Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning

by Steve Goldman and Baseball Prospectus

Book Overview

Think You Know Baseball? Think Again. The Red Sox finally won a World Series, in a triumph of unconventional wisdom. They rethought the batting order and committed to Johnny Damon as lead-off. Saw the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761140182
• ISBN13: 9780761140184
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Workman Publishing
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable Analysis of How the Red Sox Took the 2004 World Series

The best thing about reading anything by the team that writes for the Baseball Prospectus is the wit and humor with which they analyze the game on the field. They do this well in "Mind Game" and offer a valuable perspective on how the Theo Epstein led Boston Red Sox was able to capture the World Series in 2004. As might be expected, statheads that they are, this team of writers adores another stathead and celebrates the rise of sabermetrics in baseball management. Epstein is a follower of the legendary Billy Beane in Oakland, the hero of Michael Lewis's "Moneyball" (2003), himself a loyal acolyte of the guru of all statheads, Bill James. By building a team using the statistical measurements advocated by James, according to editor Steven Goldman and his team of writers, Theo Epstein made it possible for the Red Sox finally after 86 years to win the World Series following a series of near misses. What we learn from this book is that the Red Sox had suffered years of mismanagement through cronyism, racism, and a host of other "isms." When the longstanding Yawkey influence was finally purged from the team's ownership in the early twenty-first century a new clear vision of how to win took root. Epstein pursued it relentlessly, restructuring the team to reflect a philosophy built around big innings, on base percentage, power hitting, and strong defense especially up the middle. Indeed, as the back cover of this book notes, there are several myths exploded in this book: * A lineup the strikes out a lot can't be a winner. * There's no such thing as too much offense. * Until 2004, the Red Sox were habitual underperformers in the post-season. * Teams play better after an emotionally uplifting brawl. * Mariano Rivera was the best closer in baseball from 1999 to 2003. There is a large amount of additional conventional wisdom busted in "Mind Game" as well. In the end what emerges is an enjoyable, enlightening discussion of how the Red Sox were able to win it all in 2004. It's a satisfying analysis that even the non-stathead will find useful.

Daring premise, good execution

Once again, the folks at Baseball Prospectus have tried to (re)examine the basic precepts of winning baseball. Once again, they have succeeded. The naysaying reviewers criticizing everything from political jibes (I think I saw *2* in the whole book) to a supposedly *obvious* point (Rivera being solved by the Sox due to their familiarity with him) are being hypercritical. There are plenty of announcers out there (the likes of Joe Morgan and such) who would NEVER draw the conclusion on Rivera that BP has. I *liked* the essay format, as a distinct change of pace from the "on April 15, they did this ... on April 21 they did that" tomes. The book DID have a flow to it, logically and chronologically. Analyses were sensibly connected to what the Sox were dealing with at the time ... injuries, brawls, offense vs. defense. The "stathead" stats were presented with a minimum of "even if you don't understand it ... just go along with it". There was a *logic* to the presentation. The one thing I do have an issue with (and it has been said before) is some sloppy editing, particularly in latter chapters. Typos, disjointed sentences and factual errors made for some difficult reading at times. I know the final piece of the book was written in early August for an October release, but it still irks me a bit. This is a daring attempt to present a recap of one team's season in a new format. I think we should be offering them congrats.

Enjoyable Read for Baseball Prospectus Fans

Mind Game is not only a chronology of the 2004 World Championship season, but a careful review of how the Boston Red Sox were built. You don't need to be a Red Sox fan to enjoy this one. The book describes the trades and analysis employed by Boston's management team to build the winner: The Arod "almost" deal, Nomargate, and Curt Schillings' injury (the best chapter in the book). Please be aware - the book is best suited for readers who are at least familiar with the work of the Baseball Prospectus staff. While the writers do explain their methodologies as susinctly as possible, if you pick up this book without knowing what VORP, EQA and PECOTA are - you are not going to like the book. What Mind Game does best is expose myths: did the Red Sox really get hot after their on-field brawl with the Yankees? (No); did the Red Sox get hot after the Nomar deal (not right away); Does defense and pitching win championships? (read and find out) As a bonus, the book has several terrific appendices including "the Complete List of Baseball Brawls", the best and worst trades by each Red Sox GM and Baseball Prospectus rankings of Red Sox players. Most of the chapters are very well written, particularly those of Will Carrol, Steve Goldman, Nate Silver and Jay Jaffe. Despite the fact that about a dozen authors contributed to Mind Game, stylisticly it flows reasonably well. The only bumps in the road are the few chapters written by James Click which border on incomprehensible. So if you do have sabermetrics leanings, this book is a wonderful and I strongly recommend it. (I have no personal or professional affiliation with any of the writers, publisher, etc. of this book)

