(Larger Image)
|
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
by Bill James
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Free Press (2003-05-06)
ISBN: 0743227220
EAN: 9780743227223
Dewey Decimal #: 796
Paperback: 1008 pages
Edition: Revised
SKU: 0905250032
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: clean and unmarked, creased tip, no priority or international without prior arrangements, too large for flat rate envelope - Thanks!
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the "holy book of baseball." Now, baseball's beloved "Sultan of Stats" (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium.
Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one. The Game provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In The Players, you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called "Win Shares," a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Great perspective from THE MAN himself.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2009-12-08
I really enjoyed this book. I am a die-hard Bill James fan and this was a great read with plenty of in-depth analysis and research! Great for the true MLB fan.
|
|
Excellent gift for a baseball fan; 1,000+ pages is a great value
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-08-27
Having read an earlier version of Bill James' classic historical abstract, I purchased this as updated version as a gift for a friend who works as a baseball announcer for the local American Legion team.
I recommend this book as a gift for baseball aficionados; more than a book or a reference, it is a treasury that will be not be found tucked away on a bookshelf but readily available, pages marked up and dog-eared, and enjoyed for many years.
Amazon lists this book for less than $20. With more than 1,000 pages, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is an outstanding value; rating: Five stars.
|
|
fantastic
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-03-31
this book is amazing. all the information here is incredible. james does a wonderful job of writing and putting together his thoughts. its interesting and a good read. every baseball fan should own this book.
|
|
How Baseball Can Improve Your SAT Scores ...
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-01-05
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
... in both Math and Reading! Baseball is more than a sport; it's a literary tradition, a portal into American social history, and the finest set of exercises available in personnel management. My baseball-loving son, now only months from high school graduation, improved his SAT math score from junior to senior year by 85 points, not be taking the Princeton Review course but by studying the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.
You'll find this weighty volume full of the quirks and foibles that elevate Our National Pastime from mere gladiatorial combat to a blend of ballet, psychodrama, and interpersonal bonding. I gave a copy of this great compendium of stats to my son for his birthday five years ago; now he's planning to carry that copy away with him toward adulthood, so he thoughtfully gave me a new copy of my own for Christmas this year.
|
|
Insightful and Entertaining, but Win Shares needs an overhaul
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-11-15
I'm a long-time fan of Bill James and purchased this book several years ago. It has the analysis, insights, passion, reverence, and irreverence that are trademarks of his work. Recently I purchased the Win Shares book, admittedly years after it was published. Since the concept of Win Shares is the underpinning for the ratings in this book, I'd like to share some of my comments regarding this approach.
1. As others have mentioned, the insistence of James of allocating 52% of Win Shares to defense (pitching and fielding) and 48% to offense is arbitrary and yields distorted Win Shares values for the players. It would seem to me to be logical to assign the proportion of Win Shares to offense based on the relative value of the team's offense to the defense. For example, this formula could be used to evaluate the percentage of Win Shares that goes to the offense. A/(A+(2*B)-C) where A is runs scored (adjusted for park factor), B is average team runs scored for the league, and C is runs allowed (adjusted for park factor). Using this technique, the Blue Jays in 2008 have a formula that resolves to 721/(721 + (2*775)-616), or rounded to 44% . Therefore 44% of the Blue Jays Win Shares of 2008 would go to their offense and 56% to their defense. Using the same formula for the Texas Rangers of 2008 yields 61% of Win Shares that go to offense and 39% to defense. It seems reasonable to assign the values this way because the Blue Jays clearly won more games because of their pitching, and the Rangers won more games because of their hitting. Of course, this will make the Win Shares of individual players more accurate as well as the Ranger's hitters, for example, clearly deserve more than 48% of the team's Win Shares. James at one point mentions that he wouldn't want the percentage of pitching Win Shares to go above 58%, because the effect of that could cause some offensive players to have negative Win Shares. But that seems to be pointing out a flaw in the Win Shares offensive calculation rather than a rationale for keeping the pitching share at around 52%.
2. For middle infielders, a percentage of the evaluation is based on assists, which makes sense. There is an "expected number of assists" for a shortstop(or second baseman) that is based on a) the proportion of assists that typically go to a shortstop on a league basis, as well as b) an adjustment for the number of inning a left-handed pitcher was on the mound. Then the actual number of assists for a player is evaluated against the expected number giving the Assists Scale. This is good as a start, but the formula would seem to be inaccurate to the extent that your fellow fielders are either quite good or quite bad. For example, take 2 shortstops from two different teams with the exact same fielding ability. Player A has a great fielding second-baseman and third-baseman next to him. Player B's fielding counterparts are sub-par. Using the formula, it would seem to me that Player B would end up with a higher number on the Assists Scale merely because his second baseman and third baseman are waving at balls that Player B's fellow fielders would field safely. Player B would then have more opportunities to make plays himself. Therefore Player B would end up with a higher percentage of his team's assists and therefore look better on the Assists Scale, despite being no better than Player A. Fielding has a zero-sum aspect to it that makes it hard to evaluate a players' assists (or putouts) in isolation. If a system, such as this one, only look at plays made (such as assists), then we are trying to extract opportunity (plays that could be made) from outcome(actual assists), which is a futile task, it would seem to me. Using the "expected number of assists" described above goes part of the way to show opportunity, but does not take into account the fellow fielders, as I mentioned. I don't have a solution to this, but it is a limitation of the formula.
3. In evaluating player ratings, James evaluates players by a combination of total Win Shares and Win Shares during a player's peak years. A Win Share value for a player of (for example) 30 consists of perhaps the first 20 points consisting of value below replacement level, then perhaps the next 5 points are above replacement but below average, and the final 5 would be above average. A player who plays a longer career would tend to have more of their Win Shares consisting of value below average and below replacement value points. Therefore if you compared two similar players on lifetime Win Shares, the one with the longer career would have more Win Shares even if he had less value above replacement value for his career. James also uses Win Shares during a player's peak years on the theory that we tend to evaluate players on their best years rather than their total career. He says that by using a percentage (I forget what it is) of the peak Win Shares value with a percentage of the lifetime Win Shares for a player, we get the best of both worlds. But I think that using a formula that includes the peak Win Shares merely mitigates some of the problem with total Win Shares, specifically the fact that players with longer careers get overvalued. I think if there was a way to extract the portion of Win Shares that is above replacement level, then that value could be totaled for each season, and the new statistic of Total Win Shares Above Replacement Level (TWSARL?) could be used as the player rating. The combination of total Win Shares and peak win shares is not as coherent to me, as it combines two different things, as well as having the limitation I mentioned.
I'm still getting to understand the Win Shares approach, but these are my initial impressions. Win Shares is an ambitious, worthy idea, and James' implementation and formulas are quite impressive. As he says, it turns the usual method of player evaluation upside-down, and puts players contributions in context of the team, which has been more naturally understood in other team sports like football and basketball. I think, however, that his approach caused some unexpected compromises and rationalizations to be made to pull it all together, which is implied by my comments.
I must say again that the New Historical Baseball Abstract is another ground-breaking and essential book from Bill James , despite my reservations on Win Shares
|
|
|
|
|