Winning Baseball

From age-appropriate drills to motivation strategies, this step-by-step guide to youth baseball offers all the information parents and coaches need to help young players reach their full potential.

Part of the Coach's Companion series, veteran coach Trent Mongero's Winning Baseball for Intermediate to College Level covers everything from advanced mechanics for infield, outfield, pitcher, and catcher play to hitting mechanics and mental toughness strategies. Complete with insider tips for college and MLB prospects, over 100 photographs, and a four-hour instructional DVD, this is the ultimate, one-stop baseball reference.

Play smart. Play to win. Play like a champion.

This is a new release of the original 1953 edition.

Diamond Dollars is a fresh, provocative, insightful, and analytical look at the business of baseball by author Vince Gennaro, a consultant to MLB teams. Gennaro addresses some key questions that affect how teams make decisions, how they assemble their roster, and ultimately, their bottom line: How does winning affect revenues for each team? How much value does a berth in the postseason generate for the Red Sox and Yankees? What is the Yankees’ marginal revenue vs. marginal cost of winning? What is the economic value of a highly productive Twins’ farm system? Why is a player’s value “situational”, depending on the competitiveness of his team and the market in which he plays? How much was Carlos Beltran worth to the Mets in 2006? How can we quantify Derek Jeter’s “marquee value”…his ability to draw fans? What is the relative cost of developing talent vs. buying it in the free agent market? How can we quantify Nomar Garciaparra’s injury risk and its impact on his dollar value? What is the dollar value of Cubs’ fans loyalty to their beloved team? How have the Red Sox, Yankees and Cubs built their team as a brand? How much Babe Ruth was worth to his Yankee teams of the 1920s and 1930s.? Baseball teams may have thought conceptually about some of these issues, but Diamond Dollars gives them the math to measure the effectiveness of their thinking and practices. This edition includes a 2013 preface by the author and a foreword by Jim Beattie, former Executive VP and General Manager of the Baltimore Orioles and Montreal Expos. “Diamond Dollars provides an insightful look at the business of baseball—at the free agent market, teams’ scouting and player development systems, and how clubs market their brands. The book mixes Vince’s business acumen as a top executive at a Fortune 50 company with his passion for the national pastime.” -Mark Attanasio, Chairman and Principal Owner, Milwaukee Brewers “Vince Gennaro shows a profound understanding of the economics of a team’s baseball decisions. His analyses of a team’s win-revenue relationship, the player development system and player valuation, make for a remarkably innovative examination of the baseball front office model that’s just as informative for a baseball executive as for a fan.” -Chris Antonetti, General Manager, Cleveland Indians “Diamond Dollars offers up exciting and stimulating new ideas about the business of baseball. It provides a set of metrics for decisions that have typically been a “gut feeling” for many organizations. I think teams should make this required reading for everyone in their organizations.” -Jim Beattie, former Executive VP and General Manager, Baltimore Orioles and Montreal Expos “Vince Gennaro has written the best book I’ve read on the business of baseball. It serves as both a “how-to manual” for baseball owners and a tour guide for fans who scratch their heads at the things their teams do. It should find plenty of readers in both camps.” -Dave Studenmund, Editor, The Hardball Times Annual

"This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame." —Forbes Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge—insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money.

Baseball analysts often criticize pitcher win-loss records as a poor measure of pitcher performance, as wins are the product of team performance. Fans criticize WAR (Wins Above Replacement) because it takes in theoretical rather than actual wins. Player won-lost records bridge the gap between these two schools of thought, giving credit to all players for what they do--without credit or blame for teammates' performance--and measuring contributions to actual team wins and losses. The result is a statistic of player value that quantifies all aspects of individual performance, allowing for robust comparisons between players across different positions and different seasons. Using play-by-play data, this book examines players' won-lost records in Major League Baseball from 1930 through 2015.

Baseball is played in all corners of the world, so it is no surprise to learn that some of the greatest hardballers of all time never played on a U.S. major league diamond. Who knows what major league records would have been shattered had Sadaharu Oh of Japan, Josh Gibson of the Negro Leagues, Martin Dihigo of Cuba, Francisco Coimbre of Puerto Rico and Hector Espino of Mexico played in the United States. This work is a survey of the greatest baseball players who never played in the U.S. major leagues. The greatest players from the various professional leagues outside organized baseball in the United States are reviewed, and all-star teams are selected for each league. Finally, the author selects an "all-world all-star team" from the individual all-star teams from Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Negro Leagues.