Historical Baseball Abstract

[nyy26wc]

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is now in the bookstores.

I just got my copy at Barnes & Noble.

[NetShrine]

THANKS Lee! I thought I had a copy on back order with Amazon - - gotta check. If not, B&N is right around the corner.

[NetShrine]

This should be post 10,000. Cool.
Just got back from B&N - they won't have it here until 10/30. :(

[NetShrine]

Originally posted by NetShrine
This should be post 10,000. Cool.


Golden Bear beat me by one - - it was close! (http://www.netshrine.com/vbulletin2/showthread.php?s=&postid=10047&t=771#post10047) :)

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by NetShrine
Just got back from B&N - they won't have it here until 10/30. :(

I don't trust that information.

From my senior year of high school through the start of my 2nd year of law school, I worked at Waldenbooks at the local mall. I worked there during all of my summer, winter and spring breaks, while I didn't work while I was away at school.

All bookstores have the same sources for when books are due out and that information is notorious for its unreliability.

[NetShrine]

Thanks Lee. I'll go back there and try again.

All - - heard this book was pretty good, FYI, but, I haven't read it myself:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387988165/ref%3Dnosim/newsfortraders/002-7393209-0612024

[pjl7]

How much new info is in it? I have read the first two versions about 20 times. I am hoping there's a lot of new in it.

PS- To anyone looking for a winter book, "The Politics of Glory aka "What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame" is also fantastically thought-provoking.

[NetShrine]

Originally posted by pjl7
How much new info is in it? I have read the first two versions about 20 times. I am hoping there's a lot of new in it.

PJL - Agreed on Politics of Glory. Also liked "This Time, Let's Not Eat The Bones."

Accordin to B&N, here's what is new in the BBHA:

From Our Editors
This much-anticipated revision of the classic bestseller -- now long out of print -- will have baseball fans drooling. Divided into two major sections, The Game and The Players, the book provides a detailed history of the sport, decade by decade, and backs it up with pages and pages of stats and quirky facts. This new updated edition includes key new features, such as a history of baseball in the 1980s and 1990s, rankings of the greatest managers, and rankings of the top 100 players of all time at each position.

From the Publisher
In 1985, Bill James, already recognized as baseball's most brilliant analyst, scholar, and author, unveiled a masterwork called The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Today, the work is widely considered to be one of the greatest baseball books ever. Now, the greatest just got better.

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really two books in one. The first, "The Game," is an incisive, decade-by-decade history of baseball. For each decade, James provides a bulleted summary that includes not only all the expected information -- best records, highest batting average -- but also a range of eccentric details, from the heaviest player to the worst-hitting pitcher. The second part of the Abstract, "The Players," ranks history's top one hundred managers and players in each position. The rankings yield several surprises, based as they are on a fascinating and persuasive new method James has dubbed "Win Shares."

A fascinating history full of James's beloved wit and penetrating insight, here is the ultimate argument-settler for armchair experts, and the new bible for baseball fans everywhere.

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by pjl7
How much new info is in it? I have read the first two versions about 20 times. I am hoping there's a lot of new in it.

PS- To anyone looking for a winter book, "The Politics of Glory aka "What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame" is also fantastically thought-provoking.

After spending some time flipping to random pages and player comments and essays, as well as just looking up specific players, I just started reading from the beginning. It's pretty good.

There is some recycled material, but the new overwhelms the old.

Also, James's HOF book was an outstanding critique of that farse of a membership list.

[NetShrine]

Originally posted by nyy26wc
All bookstores have the same sources for when books are due out and that information is notorious for its unreliability.

Went back today. Still nothing. :(

[nyy26wc]

DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!:homer:

[nightal]

How is it? Any earth shattering rankings?

[NetShrine]

Originally posted by nightal
How is it? Any earth shattering rankings?

Dunno - still waiting to see it too.

[nightal]

I ordered mine from Amazon, should ship out today. Can't wait to see it and resume my Musial/Williams, Mantle/Mays and Hornsby/Morgan arguments with my brother

[NetShrine]

Stopped by B&N on the way home - still nada. :splat:

[NetShrine]

Stopped by B&N on the way home tonight - figured it would be a great night to look at this book. Alas, nothing. Then, I get home and I get this e-mail from Amazon.com:

Greetings from Amazon.com Alerts.
As you requested, we're notifying you of new releases matching the following criteria:

Books with "bill james" in the Author's name.
[Formats: hardcover, paperback]

New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
by Bill James
Publication date: October 23, 2001
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Binding:Hardcover
Subjects: Baseball; United States; History

Boy, talk about salt in the wound!

