Baseball Minus the Numbers

We’ve gone inside, between, over, under and around the numbers, and as far as I can tell, all of those locations contain...more numbers. I really wish I had known that before I placed a giant Baseball Prospectus book on my Christmas wish list. I know they're trying to sell books, but a more honest back-cover description would have saved me nearly 11 hours and 45 minutes of precious life. Something like:

“If regular old numbers aren’t enough to bewilder you algebra-failing m0r0ns, here’s 500 pages of new-and-improved, ultra-concentrated formulas to get the job done, simultaneously proving how many millions of times smarter than you we all are. And did we mention you’re wrong about everything? Not just 95% of things, mind you, but all of them. In fact, if it were possible for someone to be 200% wrong about something, then we assure you, you would be.”

Just so you never make the same mistake I did, let me warn you that any title including the word "numbers" and boasting a “team of experts” is probably one you should consider leaving on the shelf. Unless you suffer from insomnia, or happen to be one of those odd souls who is creepily turned on by snorebermetrics. If the latter is the case, I’ve got a stat for you: I call it VORBrip (value over reading a book that doesn’t make you want to off yourself). It's basically the number of suicidal thoughts one can expect to experience beyond what an average book would likely induce, given the same number of pages. Baseball Between the Numbers has a VORBrip of about 3,640.

Please don’t send me death threats.

I’ve decided to write a book of my own. Something for those of us who use the right side of our brains a bit more, and were never members of the Mathletes in High School. It’s called Baseball: To Heck with the Numbers - How even Marlins fans can have hope in ’08. Tentative chapters include:

1. Hendrickson: Why Height Trumps Skills
2. Hitting: The Most Overrated Aspect of Baseball, and Why The Fish are More Likely to Win Without Miguel.
3. Why Not Having a Ballpark is Actually a Lot Better Than Having One.

The book hits stores April 17th, and autographed copies are available to HLD&S readers upon request.

Disclaimer: Anything at all that you may disagree with in this blog is a complete joke, meaning the opposite of what I wrote is actually what I believe to be true. Baseball Between the Numbers is a really great book. I really, really liked it. A lot.