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• Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball William Morrow (New York, NY), 2017

1. Smart baseball : the story behind the old stats that are ruining the game, the new ones that are running it, and the right way to think about baseball LCCN 2017446301 Type of material Book Personal name Law, Keith, 1973- author. Main title Smart baseball : the story behind the old stats that are ruining the game, the new ones that are running it, and the right way to think about baseball / Keith Law. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2017] ©2017 Description viii, 291 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9780062490223 (hardcover) 0062490222 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER GV877 .L285 2017 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Meadow Party - http://meadowparty.com/blog/about-2/

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  About me
  Hi, I’m Keith Law, Senior Baseball Writer at ESPN.com. If you’d like to read my thoughts on baseball, check out my ESPN.com columns (as well as some in Spanish) and my ESPN.com chats; the latter have moved here to the dish as of September 2015. This site is for my own miscellaneous thoughts and ramblings that don’t fit on ESPN, including thoughts on food, literature, boardgames, and other media. I’ll also post updates here on chat times, TV/radio appearances, and occasionally links to my articles at ESPN.com if they’re hard to find otherwise.
  Before joining ESPN.com in June of 2006, I spent just over four years as the Special Assistant to the GM of the Toronto Blue Jays, and prior to that had written for Baseball Prospectus. I graduated from Harvard College in 1994, and received an MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon in 1999, earning Beta Gamma Sigma honors at the latter. I live in Delaware with my wife and daughter, having fled New England after one winter too many and spent a few years in between living in Chandler, Arizona.
  I’ve also written a few pieces on boardgames for Paste magazine, all of which can be found via this index page.

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• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Law

  Keith Law
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  This article is about the baseball writer. For the comedian, see Keith Law (comedian).
  Keith Law
  Born June 1, 1973 (age 44)
  Smithtown, New York
  Occupation Baseball writer
  Nationality American
  Website
  meadowparty.com/blog/
  Keith Law is a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com and ESPN Scouts, Inc. He was formerly a writer for Baseball Prospectus and worked in the front office for the Toronto Blue Jays. He is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

  Contents [hide]
  1 Background
  2 Career
  3 Baseball Writers Association of America
  4 Other interests
  5 References
  6 External links
  Background[edit]
  Born on June 1, 1973, Law grew up in Smithtown, New York on Long Island.[1] He graduated with honors from Harvard University, where he majored in sociology and economics. He received his Master of Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business.[1][2]

  Career[edit]
  He began writing for Baseball Prospectus in 1997.[1] Unlike many other Baseball Prospectus authors, Law's primary influence was not Bill James, but Eddie Epstein, the writer of the first STATS, Inc. Minor League Scouting Notebook.[3]

  In 2002, Law was hired by the Toronto Blue Jays as a "Consultant to Baseball Operations" after impressing Blue Jays' general manager J. P. Ricciardi during the offseason winter meetings.[4] Paul DePodesta had recommended Law to him and Ricciardi asked Law's opinions regarding the approaching Rule 5 draft of that year, and, impressed with Law's answers and explanations, offered him a position with the team.[5] During his time with the Blue Jays, he acted as a major league and minor league scout, contract negotiator, and provided assistance to the team's marketing and sales staffs.[2] Law reached the position of "Special Assistant to the GM" before resigning in 2006 to work at ESPN.[6]

  At ESPN, Law works as baseball scouting writer.[6] He writes baseball columns, maintains a blog, provides analysis on radio and television, and holds weekly chats on his blog. He also previously hosted a weekly ESPN podcast, Behind the Dish.

  On December 29, 2011, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported that Law interviewed for a number of front office positions with the Houston Astros, including the title of Scouting Director. Despite all of this, Keith Law decided to remain with ESPN in order to spend more time with his family.

  In November 2014, Law got into a day-long Twitter argument with pitcher Curt Schilling over the creation-evolution controversy, defending evolution against Schilling's creationist arguments, after which ESPN decided to suspend Law's Twitter account.[7] ESPN commented that "Keith’s Twitter suspension had absolutely nothing to do with his opinions on the subject," but it remains unclear what other motivation is behind the act, since the conversation between Schilling and Law reportedly "never really turned hostile", with many reading the details feeling that his suspension was "ridiculous".[8] When a bystander ordered him to 'Stick to baseball', Law replied "No, I won't. Science is infinitely more important", later emphasizing that "I haven't criticized or questioned anyone's faith. I oppose anti-science, that's all".[9] Law concluded by tweeting "Eppur si muove.", meaning "And yet it moves", apocryphally said to have been uttered by Galileo when the Catholic Church forced him to recant his statements about heliocentricity.[10]

  Baseball Writers Association of America[edit]
  In December 2007, Law was denied admission to the Baseball Writers Association of America, members of whom vote for Baseball Hall of Fame candidates and several annual awards including the Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award.[11] While 16 other internet baseball columnists were admitted in their first year of eligibility, ESPN's Law and Rob Neyer were refused due to the BBWAA's perception that Law and Neyer did not attend enough games in person.[11] In 2008, however, Law was admitted to the BBWAA along with Neyer and Baseball Prospectus writers Christina Kahrl and Will Carroll.[12] On his 2009 NL Cy Young ballot, Law listed Javier Vázquez in front of Adam Wainwright and did not include Chris Carpenter on the three name ballot,[13] which elicited strong reactions from St. Louis Cardinals fans.[14] Law stated, "Carpenter's innings total was the main reason he ended up off my ballot. He pitched extremely well when on the mound, but not well enough to close the value gap between him and the three pitchers I listed, each of whom threw at least 27 innings more than Carpenter".[15]

