The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team [Includes a New Afterword]

This reads like one of those classic old baseball memoirs. Only instead of the deep structural analysis of the MLB back office roles in Moneyball, we get life in the dugout of a small Indy league ball club with their home field just off the town square in small town Sonoma, CA. Nerdy, quirky, and committed, we see how the stats and culture of baseball get messy when mixed together. Good weekend read.Three lessons for any startup strategists out there: #1: Always Be Recruiting (especially in q2 and q3, most especially when you have a great team). #2: Play the Long Game (one day at a time is necessary but not sufficient — plan at least 2-3 years out, don’t just react). #3: metrics aren’t just for forecasting the business, develop your staff with big-n insights.

Last summer, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller embarked on the kind of fantasy baseball adventure that most of us can only dream about: they were appointed the baseball operations department of the Sonoma Stompers, and independent-league baseball team in California. In contrast to a minor league affiliate, independent-league teams have to find and secure their own talent. They do so largely by feeding off the dregs of the minor league systems: players who play in independent baseball do so because they either weren't drafted into MLB's minor league system after college, or they were signed but then were subsequently released. And while some guys play ball simply because they enjoy the game, most of the guys available to the Stompers are playing explicitly for another chance at a career in affiliated baseball.Even so, as the baseball operations department, this was a chance for Sam and Ben to test a lot of their ideas about baseball teams in a real world situation. This included novel ideas about roster construction in independent leagues, using college statistics to find good ballplayers, and even, as the season went on, in-game strategy. As the summer's data accumulated into larger datasets, Ben and Sam started to tinker with extreme fielding arrangements (shifts! 5-man infields! 4-man outfields!), unconventional reliever usage, sabermetric-minded batting orders, etc. All of those strategies that we in the stat-head baseball blogosphere argue the big league clubs should do? This was the chance to implement those strategies, and Sam and Ben don't waste the opportunity to do so. The Only Rule Is It Has To Work is the tale of their efforts.They have some wonderful successes. But they also have their share of challenges, both on and off the field. They soon butt heads with the manager they hire. Other teams try to poach their players. Some of their players underperform horrifically. Opposing teams sign half a roster of new players. All the while, we get to go along for the ride, living in the authors' minds. Ben and Sam take turns writing chapters throughout the book, and so we get both of their perspectives--which are often very different--on key moments in the Stompers season. All the while, we readers get to play armchair quarterback, thinking about what we might do in those same situations.Nevertheless, the book manages to be more than just a recounting of a fun experiment in independent baseball. As baseball fans will attest, the full experience of baseball brings with it a certain melancholy to accompany its triumphs. That melancholy is revealed when playing out a doomed season, in watching aging players fail where they'd once succeeded, and in seeing hardworking players get cut through no fault of their own. The vast majority of young men who want to become one of the 750 players on a major league active roster fail to realize that dream, and most never even come close. This frustrating failure is the soul of the greatest baseball film of all time, Bull Durham, and it's also one of this book's unexpected successes. We get to know the players of the 2015 Sonoma Stompers. We celebrate their successes with child-like enthusiasm. And we suffer through their failures, which carry a lot more weight; failure in independent ball often spells the ultimate end to players' careers.It's that melancholy, stacked on top of the riveting tale of last summer's experiment, that brings me to this: The Only Rule Is It Has To Work is one of the best baseball books I've ever read. Yes, I'm card-carrying stathead, and I'm a long-time Effectively Wild listener. I've been looking forward to this book since they announced their project last summer, and even checked the Sonoma Stompers website a few times last season to check on their progress. Yes, yes, yes, this book is right up my alley. But even so, this is just a terrific book. While it certainly does set itself apart from the standard baseball story with its unique premise, the book somehow still manages to encapsulate the full experience of baseball, with all of its highs, lows, and in-betweens. Buy it and enjoy it.Full Disclosure: I did receive a review copy from the publisher...but I had already preordered the thing, and was looking forward to reading it anyway!

