934 triumph, the Dizzy Dean Gas-House Gang Cardinals, also gets a chapter.
It's an excellent baseball book. It is reasoned and well presented. It's not a dry book; the seasons spring to life in flowing narratives that are enhanced by BP's statistical analysis.
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A Second-Place Finish
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-01-03
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
As the other reviewers have indicated, this book is full of choice details and interesting analysis about some of baseball's great pennant races and memorable teams, players, coaches, and managers. However, the book is badly edited and poorly written at times -- the price paid for trying to quickly slap together contributions from numerous contributors.
I think the book also suffers from confusion about whether it is aimed at the serious baseball fan or the casual fan. There's a lot of advanced baseball analysis terminology and numerology in the book that is familiar to the perhaps 200,000 people who are fascinated by sabermetrics. But the authors want to cast a wider net, so they spend a fair amount of time explaining these concepts to the newcomers in the audience. Trying to serve two audiences weakens the flow for those of us who already are on the bandwagon.
Yet, the book has significant strengths. The stories of how certain teams were built and reached their pinnacle during a particular pennant race (or staved off collapse for one more year) are frequently compelling. In fact, they're stronger than the data and statistics, which is usually BP's strength. I'm not a softie for the stories about a particular player's "manhood" or "ability to play in pain" or whatever, but this book highlights those achievements without being hyperbolic about it.
In conclusion, it's a decent addition to my baseball library, but far from a grand slam.
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Great content, lousy editing
Rating (3)
Date: 2007-11-02
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
This latest book from the baseball statistical wizards at BaseballProspectus.com continues what has become a pattern with Baseball Prospectus printed matter: absolutely first-rate analysis of baseball's most interesting subjects, compromised by an editing job that would make a high-school English class retch.
The good part first. Steve Goldman and his Baseball Prospectus colleagues examine the tightest pennant races in (US) major-league baseball history and try to help us understand why those races worked out as they did. Their studies are not only statistical, as usual for BP products, but also historical and personal, and the whole package "works" -- the reader can see not only how so many races were swung by human error (for example, inability to build a roster soundly, a persistent BP theme), but also *why* the errors came about, one of those things that a purely statistical analysis can't accomplish, and an example of how the self-styled chewing-gum-and-tobacco "analysts" underestimate the BP crowd. Some standard BP prejudices are evident, for example tendency to dismiss the running game as inconsequential (fair enough in the era of power baseball, but not so obvious in the pitcher-friendly 60s and 80s) and belief that Dick Allen belongs in the Hall of Fame (this reviewer, who's old enough to remember what a mess he made of his teams, disagrees strenuously). On the whole, however, the analysis is excellent, well-integrated, thought-provoking, and well worth a read, at least if you don't mind long tables of statistics.
Unfortunately, the editing job is so poor that there are places where reading the analysis is frustrating. Somebody really needs to teach these people to spell, or at least to hire editor/proofreaders who can. It's bad enough when the names of key figures are misspelled, for example the persistent reference to "Denny McClain" as a 1960s-vintage Detroit Tiger; Denny McLain, no second "C", was the real Tiger, and a book on baseball history should get things like that right, although maybe a non-specialist editor might miss it. But ANY editor should be able to get chapter titles spelled correctly. When I got to the chapter on the demise of the Yankees dynasty (to be sure, a fun read from the standpoint of content) and saw that its title persistently appeared as "Tyranicide" (sic), all I could do was gag, and wonder what other typos had crept in to compromise the actual content.
On balance, I do recommend this book; its strengths outweigh its weaknesses, and you won't get meatier analysis. But somebody PLEASE get these folks some editorial help!
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errors
Rating (3)
Date: 2007-09-21
2 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
Terrence is correct-a lot of errors.A few examples--Steve Goldman has Bob Lemon as a left handed picther.He also said Lemon came up as a third baseman.Didn't it occur to Mr. Goldman that if he came up as a third baseman, he would not have been a lefty thrower? Alex Belth had Pittsburgh winning 7 NL East titles in the 70's (actually won 6) In the Index section, Denny McLain is listed twice-spelled McLain and McClain.These were just found in the first half of the book--who knows what I will find in the second half.The Baseball Prospectus authors have got to do a better job on the research. Allen Barra's book-Brushbacks and Knockdowns contain a ton of errors , but that is another story for another day.
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