Move over, Moneyball**—this** New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players.As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, eve...

The New York Times bestseller: "A useful, entertaining look back at how the Pirates turned a small market, longtime loser into a playoff team." — Baseball AmericaAfter twenty consecutive losing seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, team morale was low, the club's payroll ranked near the bottom of the sport, game attendance was down, and the city was becoming increasingly disenchanted with its team. Big Data Baseball is the story of how the 2...

Move over, Moneyball**—this** New York Times bestseller examines major league baseball's next cutting-edge revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players.As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, eve...

Big Data Baseball provides a behind-the-scenes look at how the Pittsburgh Pirates used big data strategies to end the longest losing streak in North American pro sports history.New York Times BestsellerAfter twenty consecutive losing seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, team morale was low, the club’s payroll ranked near the bottom of the sport, game attendance was down, and the city was becoming increasingly disenchanted w...

In 2012 the Los Angeles Dodgers were bought out of bankruptcy in the most expensive sale in sports history. Los Angeles icon Magic Johnson and his partners hoped to put together a team worthy of Hollywood. By most accounts they have succeeded, if not always in the way they might have imagined.In The Best Team Money Can Buy, Molly Knight tells the story of the Dodgers' 2013 and 2014 seasons. She shares a behind-the-scenes account of the astonishing sale of the Dodgers, reve...

Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ...

An astonishing—and astonishingly entertaining—behind-the-curtain history of Hollywood’s transformation over the past five decades as seen through the agency at the heart of it all, from the #1 bestselling co-author of Live from New York and Those Guys Have All the Fun.In 1975, five young employees of a sclerotic William Morris agency left to start their own, strikingly innovative talent agency. In the years to come, Creative Artists Agency would vault from its ori...

Predictably Irrational meets Moneyball in ESPN veteran writer and statistical analyst Keith Law’s iconoclastic look at the numbers game of baseball, proving why some of the most trusted stats are surprisingly wrong, explaining what numbers actually work, and exploring what the rise of Big Data means for the future of the sport.For decades, statistics such as batting average, saves recorded, and pitching won-lost records have been used to measure individual players...

In Scorecasting, University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz teams up with veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports, and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won and lost.Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-...

“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed…. This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” —Wall Street Journal“Leavy has hit it out of the park…A lot more than a biography. It’s a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero’s self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory… a remarkably rich portrait.” — TimeThe instant New York Times bestseller about the baseball legend ...

Tracing a group of ruthless outlaws from its genesis during the American Civil War all the way to a final bloody stand in the Oklahoma territories, The Winter Family is a hyperkinetic Western noir that reads like a full-on assault to the senses.Spanning the better part of three decades, The Winter Family traverses America's harsh, untamed terrain, both serving and opposing the fierce advance of civilization. Among its twisted specimens, the Winter...

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BC NATIONAL AWARD FOR CANADIAN NON-FICTIONA GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOKFrom the bestselling author and Hall of Famer Ken Dryden, this is the story of NHLer Steve Montador—who was diagnosed with CTE after his death in 2015—the remarkable evolution of hockey itself, and a passionate prescriptive to counter its greatest risk in the future: head injuries.**Ken Dryden’s The Game is acknowledged as the best book about hockey, and one of...