Bill James Handbook 2020
Like the game itself, James has come a long way since his Abstracts of the late seventies and early eighties. He has grown into the guru of analytics. He has changed the way we look at the game, not just relying on “baseball card stats.” But can you have too much of a good thing?
The “joke” about guys buying Playboy magazine was that they only wanted it for the articles. I don’t know about that, but believe me when I tell you I only read the Handbook for the articles. That is, the essays that delve into whether a player is Hall-of-Fame worthy or “The Aesthetics Issues Or Fifty Ways to Stop Baseball from Being Swallowed up by Home Runs and Strikeouts,” in which James — who did not write all of the chapters — gives his considered opinion on what’s wrong with baseball these days and suggest how to fix it. One suggestion: curtail the constant promoting and demoting to the minors. “Baseball does not benefit from anonymous players,” he writes. “It benefits from identifiable players.”
One of my favorite chapters considers players goals. The annual Street & Smith always had a section of leaders in a few key categories with the names of active players in bold face. I scanned the columns to see who was within site of a major mark, like 400 home runs or 500 stolen bases, or 2,500 strikeouts. In the Handbook‘s case, it’s the odds of a player making it to, say, 3,000 hits or 762 home runs (Miguel Cabrera has a 75% chance to reach the former while Mike Trout has a 14% to beat Barry Bonds’ mark).
Nowadays there’s almost nothing that can’t be quantified. I’m sure some fans study these sections assiduously. For me it’s a curiosity but I wouldn’t set my clock to find out who inched up in the rankings in areas such as “Strike Zone Runs Saved”; “Manufactured Runs, Productive Outs & Unproductive Outs”; or “Four Outfielder Alignments,” to name just a few. There’s even a section where you can see how instant replay was used and how many times the umpires’ decisions were overturned. After all, you have to have a lot of data to fill over 1,000 pages. Just look at some of the stats used in the Managers Record chapter (via Scribd.com):
Don’t worry, all of these items are explained in the book’s glossary.
One thing I have come to accept: There was a time (when dinosaurs ruled the earth) that I could run off the entire roster of most teams. Now, looking through the player registers, I don’t know who most of these kids are. Each spring I buy the annual magazines, swearing I will memorize starting lineups and depth charters, but it never seems to happen. Sad.
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