Off Base: New Insights into an Old Game

Rating:
Summary: Exceptional!
Review: As a fan of classic baseball, I read this book in a kind of shock, apparently even I, an avid baseball lover realized I too had been brain-washed by the media all along, he truely offered new insite (with biting wit) into an old game.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Once I picked up this book, I couldn't put it down. This book is a relative quick read and full of interesting analysis and criticism on how managers manage, how sportwriters cover the game, etc. For anyone interested in baseball, this book is most enjoyable. It includes interesting views on what stats are important, how to evaluate talent, the "career curve", the value of closers, how to evaluate catchers. In addition, while not aimed at fantasy baseball players, as an admitted addict, this book also offered me plenty of insight to trading (and especially drafting) effectively. Kudos to Torrez.

Rating:
Summary: Must reading for any baseball fan!
Review: This book provides a lot of unorthodox but well-reasoned insights into the game of baseball. Baseball writers and commentators tend to bombard us with meaningless statistics. Torrez shows how to get real value from just a few well-chosen stats. At the same time, his book is always amusing and fun to read.

Rating:
Summary: A quick read baseball primer.
Review: What a book! When was the last time you laughed OUT LOUD while reading a book about baseball? I highly recommend this book. I believe Mr. Torrez had three goals in writing this book. 1) to get folks who like baseball to develop the capacity for independent thought -- instead of simply repeating the traditional dogma, 2) to remind folks that the game "belongs" to any and all fans, not just the self (and media) appointed baseball elites, and 3) to pursuade the reader that his independent thoughts are correct. He immediately succeeds on the first and second, and is variably successful with the third. The first two are obviously more important anyway. The only thing that prevents me from giving this a score of 5 is Mr. Torrez's poor understanding of statistical interpretation (from a scientific point of view) which is a significant part of the book. To his credit, he tries to point out the difference between irrelevant and relevant statistics but in the process contradicts himself repeatedly and is simply wrong too often on matters of statistical interpretation. Some of his arguments are also a stretch just from a logical point of view. An incorrect premise often leads to an incorrect (at least indefensible) conclusion. These can be a bit annoying at times, but in a way, they promote the primary aim of the book -- to get people to think about baseball. I began to wonder if he might have introduced some of these errors in logic on purpose to pick-an-argument of sorts with the reader. Whether you agree with Torrez's conclusions or not, this is an excellent and entertaining book.

Rating:
Summary: Buy Something More Original
Review: What a derivative collection of swill. It's not so much that Torrez's points are wrong as that almost every idea he presents as fresh has been bandied about for years by the true icons of baseball analysis: Pete Palmer, Bill James, Craig Wright, etc. As a longtime reader of those fellows, I thought, "Duh," over and over as I read this book. I guess it works OK for the generally uninitiated, but you'd be better off seeking the original sources than giving your money to this relative shyster.

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: Wow! My review is going to echo almost all the other reviews on here: this book is fantastic! I received this book as a Christmas present, and I couldn't put it down. Most people have already commented on the author's fine sense of humor and witty writing style.

Of course, the most impressive part of this book is its content. The author confidently made predictions (back in 1998?), and sprinkles them throughout the book. As far as I can tell, this book is pretty much always right on the money. An example. I'm a Cleveland Indians fan, and I remember that Kenny Lofton got off to a great start last year, but pretty much fell apart at midseason, even before he got hurt. Guess what? Lofton's final numbers were within a handful of points of where this book predicted.

Other players who had a great first half went on to do exactly what this book said: players like Ed Sprague of Pittsburgh and B.J. Surhoff in Baltimore.

Off Base is just so consistently RIGHT that it amazed me. Here's a book that said that Oakland and Cincinnati were doing smart things despite no big names and no money, and that St. Louis wasn't going anywhere, even with Mark McGwire. I don't think anyone but this book expected those things to happen.

I found only one error in the entire book. Somewhere in the beginning, it calls Larry Andersen a mediocre left-handed reliever, when he was actually a mediocre right-handed reliever. Other than that, the book is perfect!