Written by three esteemed baseball statisticians, 
The   Book continues where the legendary Bill James's 
Baseball   Abstracts and Palmer and Thorn's 
The Hidden Game of Baseball   left off more than twenty years ago. Continuing in the grand tradition of   sabermetrics, the authors provide a revolutionary way to think about   baseball with principles that can be applied at every level, from high   school to the major leagues.    
Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin cover topics such as   batting and pitching matchups, platooning, the benefits and risks of   intentional walks and sacrifices, the legitimacy of alleged "clutch"   hitters, and many of baseball's other theories on hitting, fielding,   pitching, and even baserunning. They analyze when a strategy is a good idea   and when it's a bad idea, and how to more closely watch the "inside" game   of baseball.    
Whenever you hear an announcer talk about the "unwritten rule" or say   that so-and-so is going "by the book" in bringing in a situational   substitute, The Book reviews the facts and determines what the real   case is. If you want to know what the folks in baseball should be doing,   find out in The Book....