How A Baseball Book Changed One Fan's Life
In today's issue, one IBWAA member discusses how a book published by Baseball Prospectus changed his perspective on baseball, critical thinking, and life.
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Baseball Prospectus, the organization that published the book Baseball Between The Numbers, was founded in 1996 and its website, BaseballProspectus.com, launched in 1997. Here were some of the biggest stories going on in baseball back in 1997 when BP’s website first took hold in the baseball world:
There were only 28 teams in Major League Baseball -- the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays (now the Tampa Bay Rays) were not added as expansion teams until the following season in 1998.
The Florida Marlins, as they were then known, won the National League Wild Card in just their fifth season after joining MLB in 1993. They went on to win the World Series over the Cleveland Indians in seven games.
Pedro Martinez won his first of three career Cy Young Awards, leading the Major Leagues with a 1.90 ERA, 13 complete games, and a 0.932 WHIP.
Tony Gwynn led the Majors with a .372 batting average, the second-highest single-season batting average of his career trailing only his .394 average in the strike-shortened season in 1994. He also led MLB with a career-high 220 hits.
Bartolo Colon, who has not pitched in an MLB game since 2018 and only officially announced his retirement two months ago, made his Major League debut for Cleveland on April 4, allowing four earned runs over six innings.
Leading Off
How Baseball Between the Numbers Changed My Life
By David Blumberg
I was -- and remain -- a huge baseball fanatic, and finding Baseball Between the Numbers in middle school was a lifeline. At that time in my life, my lifelong struggle with depression was triggered. There was no one inciting incident, but it’s been something I’ve had to deal with ever since. Baseball was a reprieve for me, and this book deepened my love for the sport.
Being a teenager is already difficult enough without feeling like everything you believe is refuted by everyone around you. Every friend I had who similarly loved baseball seemed to believe in traditional statistics, old clichés and established orthodoxy. I didn’t know how to fully argue my position on my favorite sport, but I knew these traditional arguments fell flat for me.
Baseball Between the Numbers arrived in 2006 from the team at Baseball Prospectus. Already known for their sharp analysis, BP sought to answer questions old and new and engage the wider baseball audience in deep critical thinking about the sport.
This book featured writers who later became members of baseball front offices, sports media luminaries and even political commentators. If you’ve heard anyone discuss political polling in the last 15 years, for example, you’ve probably been exposed to the work of Nate Silver. He cut his teeth by creating the PECOTA projection system BP used and would become the impetus for future systems such as Steamer and ZiPS.
Baseball Between the Numbers truly arrived at the right time for me. I found writers who went on to become prominent at every level of media debating the cause of the steroid-era home run spikes, whether Derek Jeter deserved his defensive reputation or what value framing had for catchers.
That latter topic later illuminated one of the beauties of BP’s analysis, which was that they didn’t speak in absolutes then and still don’t today. They acknowledged the world is more complicated than that. It was largely BP’s own team that ended up refuting their original conclusion that the effect of catcher framing was negligible in a baseball game.
Their 2012 follow-up Extra Innings was full of chapters where the answer was often, “We just don’t know yet.” Some might say that falls short of expectations, but I think it’s great they posed new questions and were willing to acknowledge where gaps in their knowledge exist. That’s a scary thing for most of us to do, much less titans of baseball analysis.
There is a lesson in that for all of us, especially living in a time when the media often plays the dangerous game of wanting to be right instead of correct. Admitting you were wrong is difficult, but a willingness to admit your failings and correct them leads to being a better person, a better citizen, and in this specific case, a better analyst. Even just saying you aren’t sure is certainly better than presenting a falsehood as if it’s correct and has been all along.
BP taught me that asking the right questions is often just as important as finding the right answers. This approach has become fundamental to my personality, not just as a baseball fan but in how I live my life.
Everything I’ve done since first reading Baseball Between the Numbers has spun out of a love for an analytical approach the book helped me develop.
I found myself working in nonprofit advocacy for a time because I’d learned to see what was wrong with the world and to want to change it for the better. I was driven to make a difference because I was able to think more critically about the world around me. I largely have BP to thank for that.
I spent several years pursuing sports broadcasting because I wanted to bring that deeper level of analysis to radio and TV. This was tough, as it’s a difficult business to crack into in the first place and was only made harder by a pandemic that tested the sports broadcasting industry at every level.
As I embark on the next stage of my life, I still feel the presence of this book and its analysis. I likely would not be writing this article if not for BP, for instance. I am searching for that deeper purpose in my professional life, and the journey that began with Baseball Between the Numbers has led to where I am now, seeking to create better cities and transit in the field of urban planning.
When reading, watching or listening to content geared toward this specialty, I find a lot of similarities to the analytics world I have become so indebted to.
I see curiosity being extolled as a virtue and people who genuinely want to find better ways than prescribed by tradition or established wisdom. I see a field that is interested in the why and the how just as much as the who, what and where. These are things that excite me, and to think that so much of that comes down to the original influence of a single book is incredible.
Baseball analysis has obviously come a long way since the book’s release. FanGraphs has in many ways surpassed BP as the go-to place for statistics and commentary. Statcast has delivered ways of measuring the game that were once thought unthinkable. Driveline and other places like it are on the cutting edge of using technology to change and enhance player performance.
We don’t know what the next innovation will be or who it will come from, but we know that spirit of inquisitiveness that Baseball Between the Numbers embodies will be inherent in what comes next.
As for me, I will always remember the lessons this book taught me. Seek truth, even if inconvenient. Ask hard questions, no matter what they may reveal. Be willing to admit you are wrong, or even that you simply don’t have the answers right now. Be generous with your knowledge and wisdom, and don’t keep it to yourself.
It’s an old cliché, but especially in baseball it’s true that the journey is often more important than the destination. Baseball Between the Numbers was a book largely about that journey toward truth, and that’s what I continue to strive toward.
David Blumberg is long-suffering Cubs fan. You can find his baseball opinions on Twitter and other musings on Medium at DGBlog. Follow him on Twitter @DGBlumberg.