As a baseball fan, seeing the game going through a revolution can be confusing! This was a great explanation of where the sport is going, and what I need to look for as I watch the future of America’s pastime.

While it is clear the authors know their stuff about the role of analytics in baseball, it pains me to read about all this praise yet again about an organization like the Houston Astros who not only flaunted established rules to win, but great certain employees so badly. When I read about thier dismissal of traditional scouts who wanted to learn more about modern methods that was the end of my objectivity for this book.

A thorough exploration of what teams and players are presently doing to improve performance and gain a competitive advantage in baseball. I found this book to be quite interesting, and even though I had a working knowledge of some of what is covered in this book, I still learned an immense amount about what is happening at the player development level in baseball. Trevor Bauer's quirkiness and abrasiveness makes a bit more sense after reading this book. While reading about the Houston Astros and their player development measures, the cheating scandal feels like the elephant in the room, but it is eventually addressed. The renaissance of Rich Hill and other pitchers without overpowering fastballs finding new approaches to save and/or jumpstart their careers is going to be a fascinating trend to continue to follow in the years to come. The authors were granted more access to what teams are doing than expected, but there is still so much going that this book could not cover. As the book progressed, you were introduced to another outsider making an impact on baseball, and teams were snatching up these innovative minds at a blistering pace. In five years, it will be interesting to see how history has treated these names and how common they will become to the causal baseball fan.

This book is not overly technical in its delivery, but still provides the proper respect and admiration for the science involved. Hardcore sabermetricians as well as the causal fan will gain insight from this book. The authors do a great job of weaving the technical with the real world application with the tangible player to keep all engaged throughout the book.

I have tried twice and both times the same thing happens. I get a copy of the covers but no book. This is true in Adobe Digital Editions and in the Kindle version. I don't know how someone can review a book, as one reviewer did, without access to the actual book. Not sure how to bring this to anyone's attention, so this review. I hope to be updating this review at some point when I can actually read it, but a review copy of just the cover doesn't offer much to go on other than finding some other review and paraphrasing what they wrote, which is what I assume the other reviewer has done.

This is a much more technical tome than The Only Rule Is It Has To Work (which Lindbergh co-authored with Sam Miller), but it’s just as fascinating.

If you’re into the effect of stats and tech on the baseball world (and if you’re fascinated by Trevor Bauer and the Driveline approach), this is a must-read.

If you follow the work of Lindbergh and Sawchik in other aspects of their careers, you can see clear evidence of the fingerprints of each on this book. While the dual author blend doesn’t work quite as seamlessly as it did for Lindbergh and Miller and at times can feel like reading two separate books at once, they’re still two very fascinating narratives to follow.