The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball

By Alan Hirsch, Lecturer in Humanities, Chair of Justice and Law Studies, and Sheldon Hirsch. McFarland Books, 2011. Hirsch and Hirsch argue that the “Moneyball approach” to baseball, which is based on sabermetrics (the search for objective knowledge through statistical analysis), has taken over the national pastime and offers only limited guidance for assembling a team, managing games, and evaluating player performance.