Joe Posnanski’s great column on SI.com about which statistics are the best indicators of baseball talent reminded me that I was going to do a review of the 2009 Bill James Handbook.
I must admit, I don’t make a habit of reading books of this type. I always enjoyed the Total Baseball books or the annual Baseball Encyclopedia when they came out. The former included a register of players with several thoughtful essays on eclectic themes; the latter offered a briefly yearly recap, season-by-season stats, and a line account of each player separated by time periods. In more recent years I’ve read the Baseball Prospectuses and Hardball Times, but more for the witty commentary than the numbers, especially with the new generation of stats on which Murray Chass opined. (And as much of a progressive thinker as I am, i think the treatment of Chass has been pretty harsh; the name-calling is unwarranted in this great country of ours where everyone is entitled to an opinion, even if you disagree with it.)
But I digress.
The new James book was quite interesting. I pretty much blurred over the register part of the book (which is the majority). That kind of information is readily available elsewhere.
My favorite parts were the too-few essays that discussed minute aspects of the game: “The Baserunners,” “Manufactured Runs,” and especially “The 21st Century Bullpen.” Mets fans know all too well how the bullpen let them down for the second straight season, but to see the numbers and categories puts the deconstruction in a whole new light: James brings up several points as he offers possible explanations. And those numbers don’t always tell the story. It depends, he writes in the situation: were there men on base? how many consecutive days had he pitched? How many pitches did he throw? Did he have a “clean” outing? Were the circumstances “tough” or “easy?” Add up all these variables, and you get a better picture than a standard box score or a commenator’s description of events could yield.
(By the way, I have a vision that sometime in the not-too-distant future, managers will call up a kid pitcher from the minors to start one game and send him back down. The opposition will have no scouting report and succumb to the surprise. I’m guessing each team would have enough pitchers in its system to pull off this hare-brain scheme.)
The “leaders sections” can build your case in politicking for your favorite superstar. So many categories for him to dominate…
Now I’m obviously not a mathematician; heck, if you read this blog regularly, you know I’m not even much of a speller, so James’ glossary is helpful to me only to a degree. For example, his definition for “Percentage of Triples…is calculated by taking the percentage of triples out of the number of balls put into play.”
The formula is 3B/AB-HR-SO. I get the strikeout component, but what about an inside-the-park round-tripper? Isn’t such a hit still in play? Maybe I’m just to math challenged to understand. Maybe I’m actually on to something. In which case, maybe there are other “faulty” formulas.
Overall, however, I’m glad I read the handbook. But I miss the old Abstracts, which were heavier on the text than we find these days.
Rating: ◊◊◊◊ (out of five diamonds)
is available on Amazon.com,
{ 1 comment }
Thanks for the review – didn’t realize this edition had any actual articles (if I recall, previous years just had stats).
Also, I agree re Chass – no name calling please.
But I can understand people’s point about him. He’s paid $$$ to do a job that has clearly passed him by, and he shows no interest in learning anything new. It would be one thing if he could actually make a case for his point, but you sense he’s just not interested in learning “new tricks.” As a result, one of the nation’s largest dailies covers baseball poorly.
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