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, eve...

The New York Times bestseller: "A useful, entertaining look back at how the Pirates turned a small market, longtime loser into a playoff team." — Baseball AmericaAfter twenty consecutive losing seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, team morale was low, the club's payroll ranked near the bottom of the sport, game attendance was down, and the city was becoming increasingly disenchanted with its team. Big Data Baseball is the story of how the 2...

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, eve...

Big Data Baseball provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the Pittsburgh Pirates used big data strategies to end the longest losing streak in North American pro sports history.New York Times BestsellerAfter twenty consecutive losing seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, team morale was low, the club’s payroll ranked near the bottom of the sport, game attendance was down, and the city was becoming increasingly disenchanted w...

In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, the ESPN baseball writer and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game.For years, Daniel Kahneman’s iconic work of behavioral science Thinking Fast and Slow has been required reading in front offices across Major Le...

Predictably Irrational meets Moneyball in ESPN veteran writer and statistical analyst Keith Law’s iconoclastic look at the numbers game of baseball, proving why some of the most trusted stats are surprisingly wrong, explaining what numbers actually work, and exploring what the rise of Big Data means for the future of the sport.For decades, statistics such as batting average, saves recorded, and pitching won-lost records have been used to measure individual players...

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,...

Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ...

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.In The Best Team Money Can Buy, Molly Knight tells the story of the Dodgers' 2013 and 2014 seasons. She shares a behind-the-scenes account of the astonishing sale of the Dodgers, reve...

The captivating inside story of the historic 2018 Boston Red Sox, as told through the assembly and ascendancy of their talented young core—the culmination of nearly a decade of reporting from one of the most respected baseball writers in the country.The 2018 season was a coronation for the Boston Red Sox. The best team in Major League Baseball—indeed, one of the best teams ever—the Sox won 108 regular season games and then romped through the postseason, going 11-3 ...

With its three-hour-long contests, 162-game seasons, and countless measurable variables, baseball is a sport which lends itself to self-reflection and obsessive analysis. It's a thinking game. It's also a shifting game. Nowhere is this more evident than in the statistical revolution which has swept through the pastime in recent years, bringing metrics like WAR, OPS, and BABIP into front offices and living rooms alike.So what's on the horizon for a game that is constantly evolving? ...

The Bronx Is Burning meets Chuck Klosterman in this wild pop-culture history of baseball’s most colorful and controversial decade.The Major Leagues witnessed more dramatic stories and changes in the ‘70s than in any other era. The American popular culture and counterculture collided head-on with the national pastime, rocking the once-conservative sport to its very foundations.Outspoken players embraced free agency, openly advocated drug use, and ev...