  Other interests[edit]
  Law's main interests outside of baseball are cuisine, German-style board games, and literature.[1] For these other interests, he maintains the personal website meadowparty.com, which includes a food and literature blog, and reviews of board games. On the Season Four disc of Home Movies, he recorded two commentary tracks. Law currently lives in Delaware with his family. Law has been outspoken about his struggle and treatment of his anxiety disorder[16] allowing him to be an inspiration to many suffering from similar problems while helping to remove the stigma of mental health issues.[citation needed]

  References[edit]
  ^ Jump up to: a b c d "An Interview with Keith Law". Batter's Box. June 10, 2003. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  ^ Jump up to: a b Law, Keith (August 2004). "In the Big Leagues Now: Keith Law's MBA, combined with his baseball knowledge, helped him to win a dynamic job with the Toronto Blue Jays". BusinessWeek. Archived from the original on December 3, 2007. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  Jump up ^ Law, Keith (January 10, 2002). "The Imbalance Sheet: Crossing the Chasm". Baseball Prospectus. Retrieved December 10, 2007.
  Jump up ^ Neyer, Rob (November 11, 2002). "Sabermetricians slowly being added to the inner circle". ESPN.com. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  Jump up ^ Schwarz, Alan (2004). The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. p. 232. ISBN 0-312-32222-4.
  ^ Jump up to: a b Press release (May 31, 2006). "Blue Jays bid farewell to Keith Law". MLB.com. Toronto Blue Jays. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  Jump up ^ John Healy (November 21, 2014). "ESPN suspends Keith Law from Twitter after arguing about evolution with Curt Schilling: report". Daily News. Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  Jump up ^ Joe Lucia (November 21, 2014). "ESPN reportedly suspends Keith law for Twitter argument with Curt Schilling (Update)". Awful Announcing. Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  Jump up ^ Barry Petchesky (November 21, 2014). "ESPN Suspends Keith Law From Twitter For Defending Evolution [UPDATE]". Deadspin. Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  Jump up ^ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/11/28/after-a-brief-suspension-for-defending-evolution-espns-keith-law-returns-to-twitter-with-this-gem/
  ^ Jump up to: a b Brown, Maury (December 10, 2007). "Bob Dutton Addresses the BBWAA Inclusion Process". The Biz of Baseball. Archived from the original on December 13, 2007. Retrieved December 11, 2007.
  Jump up ^ Kaufman, King (December 11, 2008). "BBWAA votes in Prospectus, Neyer, Law". Salon.com. Archived from the original on December 19, 2008. Retrieved December 16, 2008.
  Jump up ^ Associated Press (November 20, 2009). "Lincecum repeats as Cy Young winner".
  Jump up ^ Keith Law (November 20, 2009). ESPN Radio (Podcast). ESPN. Retrieved November 22, 2009.
  Jump up ^ http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4671356&name=law_keith
  Jump up ^ http://stigmafighters.com/stigma-fighters-keith-law/
  External links[edit]
  Law's ESPN columns
  Law's ESPN.com blog
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• Mel Magazine - https://melmagazine.com/a-conversation-with-keith-law-baseballs-foremost-intellectual-and-firebrand-a531ed8328b9

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  Jul 11

  A Conversation With Keith Law, Baseball’s Foremost Intellectual and Firebrand
  ESPN’s sabermetrics guru discusses antidepressants, the importance of logic and his great new book about the future of the national pastime

  Almost since its inception back in the 1850s, baseball hasn’t just been America’s national pastime—it’s also been a convenient cultural metaphor. Movies like Field of Dreams have used our collective love of the game as a commentary on family, integrity and the national character. It’s a sport that lends itself to such poetic musings and nostalgic stirrings — which is probably why the baseball is sometimes considered stodgy and passé compared to newer, faster-paced sports that are decidedly more visceral.
  And yet, there’s been a revolution in the game this century that’s put it on the cutting edge of statistical analysis and helped jettison some of the old ways of thinking about the sport. Most people are familiar with Moneyball, the 2003 Michael Lewis book that showed how the small-market Oakland A’s learned to compete with the big boys by relying on advanced metrics to target traditionally undervalued players. But another great popularizer of the analytics revolution has been Keith Law, the kind of guy who, a couple generations ago, would’ve never been involved in baseball in the first place.
  A sociology and economics major from Harvard who received his MBA from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, Law, 44, never played pro ball and is, by his own admission, not very good at sports. But he’s a lifetime baseball fan who became one of the early adopters of advanced analytics as a writer at the sabermetrics bible Baseball Prospectus before landing a front-office job with the Toronto Blue Jays. Since 2006, he has written for ESPN, where he scouts promising prospects and preaches the gospel of new-ish stats such as OPS and WAR as a better way of analyzing player value. And that’s when he isn’t sparring with Twitter followers who refuse to accept the validity of climate change — or his former ESPN colleague Curt Schilling, a hardcore conservative whom Law lambasted on Twitter in 2014 for his creationist beliefs, resulting in Law’s being temporarily suspended from the platform by his employer.
  These days, Law is mostly focused on his first book — the terrific Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball. It’s a book that argues, cleanly and crisply, why this stats revolution is happening in baseball and why fans should embrace rather than vilify it.

