Big Data Baseball

Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak

By: Travis Sawchik

Narrated by: Peter Larkin

Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

Big Data Baseball provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the Pittsburgh Pirates used big data strategies to end the longest losing streak in North American pro sports history.

New York Times Bestseller

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.

Big Data Baseball is Moneyball for a new generation. Award-winning journalist Travis Sawchik takes you behind the scenes to expertly weave together the stories of the key figures who changed the way the Pirates played the game, revealing how a culture of collaboration and creativity flourished as whiz-kid analysts worked alongside graybeard coaches to revolutionize the sport and uncover groundbreaking insights for how to win more games without spending a dime.

From pitch framing to on-field shifts, this entertaining and enlightening underdog story closely examines baseball’s burgeoning big data movement and demonstrates how the millions of data points which aren’t immediately visible to players and spectators, are the bit of magic that led the Pirates to finish the 2013 season in second place and brought an end to a twenty-year losing streak.

©2015 Travis Sawchik (P)2015 Macmillan Audio

Very similar to Moneyball

If you liked Moneyball, you will love this book. The Pirates approach to statistics was different than Moneyball but yields similar results.

Lots of Modern Baseball Info

Will read again.
Really enjoyed learning about a deeper level of my favorite sport. Reader, I'm gonna guess, is not a baseball fan. Read certain things with nonsensical inflections.

The game keeps changing

What a great book!

After having endured many dismissive comments by various baseball announcers about the value of baseball data and the hidden value that it can uncover, it is refreshing to read that Moneyball was taken seriously by some teams and yielded excellent results.

This book is at once a management book, a change leadership guide, a sequel to Moneyball, and an inspirational story about a team that once broke the heart of this Pittsburgh expat. The book fits is for anyone who appreciated Moneyball by Michael Lewis or The Book by Tom Tango, or any management book about challenging old thinking - and using the old timers to effect the change.

I'm back as a Pirates fan. They are playing to win again.

As an Audiobook, this was perfect. It helped fill the drive time from Chicago to Pittsburgh. The narrator kept me interested.

Other teams will evolve and pass the Bucs, but I'm sure the organization will evolve and provide material for a sequel.

Learn the names please m

I am a baseball fan and a stat geek so this should have been the perfect audio book for me, but every time the narrator mispronounced another name I wanted to rip the speakers out of my car. Please please please make sure you know the players names before you agree to narrate anything having to do with sports.

great

Good inside stuff . great story and good knowledge . baseball fans like me enjoy it

Think Moneyball 2

I'm not a Pirates' fan. But I loved Moneyball the book and the movie. If you liked Moneyball - then you'll probably enjoy this book. More of the same thing. Different people, different metrics, different situations, but same theme - how to get more wins while having one of the lowest payrolls in the MLB. Even though it is a similar story, the metrics are different (defensive shifts, pitch framing, and 2-seam fastballs are the focus of the metrics) and of course the team and people are different. I still enjoyed it and would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Moneyball.

Not what it claims to be

First, it drives me nuts when a writer on baseball calls a manager one of the "coaches" or calls the coaches "assistant coaches". It shows the writer doesn't really have baseball in his or her heart.

Second, this book is largely a relatively pedestrian recounting of the 2013 Pirates season, with maybe a quarter devoted to the role of advanced metrics.

Finally, throughout the text, statistics for the first half of 2014 are cited; in the epilogue he discusses the 2014 playoffs and Russell Martin's post-season signing with the Blue Jays. So why couldn't he go back and update the first-half numbers?

Overall, in his attempt to be Michael Lewis, Mr. Sawchik wrote a book that is not horrible, but which will leave anyone attracted to the title disappointed that the analytics are short-changed and not as effectively integrated into the recounting of the season as they could be.

Important Book for Baseball Fans

Big Data Baseball is the next logical step after Moneyball. Reading this book is critical to understanding the state of baseball post-2013.

The narrator was great, aside from the fact that he mispronounced a number of names. It's 2017, if you don't know how to say it, look it up. Oh, and it's "Aroldis" not "Arnoldis" - there's no N in that word dude:

Interesting narrative, but title oversells content

This book specifically outlines the Pirates 2013 season, in which they begin heavily using analytics to motivate on-field decisions. The general subjects discussed aren't anything revolutionary to those who even marginally follow baseball - discussions on shifting and pitch framing make up a significant chunk of the book.
Perhaps the more interesting element was seeing how they manifest on the field, having to deal with resistance from players and how the Pirates front office incorporated their analytics guys into their day-to-day operations.

The title very much oversells the content covered. As mentioned, there's not much new presented in this book. The author often covers subjects in a hand-waving method, often reducing the analytics to "using complex algorithms." I hoped for more discussion into the methodology, but that wasn't present.

Performance, in general, is fine. Not particularly compelling, but not distracting. The only complaint was that the narrator mispronounces Joey Votto's name, and he happens to show up in the text quite a bit.
Overall, I'd very much recommend the book from a narrative standpoint, it does a spectacular job at painting the Pirates' turnaround, but not from an educational one.

Great book on how baseball is played today (2018)

Some names are mispronounced, but that's the only negative thing I can say. Good book and it was read in the right tone. Interesting to see how many things in 2013 have shaped the way it seems that every team has played in 2018. I.E. the defensive shifts.