The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

By: Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, John Pruden

Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

It's the ultimate in fantasy baseball: You get to pick the roster, set the lineup, and decide on strategies - with real players, in a real ballpark, in a real playoff race. That's what baseball analysts Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when an independent minor-league team in California, the Sonoma Stompers, offered them the chance to run its baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics.

We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team, following one cardinal rule for judging each innovation they try: It has to work. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay player in professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance.

Will their knowledge of numbers help Lindbergh and Miller bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their faces? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the sport's folk wisdom true after all? Will the players attract the attention of big-league scouts, or are they on a fast track to oblivion?

©2016 Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"[F]un, breezy, and moving read." (Jonah Keri, author of Up, Up, and Away)

A must-listen for fans of Effectively Wild

While it's a little disorienting to hear not-Ben and not-Sam reading their words, the narrators are quality and the story is great.

My favorite baseball book ever.

From some of the great story tellers in media comes the story of what happens with the rubber theory of stats and optimal decisions meets the hard road of the actual landscape of baseball. Couldn't put it down.

Great True Story for Fantasy Baseball Addicts

This book is a engaging, inside look at a couple of stat-heads trying to run a low level minor league baseball team. Highly recommended!

Great listen, even for non stat heads

The use of 2 narrators was a great choice. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but this was more a story about challenges and lessons learned than baseball statistics. I recommend this to even a casual baseball fan.

Narrarators have never watched baseball. Ever!

Any additional comments?

This is a great story about two statheads running a minor league ball club. There's only one small problem.

The two narrators and the audio engineers HAVE NEVER WATCHED A BASEBALL GAME IN THEIR LIVES.

On one occasion, they pronounced Vin Scully as Vin SCOLLY. On another, they pronounced Whitey Herzog as WHITNEY Herzog. They're both in the Hall of Fame.It's a great book and a good performance, but the occasional pronunciation snafus take away from the experience.

What an awesome book

Not just for "stat years," but anyone who loves the game of Baseball, or just a compelling, well written story.

Great story, perfect for baseball nerds

Really enjoyed this book as a fan of the game, baseball stat nerd/junkie, and fantasy aficianado. The audiobook performance was also quite good even with the dialogue.

Great Book, Bad Performance

This is a very interesting book, I was on the edge of my seat and had to force myself not to look up the final record of the team before finishing the book. (Kinda like reading the last page first!) However, the experience was ruined a bit by the narrators who didn't bother to look up the pronunciation of various names and places. Still, recommended for anyone interested in minor league baseball or sabermetrics.

Big league ideas on a below minor league level

The Only Rule Is It Has To Work is definitely interesting for more than casual baseball fans. It isn't about the Yankees, Cubs, or Red Sox, and the only mentions of big league teams are short and unrelated to the actual story. Independent baseball leagues usually give players the chance to prove themselves and work their way up to affiliated baseball. This book shows that it can also give unconventional and nontraditional fans the chance to prove that different theories on rosters and lineups can be utilized.

This book almost reads like a fiction title because mostly all of the names are unrecognizable. That is what makes it more readable - there are characters you meet who develop throughout the book. There are no preconceived notions because you've heard these names on TV. Unless you listened to the authors' podcast or follow small independent baseball, everything should be new and unheard of.

There are a few parts of game recaps and play by play that get boring, but nothing that takes you completely out of the flow. I think the best parts of the book are when players are brought to life through dialogue and interaction, after the authors have chosen them based on spreadsheets and number crunching. I also enjoyed the authors discussing different shifts and batting lineup and bullpen adjustments.

The biggest takeaways are 1) Mathematical statistics applied to a lineup can only predict so much. They are percentages that events might or might not happen. Baseball is played by humans who can perform below expectations or above them. 2) The formula for winning is only useful if you keep the same pieces in place. If players are as good as advertised, they will get signed to higher levels of baseball and need to be replaced.

Good listen. Good story. Would like to see the Stompers in person at their home field sometime.

Introspective analysis of a season

The authors' quest to change a team has surprising relevance to social and business matters.