  But when MEL chatted with him last Thursday, we didn’t just want to discuss the book. The truth is, Law’s logic-driven approach to building a better baseball team perfectly positions him at the epicenter of several contemporary issues, many of which he writes about eloquently at ESPN and on his personal blog.
  In our conversation, he happily tackled a wide range of topics: how he learned to stop worrying and love antidepressants; why he doesn’t feel comfortable being labeled a liberal (though he thinks anti-vaxxers are fools); and what (if anything) baseball needs to do to regain its cultural relevance. Law even spent a little time pondering whether a 150-year-old sport could ever truly become “woke.”

  You’ve been promoting Smart Baseball for a couple months. What’s the ratio of people actively engaging in the book’s arguments versus those who are just getting angry that you said mean things about Jim Rice or Bruce Sutter?
  Most of what I get back is positive. But I’ve seen a couple reviews on Amazon where people are mad because I’m picking on a part of their childhood — I’m picking on a player they love or I’m picking apart a stat that they always thought meant something. Negative reviews are part of the territory, so the only thing that bothers me is when people don’t engage with the arguments. I’m trying to make a case here, and if they don’t want to [engage], there’s no back-and-forth. You’ve simply shut the door and said, “There’s nothing more for us to talk about.” If you’re going to get mad at me because I said Sutter doesn’t belong in the Hall of Fame, I got nothing for you. At least give me a factual argument, and then we’re getting somewhere.
  Did you grow up playing sports?
  I was a huge sports fan because my parents were. There were just sports on all the time. We would get Newsday, and we would start with the sports section. My mom was a diehard baseball fan. They were both Bronx born and raised. They moved to Long Island when they got married. We were a Yankee household — but not anti-Mets. And that’s a big thing because [those teams’ fans] hate each other. We were never like that: We rooted for the Jets and the Giants in football. They’re local teams — you’re just going to root for them.
  But because I’m on the short side, I was never much for sports. I tried. I played a little soccer when I was single-digits, because I could run at least. But I was clearly not cut out for sports, and I was a year younger than my classmates because I skipped a grade when I was very little, so that’s an even bigger disadvantage. You’re already small and now you’re a year younger — I was pretty screwed at that point.
  I stayed a sports fan, however. I was kind of that guy anyway: Math was my best subject; I spoke the language of numbers, and baseball is the perfect sport for that because it’s got more history and it’s so individual. When I was in my 20s, I discovered this online metrics community that didn’t exist in other sports, so it was a perfect marriage. I was like, “Hey, this sport was always my favorite anyway” when I was still trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.
  Being a math guy and not a jock, did you feel like you had to prove yourself when you got to the Blue Jays?
  Probably. I was 28 or so when I started there and definitely would say I could’ve handled myself very differently walking into a foreign environment. I would guess that I probably compensated with a little overconfidence. I thought, I’m going to be able to answer a lot of questions. It’s the wrong approach. One, it’s not true. Two, I was entering an environment where people aren’t necessarily hostile, but very different culturally. Before then, I’d spent my whole life in academic circles and worked for a consulting firm, where everyone came from an Ivy League-type background. After business school, I went to work for a couple of startups with very, very educated people who’ve come out of academia. With baseball, you might get very intelligent people, but not a lot of people who’ve come from academic backgrounds. That was a huge culture shift for me.
  I imagine you also had to deal with the “macho” factor — that “real man” culture — which might have been intimidating.
  Totally, and a lot of it was in my own head. You walk into a ballpark or into the Winter Meetings, and realize, “Nobody here looks like me. There’s just a handful of us with Ivy League backgrounds.” I’m like 5-foot-6, 155 pounds, so I’d be sitting with a bunch of ex-players who were taller, bigger, more athletic. It was hard to not be aware of that. You’re sitting surrounded by perfectly nice people but who don’t look like you. Masculine is “big.” Masculine is “muscular.” I am not those things. I could not be those things no matter what I did. It’s just not in the genes.
  You like to debate people on Twitter who disagree with you about baseball, evolution or the need for vaccinations. Were you a debate-club kid?
  I hated conflict as a kid. Public speaking never bothered me, but the back-and-forth thing? Even if a teacher would try to engage me, I’d take it very personally: “Why are you attacking me like that?” It was a long time — well into adulthood — until I got comfortable with being able to have a debate that didn’t feel like a real argument.
  As for Twitter, the problem with social media is that there’s no tone, so you never know if someone is just being an ass or they are legitimately [wanting to debate]. And it’s often over the most innocuous stuff, and I want to say, “You would never say that in person. If you saw me at a game, and you totally disagreed with what I said about DJ LeMahieu not belonging on the All-Star Game, you would approach the thing entirely differently.” It’s something I don’t enjoy about social media, and it always makes me pull back and say, “I’m just not playing today.”