Full disclosure: Sam Miller is my cousin. I don't think I've seen or talked to him in maybe a decade-ish (?), but we are related. Well, not technically, like, "blood related," since we are cousins through my stepdad's side. But, yes, growing up, we saw each other at family get togethers twice a year. So there you go.Sam Miller and Ben Lindbergh cohost Effectively Wild, a podcast that makes predictions and offers insights about baseball based on crazy in-depth statistics (called sabermetrics). Both have also been editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus, which, in their words, is "the leading media outlet devoted to data-driven baseball analysis." So, yeah. These nerds like baseball--a lot--and examining all the teeny tiny variables of the game in the hopes that they might accurately predict which players and teams will succeed and which won't is their idea of a pretty good time.Amazingly, after so many years of sharing their predictions, criticisms, and insights on air and online, they are offered the opportunity of a lifetime when they are asked to help run baseball operations for the Sonoma Stompers, an independent minor league in Sonoma California. Guided only (well, mostly) by statistics, they'll have the freedom to eliminate players, reposition players, switch up outfield positions, you name it...so long as they have the statistical evidence to support their decisions.Of course, Miller and Lindbergh jump at the opportunity, and The Only Rule Is It Has to Work is the story of their experience. They start the season with good intentions, ambitious goals, and perhaps slightly naive expectations. The learning curve is steep, however, and they are forced to absorb and adapt quickly, all while making fast, creative, and (hopefully) correct decisions, despite limited access to data. Sometimes they get it right. Many times they don't. In the end, they learn that running a team--and especially building a team--is complicated. Sabermetrics may be cold, hard, objective FACTS, but people are messy.I surprised myself by loving this book. I mean, I love baseball. I love watching baseball. I love playing baseball. But baseball stats? Ick. No thanks. And I thought that was what this book was going to be: just a bunch of numbers and spreadsheets. But it's not. Yes, there is a lot of number talk in here, but numbers aren't the main focus. The people are. The players, the coaches, and, of course, Miller and Lindbergh.What makes this book so powerful is the honesty with which the story is told. Miller and Lindbergh hold nothing of their experience back--even when it makes them look bad, even when they are so unsure, even when they struggle to make their team feel like, well, a team. It's so obvious that they care about the game, about the players, about getting it right--but they don't hesitate to admit when they screw up. There is vulnerability here, and heart. And you don't need to know baseball or statistics to recognize it. In the end, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work is more than a book about baseball, and certainly more than a book about sabermetrics. It's simply a good story.

I read a preview chapter online, where Sam & Ben turn up at a tryout and sign their first player (not altogether fairly!), and was immediately interested, intrigued and ordered. If you have any interest in baseball, especially with regard to sabermatrics, I would highly suggest this book. You get to a side of baseball I've never seen before - the weekend, town-baseball, no-money independent leagues that is almost like a different sport from Major League baseball.Seeing real players become characters in their own right throughout the book, in a similar manner to how it must have felt to Ben & Sam; coming in as outsiders to a team - Feh, Baps, Sean. It actually reminded me of sports management games like Football Manager and OOTP, whenever you take on a team you've never heard of. Complete strangers that you come to love, to share in their successes and failures.The preview excerpt I read was from deadspin - search for 'How Two Online Baseball Writers Won An Indie-League Draft By Finding Talent And Stealing It' (I'm unsure if Amazon likes direct links in reviews).It was funny, informative, interesting, and thoroughly enjoyable.

This is a fabulous read but wasn't quite what I was expecting given the summation. There's very little of how they used sabermetrics to get the team to perform better, it's mostly just a humourous and charming story about running a baseball team with some minor sabermetrics thinking (and in particularly, how difficult for people to use such analysis). My only fault in the book is that there is a nice set of photos in the book just a little before the middle that are massive spoilers for the remainder of the book. As such, for anyone reading I would recommend waiting to look at the photos until the end.

If you think this is two statheads espousing numbers and analytics as the be all and end all in baseball then you are in for a pleasant surprise.Yes, Ben and Sam (Sam and Ben?) have this background and may well have gone into the project thinking that numbers would solve everything but the story quickly evolves beyond this and their humility makes this a great story of people from various schools of thought learning from each other.

Brilliant ! Couldn’t put it down . Thankyou Ben and Sam for sharing this experience . This is a must have for any baseball/sports fan .

I adored this book. I didn't want it to end and was sad when it did. If you enjoy their podcasts, or like baseball in any remotely analytical way, you will love reading this. I couldn't recommend it more.