Baseball's 2007 media: Part V
Continuing our reviews of what's new in baseball media:
The book: "The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed," by J.C. Bradbury (Dutton Adult, 288 pages, $24.95)
The windup: An economist professor explains how steroids have nothing to do with the recent home-run records, who's overvalued, why small-city franchise can dominated their larger foes and whether "Moneyball" really works.
The pitch: Bradbury is a popular baseball blogger (www.sabernomics.com) who already has the juice to pull something like this off and make it credible. He coined the phrase "sabernomics" as a way to describe modern economics with the statistics that Bill James brought in, with help from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). The book actually stops on page 229, but the back 50-plus pages are appendix and bibliography. We're partial to chapter 3: "The Extinct Left-Handed Catcher," which points out that the Atlanta Braves' Adam LaRoche would be the most perfect example of someone who could thrive as a lefty receiver if he wasn't a victim of discrimination. "Using only right-handed catchers is like locking your car door in a small town with no crime. The chancs that someone will break into your car are tiny, but the cost of protecting yourself against the small likelihood of the negative consequences is so low (pressing the lock button) that it's still worth locking the door." Which means, the advantage of a right-handed catcher with a runner representing the winning run on second base in the ninth inning is worth it. It's also the case of: If you're a lefty-catcher with a good arm, the team probalby needs you as a pitcher instead.
Another review: From Publishers Weekly: "Like. Like a scrappy role player, Bradbury's enthusiasm is evident. While not forging new ground, (he) shines in the closing chapters, in which he convincingly bucks the conventional wisdom that Major League Baseball behaves like a monopoly. While the numbers crunched are more of the Financial Times than the box score kind, the issues the book deals with are those discussed in many a barroom. "