Feeding the Monster.... Charles McGrath reviews Seth Mnookin's Feeding the Monster in this week's NYTBR. Since some of you faulted me for saying that Mnookin was not the most graceful stylist, I will quote:

The publisher presumably hopes that “Feeding the Monster” will catch on with the same audience that made “Moneyball” such a hit, but the real news here — the triumph of analysis and statistical study over instinct and sentimentality in the running of a baseball team — may be a bit old now, and Mnookin, though an excellent reporter, is not as stylish a writer as Michael Lewis. He has also chosen to lard his book with copious footnotes, some of which appear to be a homage to David Foster Wallace, while many others — defining the terms E.R.A., on-base percentage and the like and explaining the workings of the wild-card playoff system — seem to suggest that his intended audience is Martians, or else archaeologists investigating baseball sometime in the distant future.  ¶ 11:06 AM