Imagine listening to someone riff on whatever baseball-related topic comes to mind while watching a baseball game and you’ll have a good idea of what this book isn’t: organized, thoughtful, insightful. The conceit here is that the author will analyze a complete game from the 2017 season, with each chapter corresponding to one half-inning. There is in fact little analysis about what’s happening on field. The author instead finds a convenient hook on which to hang observations about a particular topic, such as the first plate appearance of Brian McCann, until 2017 the player who most consistently faced the shift. This leads to a lengthy ramble about shifting that ends with no discernable conclusion, prediction, or recommendation. Reading this book is a lot like listening to sports radio, including the smart-alecky tone, the inept efforts at humor, and the complete lack of referencing or building a reasoned argument. Neyer claims, for example, that front office analysists are largely a dime-a-dozen, but offers no salary or budget figures, nor provides any data to suggest a lack of discernable differences in their output. This is the first book I’ve read by Neyer. Perhaps others are better. I put this one down a third of the way through. If the publisher and author can’t be bothered to spend time creating something organized and meaningful, I see no reason to spend time consuming it.
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