Hi everyone – below are the nineteen chapters of the current version of a comprehensive literature review of sabermetric research. The work reviewed comes from many sources; academic journals, academic and sabermetric books, sabermetric periodicals, and online sources. I am constantly working on this project, keeping up with new online posts and academic publications on relevant topics and posting new versions of chapters with additional material. For the newest update, I have divided the Batting Evaluation chapter into two, Batting Metrics and Batting Fundamentals, the second of which includes recent work from Baseball Savant, along with analogous sources. I am currently working on dividing the Batting Issues chapter into two, Batter Characteristics and Other Batting Issues, with the latter to include some topics currently in the Batting Metrics chapter.
Here is the overall table of contents. Each chapter also has its own table of contents.
The first chapter is an introduction primarily intended for people new to sabermetric work.
The second chapter reviews work on the inning and the game (i.e., nine or more innings).
Chapter 2 – The Inning and the Game
The third chapter reviews work on the influence of situation on game play.
Chapter 3 – Situational Breakdowns
The fourth chapter turns to the underlying factors behind batting outcomes.
Chapter 4 – Batting Fundamentals
Chapter four-and-a-half describes methods for measuring batting outcomes.
The fifth chapter concerns a series of issues relevant to offensive performance.
The sixth chapter is about batting strategy.
In the seventh chapter, we turn our attention to baserunning evaluation and strategy.
The eighth chapter describes methods for evaluating pitching.
Chapter 8 – Pitching Evaluation
The ninth chapter encompasses issues related to pitching performance.
Chapter nine-and-a-half includes material on pitch characteristics and strategy.
Chapter 9 1.2 – Pitch Characteristics and Strategy
The tenth chapter is a discussion of pitcher usage patterns
Chapter 10 – Pitcher Usage Patterns
The eleventh chapter examines the history and current state of fielding evaluation.
Chapter 11- Fielding Evaluation
Chapter twelve relates to fielding strategy.
The thirteenth chapter covers attempts to provide overall player evaluations.
Chapter 13 – Overall Player Evaluation
Chapter fourteen is about the impact of player injuries.
In chapter fifteen, we turn our attention to research on managers and coaches.
Chapter sixteen discusses what is known about umpiring.
Team performance is covered in chapter seventeen.
The eighteenth and last chapter concerns other team issues.
I have included a list of references in each chapter, but here is the list for the entire book. First are references for A to I.
And here is the list for J to Z.
I hope you find this helpful to your work. Please alert me at chazzq@udel.edu to any problems you see (I am sure I have made errors along the way) and any relevant research you know of that is not as yet included, so I can make the next version better than those earlier.
I wish to thank Phil Birnbaum, Dick Cramer, and Dave Smith for encouragement and support, Pete Palmer for suggesting improvements and clarifying some of his own work, Tom Tango for spreading the word and clarifying some of his own work, Rob Mains for help with access to Baseball Prospectus webposts, Ben Lindbergh for showing me how to access old FanGraphs and Hardball Times (r.i.p.) webposts, Pete, Tom, and Davy Andrews for supplying me with data, and most of all Cliff Blau for volunteering to function as both production editor and fact checker.
Statistical Baseball Research Bibliography
Although The Statistical Baseball Research Bibliography has been merged into SABR’s Baseball Index, I am maintaining it on its own at this location with periodic updates. There are now over 4000 entries arranged by author name. I have replaced the category system I previously used with Baseball Index’s, which makes it more searchable by topic. The link is just below this paragraph; please ignore any material after it. The current version is what is included through October 1, 2026.