  What’s your rule of thumb in terms of dealing with combative people online?
  On Twitter, the moment I feel uncomfortable or start to think that it’s hostile, I just mute or block and move on. People get mad: “Why do you block so many people?” One, for my sanity. But also, if you’re up to no good, I don’t have to interact with you — and you’re probably going to be just fine if you’re not interacting with me either. I’d rather focus my energies on people who have real questions or who want to engage and have a real discussion. I’ll argue with a few of the other people just for fun — if I can make a joke out of it and get everyone else on board, that’s great — but I should probably just talk to the nice people, not the other people.
  A few years ago, you wrote a piece about your lifelong struggles with anxiety and how a 2012 panic attack inspired you to go into therapy and try medication. Did that experience influence how you deal with social media?
  No question. The therapist I worked with, I was talking to her about how uncomfortable some of those online interactions would make me. People online would say these horrible things about my ancestry or whatever. And she said, “Just block them. Why are you [engaging with them]?” In the real world, people think [engaging with trolls] is stupid. But online, you get caught up [believing] that it’s socially unacceptable to block, mute or ignore people like that.
  I also started recognizing that getting too involved in negative online interactions was feeding something anxiety-related within me. The more I handled anxiety through therapy, medication and other treatment, the worse it felt to get involved. It was easier for me to just extricate myself from the conversation entirely. I just said, “I don’t like how this is going” and walked away — as opposed to, “No, I have to get the last word here. I have to have a snappy response to that.” Getting help for that changed my whole personality enough to say, “I don’t care.” I recognized I was just getting that dopamine hit from getting involved in those debates and then walking away feeling much worse.
  How scary was going on medication?
  I mean, this is brain medication — it really is. “You’re going to mess with the way I think? The way I act? The type of person I am?” It does change things, no question, and it’s not all positive. Taking Escitalopram, it wiped out my anxiety, but it also sort of cut off a lot of the highs and lows of other emotions, too. And you wonder, “Am I missing out on parts of life?”
  Now I’ve been on medication for five years, and it’s not terrifying. But it changes things. It’s much easier to weigh the pros and cons once you’ve actually gone through it and you realize that the cons aren’t as terrible as they sound. I’m not on Escitalopram any more — I may go back to it at some point — but I recognized that the pros were pretty good. I felt better; I got more done; and a lot of other things I didn’t think were necessarily related to anxiety cleared up, too. That’s why I’ve become a little bit of a proselytizer. If you’re having trouble, at least try it. You can always stop taking the medication. It’s not a lifelong commitment. But you might feel better, and it might change things enough that you say, “I’m comfortable, I’m willing to pay the cost because the benefits are there.”
  In the book, you talk about the future of advanced metrics, including wearable technology to monitor player performance. In the past, you’ve been very vocal against teams signing players who have, for instance, been accused of domestic violence. Will there ever be a time when analytics could determine a player’s mental makeup? Maybe even project who might be more likely to be involved in such crimes?
  Many teams administer what they call a “psych test,” which is really just a questionnaire to players they might potentially draft. I don’t know the validity of those tests. I’ve talked to scouts who say internally, “Yeah, we do a psych test; we think it’s useless.” It’s certainly not accepted the way analytics are accepted.
  When I was in the draft room [in Toronto], I remember there was a guy who had made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going to stop smoking [pot] even if he got into pro ball. But it was like, “Yeah, but he can really hit.” [Smoking pot] doesn’t make you a bad person, but it may get you suspended, in which case you are useless to me as a player. It’s an imperfect analogy but still, at the end of the day, you’re not going to be helping us. And sure enough, the guy played one summer and just quit. He was like, “Nah, I want to go surf and smoke weed.” Thank God we didn’t take him.
  And I do remember the conversation when Elijah Dukes was in the draft. We weren’t taking him anyway, but the discussion was: “He’s really talented, but he’s also a mess.” This guy was known to have serious mental health issues, anger problems — I don’t know if he had an arrest, but at the very least, he seemed to have a big anger problem. Everything was always discussed, though, very qualitatively and almost always in the context of who the player is.
  To me, this is separate. You’re telling me this guy is a domestic abuser? I don’t care what kind of player he is — he can go play somewhere else. If I was a GM, he’s just not going to play for us — that’s not who we are. And teams take different approaches. Obviously, the Cubs and the Yankees have both employed Aroldis Chapman, and they’re fine with it. But I’ve had other executives who have said, “If that’s our player, he’s just not going to play for us.”
  This brings up the question: Can baseball be “woke”? Should a sport get to a place where “wokeness” is a factor?
  I come down on both sides of it. On the one hand, a player that’s committed a criminal act — or is at least alleged — doesn’t have a right to play Major League Baseball. And if Major League Baseball was a single entity, they could just say, “You’re not going to play for us,” and they’ll just kick you out.
  But the flip side is, you’ve actually got 30 independent front offices. Tampa Bay for a long time was a running joke: “The guy has a felony conviction? Oh, the Rays will take him.” That was almost their market inefficiency: “We’ll take the criminals.” Okay, that’s one way to run your organization — I wouldn’t, personally. They ended up with Josh Lueke, who had been convicted for raping a woman who was incapacitated. And they took a ton of criticism for it, but as far as I could tell, they didn’t care. They just employed him until he wasn’t good any more.