The Revolution Starts Now

At a recent New Jersey SABR meeting, Tom Oliphant, political writer and author of "Praying for Gil Hodges", noted that part of baseball's appeal is the ability to argue, disputes that span the breadth of history, and that can be argued for hours, months, and generations. Should Fred Merkle have been called out in 1908? Did Ed Armbrister interfere with Carlton Fisk in 1975? Willie, Mickey, or the Duke? Does pitching or hitting win championships? Which is more important, statistics or scouting? Just like life, the above questions are more complicated than they may appear. Merkle and Fisk were both involved in controversial plays which will never be undone, and Mays, Mantle and Snider will always have adherents for their superiority which will never be reconciled. Of course, World Series have been won with either strong pitching or overwhelming hitting, and no smart team can entirely disregard either statistics or scouting. But the last question really involves a revolutionary change in the nature of contemporary fandom-the observer and fan claiming a seat at the table with the professional class. The work of Bill James, the Society for American Baseball Research and later, Baseball Prospectus, is, if such a diverse group can be generalized, the attempt by nonparticipants in professional baseball to understand, analyze, and predict baseball. Baseball wisdom has historically been passed down through the hierarchy-veteran players retire and take coaching jobs, passing on their lessons to the next generation. While Alan Schwarz' The Numbers Game outlined clearly the entire history of gathering, collecting, and learning from baseball statistics, the current wave of fan driven research and explosion of new statistics and publications is, arguably, unprecedented. For the first time, number crunchers are not just complaining from newspaper columns, but contributing from the executive suites and seeing their theories put to the test. The man said to be the guru of baseball statistical research is Bill James, the former night watchman who turned a typewritten journal mailed to a few isolated souls into a shelf full of books and articles. James was hired by the Red Sox in November 2002, and Mind Game is the story of the Red Sox' 2004 World Series Championship and the role that James and the new thinking in baseball played in the season. After a brief accounting of the Red Sox' history, Mind Game takes the reader through the 2004 season in bite size nuggets, describing a game or series of games in each chapter, combined with "Extra Innings" segments that illuminate other points not directly relevant to the season narrative. The combined effect is a fun, rollicking ride through the year with BP's cheeky humor combined with sober, revealing analysis. The new wave of baseball thought has its naysayers, as some establishment figures have made it abundantly clear to any and all that they are "anti-Moneyball" people, referring to Michael Lewis' popular b

All-Star Analysis, Replacement-Level Writing

I eagerly anticipated this book, and was only slightly let down when it finally shipped. On the positive side, it condenses into one volume all of the decisions that went into the making of a championship team. It's especially insightful because Baseball Prospectus has a similar understanding of the game as Sox' GM Theo Epstein. I also appreciated the fact that it's not a pure "stathead" book, and delves into things such as why it's sometimes sensible to overpay a player such as Jason Varitek, why (at the time) it made sense to sign Matt Clement in place of Pedro, and why team chemistry matters (it doesn't always help, but it rarely hurts.) On the down side, it could have used a lot more proofreading and copy editing; there was at least one paragraph that I had to re-read three times before I could figure out who "him" was (Frank Crosetti). Maybe we need a new stat, "Typos Above Replcement Writer," or "Grammatic Efficiency Ratio." Perhaps most annoyingly, it's full of glib political references that will alienate about 50% of readers. At the very least, they're distracting, sending the reader off into thoughts of, "Is that a dig at somebody? Is he right?" when you want to be thinking about baseball. These sorts of things are fine in a daily column, but they're inevitably comtemporaneous, and may be hopelessly obscure before the Sox win again. The book would have been much better had the author restrained himself. I don't understand why sportswriters do this, especially since Baseball Prospectus holds itself to much higher standards of accuracy than most political analysts. But, if you want to read the real story behind the 2004 Red Sox, if you want to understand the thinking behind the most talented and progressive management in the game today, then this is the book.