Quote:
Originally Posted by nukkxx
Well, I already mentioned that I know (knew) absolutely nothing about baseball, and I didn't know that quantitative analysis is used in baseball. But what I didn't mention is that in real life I'm very well versed into probability theory, statistics, data mining and time series analysis. My field was finance but numbers are numbers :-) So you can imagine my joy to learn that the word "Sabermetric" exists :-)  I will definitely have a look at all these :-) |
These two books would be great for you because they are both very informative about baseball, and really fun reads. The writers are both very enthusiastic about the subject. Michael Lewis, author of "Moneyball", comes at things from a Wall Street perspective, wanting to find undervalued players on the cheap. Brian Kenny, author of "Ahead of the Curve", comes at things from the Sabermetric or data driven/statistical perspective. He has a great glossary of the stats he uses, and does a good job of keeping it simple for those that aren't into/don't yet understand the numbers as much. I know this because a friend of mine, who hates everything to do with numbers, read it, and was able to ignore the numbers, but still absorb the concepts that Kenny was trying to get across.
Lewis and Kenny are coming at it from different perspectives, but they are both searching for the answer to the question "What is the value of a player on the open market?". Pre-sabermetrics, we used different statistics, which gave us less of a view of the players entire contributions (batting, fielding, and baserunning for position players - pitching, fielding, batting, and baserunning for pitchers) to helping his team win games. Sabermetrics are not perfect. They still have a long way to go in terms of measuring fielding, and could probably tighten it up on the baserunning as well. They are far better than the numbers we used to use to evaluate players though, and in the future they will get even better with technology's ability to better measure the fielding and baserunning components of the equation.
Your background in finance will serve you very well because as you say numbers are numbers, but also, value is value. I know I said before that you'd do well both with baseball and OOTP, but your background should help you even more. A lot of baseball general managers now come from Ivy League schools, and have financial backgrounds, so you'll get there in no time. Watching the Ken Burns documentary, as well as YouTube games from the 1950s right up to present day (at the link I gave you above), is also a fun way to immerse yourself in the game, learning about it as you go. I think you'll really enjoy this journey, and you should definitely keep this thread going for any further questions you may have. Enjoy et bon chance!