[NetShrine]

This is a strange one - - I finally got it.

Went to a different B&N - no luck, they didn't have it.

B. Dalton was in the same mall - so, I went - - - and, they had it! So, I got it. Now, this is the strange part - - as I am in B. Dalton completing the check out, the guy gives me the book - in a Barnes & Noble shopping bag! What's that all about?

While also there, I picked up "Dugout Days - Untold Tales & Leadership Lessons from the Extradordinary Career of Billy Martin." Now, to be honest, I never would have picked this book up - - not much of a Martin fan. But, it was written by someone who works at the same firm as me (and, no, I don't know him, I work for a VERY large global company) and it's "told" mostly in the form of quotes from people like Paul Blair, Jackie Brown, Rod Carew, Tom Grieve, Toby Harrah, Ron Hassey, Mike Heath, Willie Horton, Matt Keough, Mickey Klutts, Charlie Manuel, Bobby Meacham, Jackie Moore, Mike Norris, Mike Pagliarulo, Lenny Randle, Dave Righetti, Mickey Rivers, Buck Showalter, Chicken Stanley, - and, ugh, Tony LaRussa. Looks like a fun book.

Lastly - they had one of those "Chicken Soup Books" there - you've seen them all over - stuff like "Chicken Soup for the Whatever Lover's Soul. But, this one was for "Baseball Lovers." Anyone know anything about those? Worth picking up?

[nightal]

Finally got my copy. He has flip-flopped on a couple of positions due to his new "win shares". Left field, center field and second base are different from his earlier opinions among others. Every great or good player in history has a short saber bio. Including negro leaguers in his top 100 is very interesting, just check out who's #4 in his greatest player list. This will shock you.

[Skipper Steve]

More:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2001/1114/1277966.html

Wednesday, November 14
Another classic from Bill James
By Alan Schwarz
Special to ESPN.com

The winter has begun for baseball fans, that lonely, four-month abyss when we reacquaint ourselves with the joys of shivering mornings and shoveling driveways. But this year need not be so chilling. It will take the entire four months to devour the "New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract," time well-spent indeed.

Thirtysomethings like me remember how in our youth the end of winter officially came not with the arrival of any Punxsutawney ground hog or even the new Topps baseball cards, but with James' annual Abstract. He stopped those after 1988 and has been writing painfully little since -- the main reason being he has spent most of the past five years researching the new Historical Abstract, a 1,000-page anvil of a book which we now have a whole offseason to gnaw on.

Like most of James' work, trying to consume it in one sitting would rival eating an entire dessert menu. This is a book delectable for its small bites, such as:

The best active player in baseball at the turn of the decade? Craig Biggio. As only he can, James systematically proves that the Astros second baseman does so many things well other than hit home runs that he has consistently outplayed even Ken Griffey Jr. at his peak. And as only he can, James shows little patience with any detractors: "Craig Biggio is better. The fact that nobody seems to realize this ... well, that's not my problem."

Have you ever wondered if a pitcher ever threw to the minimum number of batters one needs to get credit for a complete game? (Thirteen -- he retires 12 batters but gives up a home run, while his team gets shut out in its five innings before the game is called due to rain.) One has: Dick Drago of the Royals on July 30, 1971, when he lost a 1-0 game to Baltimore's Jim Palmer.

James shows how strikeout rates often foreshadow career length for young pitchers. Then he punctuates the discussion with, "For a baseball fan to fail to see that strikeout rates are closely tied to career length, I would argue, is very much like a basketball fan failing to notice that basketball players tend to be tall."

Though he believes the industry is separating into the haves and have-nots, the 1990s were still the most competitively balanced decade than any other in baseball history.

Managers who use left-handed relievers for one batter at a time gain one platoon advantage but hurt their team five other ways -- besides boring the hell out of all of us. Cue the Hallelujah Chorus!

Interesting Ray Lankford tidbit: Through 2000, he ranked fifth all time in terms of percentage of balls put in play (AB-HR-SO) that resulted in doubles or triples, behind Hank Greenberg, Babe Herman, Dan Brouthers and Lou Gehrig.

