The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
The New York Times bestseller about what would happen if two statistics-minded outsiders were allowed to run a professional baseball team.
It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies — with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule is it Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you've ever read.
We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: it has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance.
Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport's folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion?
It's a wild ride, by turns provocative and absurd, as Lindbergh and Miller tell a story that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And they prove that you don't need a bat or a glove to make a genuine contribution to the game.
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Ben Lindbergh. (2016). The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. Henry Holt and Co.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Ben Lindbergh. 2016. The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. Henry Holt and Co.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Ben Lindbergh, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. Henry Holt and Co, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Ben Lindbergh. The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. Henry Holt and Co, 2016.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 0 |
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- bioText: Ben Lindbergh is a staff writer for FiveThirtyEight and, with Sam Miller, the cohost of Effectively Wild, the daily Baseball Prospectus podcast. He is a former staff writer for Grantland and a former editor in chief of Baseball Prospectus. He lives in New York City.
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The New York Times bestseller about what would happen if two statistics-minded outsiders were allowed to run a professional baseball team.
It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies — with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule is it Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you've ever read.
We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: it has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance.
Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport's folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion?
It's a wild ride, by turns provocative and absurd, as Lindbergh and Miller tell a story that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And they prove that you don't need a bat or a glove to make a genuine contribution to the game.- reviews
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- source: Nate Silver, bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise and the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight
- content: "Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller have given us a brutally honest but blissfully funny look at where we really stand a decade into the 'analytics revolution.' If you want the insights that statheads and baseball traditionalists still need to learn from one another, start by reading this book."
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- source: Ken Rosenthal, MLB on FOX reporter, FOXSports.com senior baseball writer, and MLB Network insider
- content: "The Only Rule Is It Has to Work is a terrific read, as Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller – two of baseball's leading sabermetric writers – put their beliefs on the line by taking over an actual team of actual players and trying to implement their unorthodox theories. The story of their season with the Sonoma Stompers is a fascinating human drama about the give-and-take between the new thinking and the old school."
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- source: Jonah Keri, bestselling author of Up, Up, and Away and The Extra 2%
- content: "In a phenomenal book that is a fun, breezy, and moving read, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller invite us into their mad experiment. They show us the trials, travails, and challenges of running an independent league baseball team, and along the way they do something remarkable: they make us care deeply for the players who put their hearts into every point of on-base percentage."
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April 18, 2016
What happens when two numbers crunchers take command of an independent minor league team? Through some fancy wheeling and dealing, Lindbergh, a staff writer for FiveThirtyEight, and Miller, the editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus, are put in charge of the operations for the Sonoma Stompers, an independent professional squad in California. Their task is to scout and sign prospects for a winning season. Using data-driven sabermetics and spreadsheets, the two set a goal of “making the right decision every time, giving players every resource and advantage available.” Lindbergh and Miller are real storytellers, explaining their strengths and defects as they attempt to field a capable team, using the best stats money can buy. They pay tribute to the collection of older, dedicated players who are pleased to play in the minors and have no illusions of making the majors. Armed with data, they gleefully describe their team’s roaring start in the first half of the season, gaining first place, then slipping to a respectable second-place finish. For fantasy baseball junkies and baseball purists alike, this is a vivid, joyful exploration of recruiting and running a team by numbers—and instinct.
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May 1, 2016
Baseball encompasses a multitude of statistics; every aspect of the game is analyzed and put under a microscope by experts and dedicated fans every year. In this debut, former Baseball Prospectus editor in chief Lindbergh teams with Miller, current Baseball Prospectus editor in chief and coauthor of Baseball Prospectus 2016, to share their experience establishing a winning minor league team. Utilizing their vast knowledge of the game, the authors convinced the owners of the independent Sonoma Stompers to allow them to handle daily operations. Their experiment--whether the statistical analysis system sabermetrics could create a championship team--turned out to be like none other. While critics thought the hypothesis crazy, the results are truly riveting. This absorbing read takes readers through some very unorthodox methods of management. With honest and captivating prose, the authors compel readers to care about players that don't make a lot of money yet still have big league dreams and aspirations. VERDICT Die-hard fantasy baseball players, statistic geeks, and anyone interested in the sport's legacy will appreciate this work.--Gus Palas, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies — with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. Their story in The Only Rule is it Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you've ever read.
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