  And there’s a lot of commentary from people who research domestic violence who say that denying the abuser’s ability, or right to work, doesn’t help the victims in any meaningful way — and could make things worse for him. I’m saying that I wouldn’t employ this guy on my team, which is more of an individual moral choice. But does baseball have a broader obligation to say, “We’re going to suspend you. We’re going to take a stand and penalize you for these things, but we’re not going to ban you for life” — because it turns out, speaking from a societal level, that’s the wrong thing to do?
  Because Smart Baseball is a number-crunching, logic-driven book, it doesn’t really have room to talk about these moral issues. But in your other writing, you’ve always been very invested in the human component of the game — specifically, speaking out against the scourge of domestic violence and DUIs. You mix the analytical with the personal.
  And they don’t naturally go together. With analytics, you do need to be a little colder, a little more callous: “This guy was great for us two years ago, but he stinks now, so we need to employ someone else in that role.” Analytics is very unfeeling like that. There’s probably a real benefit to making these baseball decisions, which are typically business decisions, without too much emotion involved.
  Then on the other side, players have allegedly committed these infractions — it’s entirely moral. An analytics guy would say, “Who cares? Can he help us? Is he undervalued because of that? Well, all the more reason to go get him.” To me, it’s saying, “No, I’m going to draw the line here and say I don’t want that player playing or working in my organization [because of] the message it sends to other players or to the women that work in the organization.” Those two [philosophies] don’t go together very naturally, and I think it’s probably surprised some of my readers to see that I’m kind of on two different sides.
  When you battled Curt Schilling on Twitter, it created an impression online that you must obviously be a liberal because you took apart his anti-evolution stance. You’re also a believer in climate change, which in the modern world has somehow become a liberal position. Where do you actually align politically?
  I’ve always felt like I’m kind of all over the place. I struggle with the terms [liberal and conservative] because a liberal today doesn’t even mean what it meant five years ago, let alone 20 years ago. And typically, if someone is calling me a liberal, they’re talking mostly about social positions. I believe that gay marriage should be legal everywhere. I believe in equal rights for everybody. If you’re saying that’s liberal, then conservative means that only straight white men should have rights? Maybe some people believe that, but I don’t think that’s what historical conservatism has meant.

  When they say, “You’re a liberal,” we’re not talking about economic policy or tax policy or free trade. Free trade was typically, until the current administration, seen as something more Republican than Democratic. I would say, based on my economics background, I would probably be more of a free-trade supporter. But I’m not sure where that even falls at this point on the left-right continuum.
  The one thing I will say to people is that I’m clearly no fan of the present administration. But I don’t think that necessarily makes me a liberal either. I think it probably makes me middle-of-the-road at this point. [Laughs] And it puts me in good company. I don’t want to say “majority,” because I don’t really know, but there are plenty of people from a pretty wide swath of the spectrum who aren’t happy with the way things are going in Washington. That doesn’t make me any more or less “left” than I was a couple of years ago.
  The arguments you make in Smart Baseball — valuing logic over emotion and gut feelings — seem to be the same fight we’re having in politics, where you often see those on the right trying to dismiss thinkers and experts. These simple truths should have been settled already, and yet we’re still bickering about them.
  Any time I run into these anti-science people, or anti-vaxxers, it’s like … what? Denying the use of analytics in baseball isn’t the same as denying evolution, but it comes from a similar place. Part of it is anti-intellectualism, and part of it is the mentality that says, “I don’t want to believe that the thing I used to believe is just not true.” I think that upsets people at their core, and it often goes to identity. It’s a little uncomfortable to argue against it, but I know that arguing for facts — for critical thinking — is always for the good, even if I’m ultimately breaking down someone a little bit in a way that might make them uncomfortable. But as long as you think you’re on the right side of things — and obviously not being an ass about it — then you’re okay to do that.
  Let’s take a moment to talk about the modern state of baseball. Specifically, I wonder if you think that the sport can do anything to combat its diversity problem.
  I talk to people at the league office a little bit about this — just friend-to-friend mostly — and they’re aware of the diversity problem. We just don’t have enough African-American kids playing the sport. And I think it’s much less racial than it is economic: It’s just a super-expensive sport for kids to play, and they need access to facilities. Baseball is really trying. I just don’t know that anybody has an idea of what the solution is. But I’m at least satisfied that they’re aware this is an issue and that they’re putting people and resources toward addressing it.
  MLB gets involved in other issues, too. When Missouri was thinking about passing one of those anti-trans bathroom bills, MLB was like, “We’ve got two teams in your state, and we’re not behind this.” That’s the kind of thing I think baseball needs to be doing, and they should probably be more willing to be more public about that. They’re probably concerned about alienating one portion of the audience over another. But I think there’s a social responsibility for these entities to say, “We’re bringing a lot of tax revenue to your jurisdictions — we want to make sure that our events are inclusive and that everyone is comfortable coming to them.”
  This also goes back to your question — should baseball try to be “woke”? Should they try to appeal to a younger audience? I don’t think anyone cares about the intentional-walk thing. But taking stands on things, that’s the stuff that baseball can do to maintain some cultural relevance. It’s a nostalgic game — that’s always going to be an aspect of baseball. I’m fine with that. But there are other things that I want them to do to stay current, like taking that stand in Missouri the way they did. That will really make a difference in the public’s opinion of the sport.
  But there’s still this impression that baseball caters to an aging, white fan base. Even within the game, you have this culture clash between white players’ “Play the game the right way” mentality and the more exuberant style exhibited by Latino players. Those factors contribute to baseball seeming out of touch.
  Those outside always say, “Why isn’t baseball doing X, Y or Z?” And what I’ve learned over the years is that [MLB executives] do a lot of that stuff. If a player makes a comment that might be construed as racially insensitive, they’re going to reach out and do something. It’s all very behind-the-scenes, which is probably how they should be handling it.