The heaviest player ever? A Yankees and Giants pitcher in the '30s named Jumbo Brown, who weighed in at 295. One classic James line about Cecil Fielder: "Fielder acknowledges a weight of 261, leaving unanswered the question of what he might weigh if he put his other foot on the scale."

Reading James' work is like the Internet: Everyone finds a different reason to enjoy it. I, for one, don't particularly like reading about the players of the '20s and '30s; I prefer seeing James dust off names I watched and have read about as active players to see what new tidbits about them he has discovered. Looking back, James sees Cliff Johnson hitting 500 homers if the Astros hadn't wasted half of his career trying to make him a catcher; Rudy Law had the worst outfield arm of the '80s; and how about a platoon combination of Rob Deer and Brian Hunter?

The meat of this book, though, is James' ranking of the 100 greatest players of all time at each position. And for the first time he has done this using his new method of evaluation, a truly revolutionary device called Win Shares.

Win Shares breaks new ground not just because it evaluates position players on their entire hitting-fielding-baserunning package, but starting pitchers and relievers equally as well, with all of them getting one number -- usually between 5 and 25 for a season, then around 25-250 for a career, not unlike starting pitchers -- that can be used for studies and comparisons that once stood beyond our reach. As James reports with infectious glee, the uses for the system are endless: Are players aging differently than in past eras? Are first-round draft picks worth their bonuses? Is trading a young pitcher for a position player smart? Now, with what James calls this "value clamp" -- which he claims evaluates fielding at all positions far more accurately than ever before -- we can answer these questions.

Win Shares allows James to rank Rennie Stennett as the 90th best second baseman of all time, and during the requisite comment discuss how Stennett's emergence in the early and mid-1970s forced the Pirates to trade both Dave Cash and Willie Randolph; and I, for one, didn't know how good Stennett was (he was hitting .336 with 28 steals in August 1977) before a broken ankle sabotaged his career. George Bell (No. 62 among left fielders) made a slew of errors in the mid-'80s but not one of them was costly to his team. And Gaylord Perry (No. 18 among pitchers) was apparently far better than most people ever realized -- his 1972 season with Cleveland, James believes, was the best for any American League pitcher since 1931. Yikes.

Other topics get tackled all over the book: Why knuckleball pitchers are so underappreciated, how to slice dead time out of games (otherwise known as "Stop Messing Around and Play Baseball") and James' prediction that leadoff skills are about to enjoy a renaissance: "All it takes is one dramatic counter-example [to strictly power-based lineups] to change the way people think about the issue. Sooner or later, we're going to get some little guy with limited athletic ability who just draws walks and punches singles, somebody will put him in the lineup in front of [Barry Bonds or Juan Gonzalez], and the big guy will drive in 175 runs, and everybody else will go scrambling around looking for little guys who can get on base." While he doesn't draw many walks, Ichiro did just that this season to Bret Boone, and you can bet it will affect how other teams evaluate players.

The "New Historical Abstract" is not vintage James, though, something he sounds perfectly comfortable with. He depicts the years he spent on the book as roughly as fun as a screaming children convention; it was drudgery, a chore, and that can douse the reader's enthusiasm for what comes afterward. He goes off on a bizarre tangent in which he rips teachers and cancer researchers for being preachy, unaware (presumably) that he has veered off in that same direction. His player comments are too often terse and gruff, rather than showing his élan for the topic once so contagious.

But it's still the "New Historical Abstract," still crammed to the gills with Bill James insights, analysis and attitude. The winter just got warmer.

[Skipper Steve]

http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2001/1108/1275357.html

November 14, 11:12 AM ET
An interview with Bill James
ESPN.com

ESPN.com's Rob Neyer worked as Bill James' research assistant from 1989 through 1992. The following interview was conducted via e-mail from November 1 through November 6, 2001.

Rob Neyer: First of all, congratulations on the book. At this moment I'm on page 678 (about a third of the way through your list of the top 100 left fielders) and I hope to finish by the time we're done chatting here.

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract consists of substantially new material, especially so in Part 2, which includes comments on your top 100 players at each position. And it seems to me that while your primary goal in writing both the original HBA and the new edition was to give the reader a sense of what baseball was like at different points in history, the "center" of the book has changed somewhat. In the original HBA, we got that sense, for the most part, from the portion of the book labeled "The Game." But though "The Game" remains, it's really the players who take center stage in the new book, as we get hundreds of wonderful images of both the players and the conditions in which they played.

