Below I’ll give you my selections for the best Sabermetrics books by a few categories. I will cover these and other great books more in depth later.
- Understanding Sabermetrics: An Introduction to the Science of Baseball Statistics, 2d ed. (2019)
- The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball (2014)
- The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball (2015)
- Understanding Sabermetrics: An Introduction to the Science of Baseball Statistics (2007)
- Astroball: The New Way to Win It All (2019)
- Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution (2017)
- Practicing Sabermetrics: Putting the Science of Baseball Statistics to Work (2009)
- Analyzing Baseball Data with R (Chapman & Hall/CRC The R Series) (2013)
- Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks (2007)
- The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (2003)
- The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics (2015)
- BIG DATA BASEBALL (2016)
Understanding Sabermetrics: An Introduction to the Science of Baseball Statistics, 2d ed. (2019)
Interest in Sabermetrics has increased dramatically in recent years as the need to better compare baseball players has intensified among managers, agents and fans, and even other players.
The Book: Playing The Percentages In Baseball (2014)
Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, The Book continues where the legendary Bill James’s Baseball Abstracts and Palmer and Thorn’s The Hidden Game of Baseball left off more than twenty years ago.
The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball (2015)
From the front office to the family room, sabermetrics has dramatically changed the way baseball players are assessed and valued by fans and managers alike. Rocketed to popularity by the 2003 bestseller Moneyball and the film of the same name, the use of sabermetrics to analyze player performance has appeared to be a David to the Goliath of systemically advantaged richer teams that could be toppled only by creative statistical analysis.
Understanding Sabermetrics: An Introduction to the Science of Baseball Statistics (2007)
Born in the 1970s as a radical challenge to traditional baseball statistics, sabermetrics has developed into a new way of understanding many aspects of the game. Its practitioners have created new statistical tools and revised our old ways of thinking about established measures such as the batting average, tactics such as the sacrifice bunt, and even who among the greats was truly great.
Astroball: The New Way to Win It All (2019)
When Sports Illustrated declared on the cover of a June 2014 issue that the Houston Astros would win the World Series in 2017, people thought Ben Reiter, the article’s author, was crazy. The Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century, but they were more than just bad. They were an embarrassment, a club that didn’t even appear to be trying to win. The cover story, combined with the specificity of Reiter’s claim, met instant and nearly universal derision.
Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution (2017)
“A delight for baseball lovers” (Kirkus Reviews) and “one of the most significant baseball books of the year” (Bob Costas) Ahead of the Curve uses stories from baseball’s present and past to examine why we sometimes choose ignorance over information, and how tradition can trump logic.Forget batting average. Kill the “Win.” Say goodbye to starting pitchers.
Practicing Sabermetrics: Putting the Science of Baseball Statistics to Work (2009)
The past 30 years have seen an explosion in the number and variety of baseball books and articles. Following the lead of pioneers Bill James, John Thorn, and Pete Palmer, researchers have steadily challenged the ways we think about player and team performance–and along the way revised what we thought we knew of baseball history.
Analyzing Baseball Data with R (Chapman & Hall/CRC The R Series) (2013)
With its flexible capabilities and open-source platform, R has become a major tool for analyzing detailed, high-quality baseball data. Analyzing Baseball Data with R provides an introduction to R for sabermetricians, baseball enthusiasts, and students interested in exploring the rich sources of baseball data.
Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan’s Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks (2007)
This smart and funny fan’s guide to baseball explains the ins and outs of pitching, hitting, running, and fielding, while offering insider trivia and anecdotes that will appeal to anyone—whether you’re a major league couch potato, life-long season ticket-holder, or a beginner. What is the difference between a slider and a curveball?At which stadium did “The Wave” first make an appearance?How do some hitters use iPods to improve their skills?Which positions are never…
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (2003)
When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “holy book of baseball.” Now, baseball’s beloved “Sultan of Stats” (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium.Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one.
The Hidden Game of Baseball: A Revolutionary Approach to Baseball and Its Statistics (2015)
Long before Moneyball became a sensation or Nate Silver turned the knowledge he’d honed on baseball into electoral gold, John Thorn and Pete Palmer were using statistics to shake the foundations of the game. First published in 1984, The Hidden Game of Baseball ushered in the sabermetric revolution by demonstrating that we were thinking about baseball stats―and thus the game itself―all wrong.
BIG DATA BASEBALL (2016)
After 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 2013 Pirates, mired in the longest losing streak in North American pro sports history, adopted drastic big-data strategies to end the drought, make the playoffs, and turn around the franchise’s fortunes.
Best Sabermetrics Books: The Ultimate List
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some sabermetrics books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Matrix Methods: Applied Linear Algebra and Sabermetrics
Author(s): Richard Bronson, Gabriel B. Costa
ID: 2523159, Publisher: Academic Pr, Year: 2020, Size: 5 Mb, Format: pdf
A Fan's Guide to Baseball Analytics: Why WAR, WHIP, wOBA, and Other Advanced Sabermetrics Are Essential to Understanding Modern Baseball
Author(s): Anthony Castrovince
ID: 3386959, Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Year: 2020, Size: 5 Mb, Format: epub
Practicing Sabermetrics: Putting the Science of Baseball Statistics to Work
Author(s): Gabriel B Costa
ID: 254114, Publisher: McFarland, Year: 2009, Size: 2 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not errorless. Some books are absolutely record-breakers according to Chicago Tribune, others are composed by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Drop a comment if you have any feedback on the list.