Keith Law

Keith Law is a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com and ESPN Scouts, Inc. He was formerly a writer for Baseball Prospectus and worked in the front office for the Toronto Blue Jays. He is a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

 
On April 25th, we will be celebrating the release of the eagerly anticipated new book from ESPN Senior Baseball Writer Keith Law “SMART BASEBALL: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball” (William Morrow), an intelligent, informative, and engaging incursion on the baseball establishment.
 
In this provocative book, the outspoken Law takes on the established view of baseball stats, undermining over a century’s worth of baseball dogma. With many of these numbers dating back to the beginning of the game, he examines how allegiance to these old stats is firmly rooted, not in the modern game as it’s played, but in baseball’s irrational adherence to tradition. Using entertaining anecdotes, logic, and occasionally just a little math, he exposes the flaws in much of the game’s orthodoxy, from the illusion of clutch performers, to the dishonesty of RBIs, to how the save rule - invented by a journalist - has ruined bullpens for decades.