  We want public justice right away, but that’s not necessarily beneficial for the sport — sometimes, handling it quietly is better, and the player doesn’t say it again. Maybe he makes a little apology and then it just goes away. That might be better for the sport in the long run. It doesn’t satisfy those of us who have the torches lit, and maybe we’re wrong to do that and to scream for blood. I try to do that less now. I’ll call it out if someone makes a comment that’s racially insensitive or insensitive to gay people. But at the same time, we don’t necessarily need to go burn the guy’s house down.
  Do you consider yourself a baseball intellectual? I imagine that characterization might be a bit of a double-edged sword.
  I’m not very romantic about [baseball]. I might have been when I was younger. I’m not terribly romantic about a lot of things. The things I’m romantic about, or nostalgic over, are things from my childhood. Why do I still love Oreos? They’re really not that good — I can make homemade Oreos that are much better — but there’s something about sitting there with a sleeve of Oreos.
  It’s not like, 30 years from now, I’m going to think back on watching Mike Trout in this romantic sense. I’m going to think about him in a much more analytical sense or the remarkable achievements of his career. I’m fine with that.
  I always tell people: Baseball is the job, not the hobby. I would never go to a baseball game just for kicks. But if I’m at a game and I see something amazing — if there is a no-hitter happening, or if a pitcher hits a 100 [mph], or you see a comeback at the bottom of the ninth — I still feel that.
  I remember seeing Byron Buxton in high school. I’ve caught some god-awful high school baseball over the years. But in Buxton’s case, he was in this tiny town called Baxley, Georgia, a town of fewer than 4,000 people. There were a couple hundred people there to watch this game. In the bottom of the seventh, Buxton leads off and basically created the tying run all on his own, primarily with his legs. He singled, stole a base, and the atmosphere was electric. His team ended up winning the game a couple of batters later. I remember walking out of there thinking, “That was the most fun high school game I’ve ever attended.” Those are the things I will still talk about years from now with a fond memory.
  In the book, you acknowledge that baseball is no longer the national pastime. I know that’s true, but as someone who loves the game, it still made me sad to read that. Does it make you sad?
  I would say so. I’d probably be making more money if it were a more popular sport. [Laughs] I’d sell a billion copies of the book. But I rue the fact that I can go into crowds, rooms of people, and people our age and younger generally don’t care about baseball. I feel like that wasn’t so true maybe 30 or 40 years ago. I’m not one of those people that expects nothing is ever going to change but, yeah, I wish it was more [popular].
  And I don’t think baseball has done anything wrong, either. It’s popular to blame baseball for being too slow, too stodgy. No, people’s interests change. There are new types of entertainment that didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago. My wife and I were talking recently about how it just kills us that people don’t leave the house as much as they used to. We’re out in the suburbs, and we feel like people aren’t as social as they were when we were growing up in the suburbs. People just do different stuff now.
  For me, what makes it tougher to stomach is that football is the sport that’s supplanted baseball. The older I get, the harder it is for me to enjoy football, knowing what we know about concussions — not to mention the mindless, gladiatorial bloodlust that’s inherent to the game.
  People enjoy a violent hit. People like that about hockey too, which I never did. I was more of a hockey fan as a kid than a football fan — with football, I could never get around the violence aspect. The athleticism of it still blows me away. But it’s the sheer violence and the laudatory commentary on hits: “That was a great hit!” It’s like, “He just severed the guy at the waist — why are we praising this?” I was never that kind of kid when I was playing sports with friends. I was never one who got into fights with other kids — that’s just not me. I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong for other people to like that stuff, but I can’t.
  Like any public figure, you’ve had your controversial moments, like when ESPN suspended your Twitter account after the Schilling dustup — or in 2009, when you were one of the few voters to leave Chris Carpenter off your Cy Young ballot. How do you handle being dragged?
  I don’t like it. It physically doesn’t feel good. I don’t ever like being the center of attention like that. I just want people to read my stuff, buy my book, be polite about everything and not talk too loud. [Laughs] But what I do typically is just walk away, just disappear for a bit. I go ride the bike around the neighborhood, go to the gym. I have a few board games in the house — I’ll just play a game with my wife and daughter.
  This idea that I would say something just to get attention and more clicks, and that it’s a hot take… If you knew me at all, you’d know that I hate that. I don’t want to be that kind of center of attention. I understand that there are people who say incendiary stuff because they want to get retweets or seven-figure contracts from TV networks. I’m fine where I am. I like my little house. We’re good. I’d rather sleep at night.

  Tim Grierson is a contributing editor at MEL. He last wrote about why Tobey Maguire was the original and best Spider-Man.
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  Keith Law discusses his new book, "Smart Baseball," and how to get used to sabermetrics

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  Keith Law discusses his new book, "Smart Baseball," and how to get used to sabermetrics
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  Keith Law wants you to love sabermetrics like he does, and his new book "Smart Baseball" is a good guide toward some of baseball's most advanced stats.
  Stephanie Apstein May 17, 2017
  Keith Law, a senior writer at ESPN, has cultivated a following with his unique mix of scouting insights and statistical explanations. His new book, Smart Baseball, out now, takes these ideas further: What’s the matter with RBIs, anyway? How are front offices evaluating players today? And what’s next?

  Sports Illustrated: How did this book come about?

  Keith Law: I’ve been getting requests from readers to recommend a book like this for a while. It never occurred to me to write this book, but maybe I’m well situated for this. I have a mixed background in baseball and I have experience translating hard concepts into simpler language. I didn’t know what kind of response I would get. A week after the 2015 draft I emailed my agent and said, “I have an idea for a book.” We sold it that fall. The writing started in March of ’16 and the last original content was around December. I kept my job at the same time. I took like one week off at one point to do extra writing. It was quite a year!

  SI: Who do you see as your audience?

