About this book:

 

Baseball is drowning in data. Broadcasts and articles are littered with endless high-tech gobbledygook, calculated instantly every time a player moves a muscle.

If it were just a case of too much information, we could ignore the onslaught and continue to love the game. But the flood of data—embraced by Major League Baseball—has become the driving force behind which players are drafted, how they are developed, and how the game is played. The natural athleticism of baseball is being replaced by a video-game version executed by robot-like players.

Death by Data looks at how baseball went from box scores to Sabermetrics to a complete surrender to Statcast, high-speed cameras, and other mind-numbing technologies. Ballplayers that were once flesh and blood and spirit are now vast collections of numbers measured with invisible rulers.

Author Joel Bradley, long-time scout and high school coach of future major leaguers Anthony Rizzo, Mike Fiers, Andy Painter, and many others, provides an inside look at how traditional player scouting and development have been replaced by a blind faith in algorithms and spreadsheets.

Death by Data also describes how Baseball’s relentless quest for money and profit is sucking away the soul of the game: The heartbreaking contraction of the minor leagues, the replacement of scouting by biometrics, and the Rule Changes Era that smacks of gimmickry.

Join Joel Bradley in his modern baseball conversation about how we got here and how we can return to the game we love. At the heart of the battle and the conversation lies the question, “What is a ballplayer?”

How Baseball answers that question will go a long way in determining if the game will remain central to the fabric of our culture, or if it will become just another shallow form of entertainment among a thousand others.

Author: Joel Bradley

Imprint Publisher:  Summer Game Books

ISBN: 1-978-955398-18-3