Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

It's tempting to write Freakonomics but with sports and say , "No mas. I'm done.", but Scorecasting is so much more than that. Sports are everywhere. People wake up and go to work where we talk sports, we listen to it on the radio, and then we go home to watch Sportscenter. We have the opinions of so many experts, analyzers, and former players that you would think that we all would understand everything about sports. It's kind of funny that could be so wrong.Scorecasting isn't a book that tells you what to believe. It's a friend in a bar suggesting that the Patriots got hosed in Superbowl XLII and would have won if the refs followed the rulebook to the letter of the law. It's the kind of friend that mentions that human element in referring is alive and well and furthermore we as fans want it to exist. It's the person that mentions that the current failings of some African-American coaches in NFL are actually a good and progressive thing.Sports have so many sayings and beliefs that are based on numbers (offense wins games, but defense wins championships, umpires have high strike zones), but for how many of them have you actually seen the statistics that back these claims? How many times have you heard an announcer say, "Coach X should have played the percentages and punted"? It is questions like these that Scorecasting tries to uncover.Granted, I will admit that some of the material in Scorecasting feels underdeveloped, but overall every idea and topic is well researched and presented. The book has a heavy reliance on statistics and analysis to support every claim. The book challenges so many different philosophies and common notions in sports that it's bound to cause a few arguments, and I don't believe that there can be a greater mark of excellence for a sports book than that.TL;DR Interesting ideas, well thought out arguments, and a light and enjoyable read. It was worth every cent .

Scorecasting analyzes various sports-related problems and conventional wisdoms. Using ultra-basic statistics, the authors analyze problems and coaching conclusions in various sports. Some of the exceptional topics included:Why is there a home field advantage in all sports?Are NFL teams properly valuing draft picks? (I thought this was the best written chapter in the book)Rounding First (why .299 hitters in MLB are rarer, and perhaps more valuable than .300 hitters).There are also topics included that have been discussed in other publications, including:4th down risk aversion in NFLThe unfairness of NFL's overtime systemIcing the KickerStreaks in Sports (hot hands, win/loss streaks)The book is well written and well edited. It is written at a basic level; even someone with no math background at all can quickly absorb this.I have only one real criticism of the book. In virtually every article, there is not enough explanation of the numbers, statistics and methodology. Only conclusions are given. Time and time again, I ask myself "what was the sample size?" Or "How did you reach this conclusion?" In one section, the authors even criticised a different study on Icing the kicker due to sample size, but failed to identify how many games they studied. I wish there would have been a little less narrative, and a little more science/mathematics. For example, when the authors are analyzing the home field advantage, they include playoff games, but compensate for the home team being the better team when analyzing win rates. How did they compensate? In the section on Streaks, they conclude that a team that has won 8 games in a row (or lost 8 games in a row) is just as likely to win the next game as any other team. This is a very counterintuitive result -- any team with which had an 8-game win streak is more likely to have a winning record than one without. A team with a winning record is (usually) more likely to win the next game than a team with a losing record. But this conclusion was stated in one sentence, with no real analysis or support. Another statement in MLB home field advantage analysis I found surprising was that a home teams outscores visiting teams by 10.5 runs during an entire season. This run differential is not enough for a typical team to win 54% of its games at home; the differential should likely be much more than 10.5. What years were used to obtain this differential? This is a key number in the MLB section, because it is used to evaluate how much umpires contribute to home field advantage.Despite my limited criticisms, most people will enjoy this book. If you are a stat geek or a big fan of a sport though, the lack of stats and methods will bother you.

As I write this, Scorecasting (SC) is one of the latest books to follow the trend of narrative non-fiction that challenges conventional thinking. SC is Freakonomics applied to sports. It's also similar to Malcolm Gladwell's approach (Outliers, Tipping Point, etc.) In fact, the authors mirror the writing style and witty chapter titles of Freakonomics, so clearly it was a big influence.Very simply, SC was incredibly enjoyable. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun reading a book. It is riveting, thought provoking, and extremely well written. Furthermore, you do not need to be a die hard sports fan to enjoy it. I follow professional sports very casually as best and I was still enthralled. Don't rely on the NY Times book review which was filled with their usual highbrow rhetoric, and was completely off base in my view.Without spoiling anything, SC challenges commonly held beliefs about sports, and backs it up with solid data. Some of the topics include the truth about home field advantage, whether "icing" the kicker works in football, the truth about going for it on 4th down rather than punting, and the truth about "streaks" and momentum. The most striking topic, in my view, is the authors' demonstration of umpire bias in baseball, which is backed up by solid numbers and statistics. I actually found this book even more enjoyable than Freakonomics, but to be fair SC deals exclusively with sports, an inherently fun topic.This book is so good that once it gains some traction, I feel it will be considered a modern classic. I haven't researched this yet, but I'm very curious what professional athletes and referees think of it, particularly umpires. At any rate, I'm confident you will love this book and find yourself saying "that's incredible" every 10 minutes.

Like the subject line says, just like freakonomics but for sports. Provides interesting ways of using data and probability along with logic and a basic understanding of human psychology to look at various events in sports from a different angle. Quick and easy read.

Sowohl für Sportinteressierte, als auch für Interessenten von Verhaltensökonomie ist das ein wunderbares Buch. Den einen schenkt es sehr coole Infos über den Sport, den Sie lieben, den anderen mal eine erfrischende Abwechslung zu den typischen VWL-„wie bewege ich Leute dazu, ihr Geld sinnvoll zu investieren“ Use Cases.Einziges persönliches Manko: SEHR viel Baseball.

I had just read a chapter about golfers when I watched the last day of the Open. The book explained that golfers are more likely to leave a birdie putt short but be more aggressive with a par putt and risk going past the hole. I watched and what the book said happened on hole after hole. You'll have to read the book to understand why.There is also info about football but if you don't understand American sports you would find huge chunks of the book a mystery. If you understand balls and strikes, the strike zone,punting on fourth down etc, you'll love it. If you follow the more traditional British sports including snooker and darts, you'd be better off with The Hidden Mathematics of Sport. Personally I love both of them.

In line with Freakeconomics but related to sport events and activities.interesting but difficult to understand if you do not possess a sport vocabulary (more precisely about baseball)

Das Buch ist sehr voll gepackt mit Informationen. Rund um die eigentlich erwarteten Fakten und Ableitungsmöglichkeiten für die persönliche Wettstrategie werden des öfteren Beispiele aus dem US-Sport verwendet. Soweit ok, auch die psychologischen Kompenenten werden abgedeckt. Für Sportwetten ein gutes Hintergrundwissen, welches ich aber nicht verwenden kann in meinem Wettmodell./////The book is very packed with information. Around the actually expected facts and derivation possibilities for the personal betting strategy, examples from US sports are often used. So far ok, even the psychological components are covered. For sports betting a good background knowledge, which I can not use in my betting model.