[mathdotcom]

There's some new ideas in there and Winston's approach is good for evaluating a lot of sports questions. However there's a lot of BS in there that any serious ''sabermetrician'' should clue in on immediately.

Just a couple examples:

He has data that says base runners get thrown at 3rd 5% of the time. He then makes an EV calculation of running from 2nd to 3rd on the assumption that the probability of being thrown out is 0.05, ignoring the obvious selection issue that in the data the guys who choose not to go to 3rd are doing so for a reason: they know they're likely going to be thrown out. Winston uses the result to make the silly claim that runners should go for it more often.

On Tim Donaghy, he claims the betting data shows Donaghy was fixing games because the games where the Over was pounded went over significantly more than half the time. That's just steam; he needs to either show that steam was much greater for his games, or that the same effect does not exist for other refs.

I could go on and on.

It is sad there aren't more books on sports from at least a slight betting perspective. Even J7's book has decent value, and a few laughs, if for no other reason than it provides some food for thought.

-mathy

[FourLengthsClear]

I have to say that I enjoyed it, albeit I read it at a time when I was just starting to develop an interest in US sports from a betting perspective.

[mebaran]

There's some new ideas in there and Winston's approach is good for evaluating a lot of sports questions. However there's a lot of BS in there that any serious ''sabermetrician'' should clue in on immediately.

Just a couple examples:

He has data that says base runners get thrown at 3rd 5% of the time. He then makes an EV calculation of running from 2nd to 3rd on the assumption that the probability of being thrown out is 0.05, ignoring the obvious selection issue that in the data the guys who choose not to go to 3rd are doing so for a reason: they know they're likely going to be thrown out. Winston uses the result to make the silly claim that runners should go for it more often.

On Tim Donaghy, he claims the betting data shows Donaghy was fixing games because the games where the Over was pounded went over significantly more than half the time. That's just steam; he needs to either show that steam was much greater for his games, or that the same effect does not exist for other refs.

I could go on and on.

It is sad there aren't more books on sports from at least a slight betting perspective. Even J7's book has decent value, and a few laughs, if for no other reason than it provides some food for thought.

-mathy

I can just imagine Bengie Molina on 2nd taking a huge lead...and then getting thrown out by a mile. Like you said though, interesting food for thought.

[Santo]

A lot of his theories are good, though missing selection criteria. I.E. It would be more interesting to see those probabilities where SB/year>15 . I learnt a bit from the book, but I learnt a whole lot more from reading sites like Fangraphs.