Baseball Hacks

Joe Adler received both his undergraduate and master's degrees from MIT in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. After spending a few years as a management consultant doing risk analysis for banks and credit card companies, he now works as a researcher at Verisign, where he does data mining and statistical analysis work on hundreds of gigabytes of security, naming, and telecom data. When he's not doing statistics professionally, he spends hours every day watching baseball on television, following standings, and reading about baseball. As a hard-core fan, he can't help thinking about how to apply statistical thinking when watching baseball. If you suffer the same affliction and want to talk shop, send Joe email at baseballhacks@gmail.com.

• Credits Preface Chapter 1. Basics of Baseball 1. Score a Baseball Game 2. Make a Box Score from a Score Sheet 3. Keep Score, Project Scoresheet-Style 4. Follow Pitches During a Game 5. Follow the Game Online 6. Add Baseball Searches to Firefox 7. Find Images of Stadiums Chapter 2. Baseball Games from Past Years 8. Get and Install MySQL 9. Get an Access Database of Player and Team Statistics 10. Get a MySQL Database of Player and Team Statistics 11. Make Your Own Stats Book 12. Get Perl 13. Learn Perl 14. Get Historical Play-by-Play Data 15. Make Box Scores or Database Tables from Play-by-Play Data with Retrosheet Tools 16. Use SQL to Explore Game Data 17. Use Microsoft Access to Run SQL Queries 18. Get a GUI for MySQL 19. Move Data from a Database to Excel 20. Load Baseball Data into MySQL 21. Load Retrosheet Game Logs 22. Make a Historical Play-by-Play Database 23. Use Regular Expressions to Identify Events Chapter 3. Stats from the Current Season 24. Use Microsoft Excel Web Queries to Get Stats 25. Spider Baseball Sites for Data 26. Discover How Live Score Applications Work 27. Keep Your Stats Database Up-to-Date 28. Get Recent Play-by-Play Data 29. Find Data on Hit Locations Chapter 4. Visualize Baseball Statistics 30. Plot Histograms in Excel 31. Get R and R Packages 32. Analyze Baseball with R 33. Access Databases Directly from Excel or R 34. Load Text Files into R 35. Compare Teams and Players with Lattices 36. Compare Teams Using Chernoff Faces 37. Plot Spray Charts 38. Chart Team Stats in Real Time 39. Slice and Dice Teams with Cubes Chapter 5. Formulas 40. Measure Batting with Batting Average 41. Measure Batting with On-Base Percentage 42. Measure Batting with SLG 43. Measure Batting with OPS 44. Measure Power with ISO 45. Measure Batting with Runs Created 46. Measure Batting with Linear Weights 47. Measure Pitching with ERA 48. Measure Pitching with WHIP 49. Measure Pitching with Linear Weights 50. Measure Defense with Defensive Efficiency 51. Measure Pitching with DIPS 52. Measure Base Running Through EqBR 53. Measure Fielding with Fielding Percentage 54. Measure Fielding with Range Factor 55. Measure Fielding with Linear Weights 56. Measure Park Effects 57. Calculate Fan Save Value 58. Calculate Save Value 59. Calculate Holds and Decent Holds for Relief Pitchers Chapter 6. Sabermetric Thinking 60. Calculate Expected Runs 61. Calculate an Expected Hits Matrix 62. Look for Evidence of Platoon Effects 63. Significant Number of At Bats 64. Find "Clutch" Players 65. Calculate Expected Number of Wins 66. Measure Hits by Pitch Count 67. OBP, SLG, and Scoring Runs 68. Measure Skill Versus Luck 69. Odds of the Best Team Winning the World Series 70. Top 10 Bargain Outfielders 71. Fitting Game Scores to a Strength Model Chapter 7. The Bullpen 72. Start or Join a Fantasy League 73. Draft Your Fantasy Team 74. Make a Scoreboard Widget 75. Analyze Other Sports Appendix A. Where to Learn More Stuff Appendix B. Abbreviations Index