  KL: I tried to write for the maximum number of people. I think of this as a book for a lay audience, for everyone who wants to know more about sabermeterics, who wants to understand how teams are evaluating players. Basically, someone from my parents’ generation who wants to understand, Why are all these stats bad? Why do you always say RBIs are meaningless? I tried to make all these arguments in plain English rather than relying on math. The goal here was to be very inclusive. There’s a lot of anti-intellectualism out there; people don’t want to learn that what they always believed was wrong. But all 30 teams have an analytics department. This is how they’re doing it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it. People are entitled to own beliefs but not to their own facts. So far the response has been really positive. If people hate the book, they’re not telling me (or I already have them muted and blocked!).

  SI: You have a lot of background yourself, but you clearly didn’t just write this all off the top of your head. What did you learn from researching?

  KL: I would say it’s the accumulation of 15 years in the business, but toward the end—the last two chapters—I start quoting people. I spent two-plus hours at MLBAM’s office. They were so kind, talking me through the Statcast stuff. I felt like, I gotta learn all this stuff so I can do the translation. It’s incredibly fun to get access to that. As far as reporting, I tried to cast a wide net. Not everyone wanted to say too much; these are trade secrets, and I don’t blame them. If I felt a person has credibility, I felt comfortable quoting them on an anonymous basis.

  MLB
  MLB Mock Draft 1.0: Should Twins take Brendan McKay or Hunter Greene with No. 1 pick?
  SI: You’ve had kind of a backwards career—you started as a stat guy at Baseball Prospectus and as a special assistant with the Blue Jays, then started scouting partway through your time there and now you write about prospects for ESPN. Do you think doing it in that order affected how you saw the game?

  KL: Part of me says I wouldn’t change it, but it felt at first like, Am I going backwards here? Scouting’s supposed to be the retrograde aspect of this, but it turned out it wasn’t. Scouting can be progressive in its own way. There are people who play the stereotype, but it’s not that common. Most people are very rigorous in their process, the observation and the evaluation. People view scouting as this nebulous thing, but there is a lot of rigor to the more serious scouts and the best teams today are really integrating both sides and bringing in player development. If I didn’t have both backgrounds I couldn’t have written the book. It would be hard to imagine going other way, because I’m a math guy. It’s hard to think of a life where I end up in scouting first, because being a stats guy felt more true to who I was as a kid, a math-loving baseball fan.

  0:00

  SI: Why did you make the switch?

  KL: When I was with the Jays, 2004 was when I realized we weren’t succeeding. We were limiting ourselves to college players who had certain stat profiles and throwing out so much of talent in the draft. I realized other teams were trying to do the same thing and suddenly the pool was incredibly limited. Around the fourth or fifth round, we looked up and said, Everyone we liked is gone. I felt like I needed to get out there and start seeing some of these players for myself. It bothered me that there was a huge aspect of the job that was a black box.

  A lot of it is learning what to look for. I was lucky to have people who were willing to do that work with me, and help me get up to speed. You have to see a lot of players. It bothers me when I see people decide, I’m gonna be a scout! I don’t think I started to be good until I saw them as young players and then I saw them either make the big leagues or wash out. I had been at ESPN for four or five years before my high school players made it or didn’t. So then I started to go back to notes and say, All right, what did I think at the time? What did I miss? Looking at my notes is like going back and reading your eighth grade book reports.

  SI: Is there anything you wish you’d touched on?

  KL: You always wish you had more time. That middle section could have been even longer. I wished I’d been able to answer more questions about, What’s the one number? I try to say a couple of places that there really isn’t one that should be the absolute end of things. Part of me feels like I could’ve given more time to the pitching/defense split. I also wanted to give more direct instruction—If you want to know what a pitcher’s worth, start here—but I also don’t want to be too didactic, talking at the reader rather than making it conversational. Maybe there’ll be another edition!

  MLB
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  SI: How much of this stuff is going to be obsolete soon?

  KL: That’s definitely going to happen. Especially with the Statcast stuff, they haven’t released a whole lot yet.

  SI: There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the homogeneity in front offices. It’s not a subject you spend too much time on in the book, but you do mention that you are now underqualified for the job you originally held with Toronto. Do you think teams are thinking about diversity as a market inefficiency?

  Some teams are looking for other backgrounds, other industries—the Phillies hired a guy from Google to run analytics—but this is just different backgrounds in terms of work experience. I worry that the industry is pretty white male and this emphasis on stat guys isn’t going to help. I have a young daughter who’s very into science and she occasionally drops, “I’m not good at math.” We tell her, “You’re not allowed to say that!” It’s a vicious cycle—studies have shown that if you give a group of women a test and show them an article saying women are worse at this, they’ll do worse. So we try to reinforce “You can do anything” to try to cancel out what she’s hearing in the world. So I’m pretty passionate about this. I worry about the diversity issue in baseball because that’s pretty narrow labor pool to be drawing from. How many people do you know who pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics and then are willing to go into baseball and make less money than they might elsewhere? I don’t think the diversity problem is getting better. We should know better by now. Well, we know better. We’re not doing better.

  SI: Toward the end of the book you get into the question of wearable trackers. It’s no wonder that teams are salivating over the prospect of more data, but do you think there will be pushback from players? And will we see this stuff in games any time soon?

