The Hidden Game of Baseball

I came upon The Hidden Game of Baseball when I was in high school at our local small town library. At the time I was mainly into baseball cards with a growing interest in following Major League Baseball games, usually in the summer when I had time to listen to games and read boxscores.

This book intrigued me with the concept of finding out what Ty Cobb would hit in 1985, which led to a discussion of normalized statistics. From this book I learned that historically a base stealer hurts his team when he isn't successful 2/3 of the time with his steal attempts. The book was built around the basis of runs scored, and runners making outs on the bases took away opportunities to score runs. There was in depth statistical analysis of this, with historical examples provided.

This is a book I wish I had a copy of today. Some of the concepts have since been passed over, some expanded on, but it formed the basis for much of what baseball statisticians use today for evaluation.