  I doubt we’ll be seeing it in games, but I think we’ll see wider adoption. Teams are trying this stuff even if they’re not sure it’s going to work, because why not just try it? Vendors are looking for early-adopter teams and they say, “Just try it for free!” But it’s dangerous. Are we gonna do blood tests on players? What about Rocco Baldelli [the former Ray who was diagnosed late in his career with a rare disorder that made him chronically fatigued and eventually led to his retirement]? What if he’d been in the draft and someone had looked and said, “Oh no, you’re not gonna be able to hold up physically”? It’s probably the right decision for the team, but the player got screwed. Brady Aiken [the No. 1 pick in the 2014 draft, who did not sign with the Astros after they took issue with his physical and dropped their offer] at the time of the draft wasn’t injured; there was just a structural problem. He did end up having Tommy John, but not immediately. As we get information there’s an expectation that players will provide, and maybe they shouldn’t.

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10/5/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507257620487 1/3
Print Marked Items
Smart Baseball: The Story behind the Old Stats
That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That
Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think
about Baseball
Bryce Christensen
Booklist.
113.14 (Mar. 15, 2017): p12.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text: 
Smart Baseball: The Story behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and
the Right Way to Think about Baseball.
By Keith Law.
Apr. 2017.304p. Morrow, $27.99 (9780062490223); e-book, $12.99 (9780062490254). 796.357.
After abysmal failure as a young fantasy-baseball enthusiast in the nineties, Law concluded that the statistics he was
using to make key decisions were failing him. Turning for guidance to Bill James, Eddie Epstein, and other
sabermetric mavens, Law soon realized that many traditional baseball numbers--batting average and RBIs for hitters,
wins and saves for pitchers, and errors and fielding percentages for fielders--hide more than they reveal. No wonder
those who rely on them--from fantasy baseballers to Major League executives--end up making foolish moves.
Fortunately, such foolishness is receding into the past for those now assessing the game with powerful new statistics--
such as weighted runs created (wRC) for hitters, batting average on balls in play (BABIP) for pitchers, and defensive
runs saved (DRS) for fielders. In mercifully plain English, Law explains how the new statistical tools can answer
questions that previously baffled baseball experts. A must-read for everyone who brings a curious head as well as an
impassioned heart to the ballpark.--Bryce Christensen
Christensen, Bryce
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Christensen, Bryce. "Smart Baseball: The Story behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That
Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think about Baseball." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2017, p. 12+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490998378&it=r&asid=318aa25e31e172a2e3090bfb8b9cc5fc.
Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490998378

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Law, Keith: SMART BASEBALL
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text: 
Law, Keith SMART BASEBALL Morrow/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 4, 25 ISBN: 978-0-06-249022-3
A former Major League Baseball statistical analyst who now writes for ESPN shatters myths about how to accurately
measure a baseball player's ability and then explains modern criteria that offer better results.Law--who served as a
special assistant to the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays and now is a senior baseball writer for ESPN Insider
and an analyst for the network's show Baseball Tonight--provides a spirited exploration of statistics sure to start
arguments among devoted baseball fans. Not all the explanations of statistical measurements, computer programming,
and sophisticated technology developments are easily understandable, but the author's detailed explanations are as
jargon-free as possible; readers need not comprehend everything to enjoy the book. In the chapter likely to cause the
most passionate debate, Law relies on extensive statistical analysis to examine the Baseball Hall of Fame. The author
names worthy players who were never voted in and calls out less-worthy players who achieved entrance. Law clearly
explains the reasons for the poor decision-making by eligible voters. For position players, there is an overreliance on
outmoded metrics such as batting average, runs batted in, and stolen bases as well as the lack of an effective method
for measuring defensive prowess. For starting pitchers, voters focus too much on games won and earned run averages;
for relief pitchers, it's games saved. For all pitchers, the author stresses the lack of criteria regarding the nature of the
stadiums when they enter games and the quality of their team's defense. Law also shatters the conventional wisdom
regarding "clutch hitters." Rather than leaving readers with utter negativity, the author explains persuasively how and
why the new analytics are likely to improve the performances of individual players and entire teams. For baseball fans,
Law offers a smooth combination of erudition and his obvious love of the sport.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Law, Keith: SMART BASEBALL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921976&it=r&asid=9b7dfc51503cfcaac14592550b962e9e.
Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480921976

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Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats
That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That
Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think
About Baseball
Publishers Weekly.
264.9 (Feb. 27, 2017): p93.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and
the Right Way to Think About Baseball Keith Law. Morrow, $27.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-249022-3
Baseball is full of truisms based on statistics, and Law sets out to debunk as many of them as he can. ESPN senior
baseball writer Law brilliantly dismantles some of the game's most sacred and most misleading statistics--including
pitcher wins and saves, RBIs, and stolen bases--with a style in which smart trumps snarky. In fact, his book's title is
perfect. Law writes for the seasoned and savvy baseball fan, arguing that W scats such as WOBA (weighted on-base
average), WRC (weighted runs created), WPA (win probability added), and WAR (wins above replacement) help
teams and analysts place a more precise value on any given player's production. Law boldly second-guesses real-game
decisions made by managers and makes his case with examples that range from the sport's early days through the 2016
postseason. As a new baseball season begins, Law challenges longtime fans to think differently about a game that he
says has been hindered by inefficient traditions for far too long. (Apr.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and
the Right Way to Think About Baseball." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2017, p. 93+. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485671241&it=r&asid=6df4b26dabefa1640aee945322e64185.
Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485671241

Christensen, Bryce. "Smart Baseball: The Story behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think about Baseball." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2017, p. 12+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490998378&it=r. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. "Law, Keith: SMART BASEBALL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921976&it=r. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017. "Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2017, p. 93+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485671241&it=r. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

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