Was this change in the book's "center" -- assuming, of course, that you agree with me that the center has changed -- something you consciously set out to accomplish, or did it just sort of happen in the process of writing the new book?

Bill James: Well, regardless of what answer I may want to give you, the certainly accurate answer is that it just happened. I know that that has to be the answer, because there was a line in the first edition of the book about the first section of the book being the bulk of it or something. When I edited that section for the new edition I didn't alert on that line, so it almost made it into the final version of the book. I was reading the book this summer, and I realized that I was making an obviously false statement about the relative weight of the sections.

[Skipper Steve]

The first section of the book is expanded, revised, re-edited ... but recognizably the same. The second section of the book is almost 100 percent new.

Rob: That second section is titled "Player Ratings and Comments," and so I suspect that many people, skimming through and just seeing that heading, will assume that Part 2 section is 600 pages of Bill James employing his geeky statistical methods to rank the players. But really, that's not what Part 2 is about. For the most part, the comments on the players are concerned with who the players were and what it was like to see them play, as opposed to how good they were. Just flipping through at random ... in your comment on Gus Suhr (a 1930s National League first baseman), you write, "Suhr was a tall, thin man with a thin face and an elongated jaw; it must have been four inches from the point of his chin to his perpetual smile." This is just a part of the comment, and you do discuss his characteristics as a player, but my point is that if someone comes in expecting dry analyses of the players, they're going to be surprised.

Bill: Let's hope. There are, of course, some comments that are devoted to reviewing the rankings, posing the question of "Why does this player rate where he rates?" Why does Arky Vaughan rate ahead of Ernie Banks?

You can debate the ranking of the top five players at each position, more or less; after that, people are going to lose interest in doing that. The goal for the other 95 comments, in general, was to create an image of the player.

My favorite thing that I found, in researching the book, was a comment by Bill Dinneen, who played a hundred years ago. When Joe DiMaggio came to the major leagues, Dinneen went on at some length about how strongly DiMaggio reminded him of Ed Delahanty. DiMaggio, according to Dinneen, looked like Delahanty at bat, looked like Delahanty at the plate, ran like him, threw like him, everything. I just loved that quote, because the average reader has an image of Joe DiMaggio, but no visual image of Delahanty. To say that Delahanty looked for all the world like DiMaggio creates an image of Delahanty on the field, which was my basic goal: to create an image of the player in the reader's mind.

Rob: You're right, nobody's really going to care if Gus Suhr is the 73rd-greatest first baseman ever, or the 87th-greatest. You obviously enjoy writing about the players, creating an image of them, and it seems to me that creating a list of the 100 best first basemen is, more than anything, simply a convenient way of creating a group of players to write about, of whittling the list down to something manageable ... And yes, I do have a question here. A decade or so ago, you worked on something called The Biographic Encyclopedia, which was published in the three editions of "The Baseball Book" that you authored. I contributed material to that project, and to this day, long-time Bill James fans approach me and ask, "So whatever happened to the Biographic Encyclopedia of Baseball?"

So I'll ask you, are the player comments in the new book your answer?

Bill: Well, I think that the issue of how the players rate is an interesting issue in itself, and I think I would have done the rankings even if I hadn't had any comments at all about the players. I could have just run lists of the top 100 players at each position ... the lists themselves would be kind of interesting. Or I could have written comments about the top 50, and just listed the second 50, but a lot of times the most interesting people are the people who weren't perennial All-Stars.

There is no direct connection between the player comments and the Biographic Encyclopedia, except that they come from the same internal impulse. I am curious to know who these people were, what their stories were. I tried to pose those questions in that form (The Biographic Encyclopedia) and I enjoyed doing it, but I didn't know where to go with it or how to sustain the effort. This is a different package with a lot of the same material inside, and also, there is no point in doing bios of Ted Williams and Ty Cobb, because people already know who those guys were, so in those cases I would spin off in some other direction.

Rob: Bill, I'm just dying to ask you about the Negro Leaguers, in fact I've been dying to ask you about them for months, ever since I found out that you were including them in your rankings. But it's probably better to start off with some background ... The ratings in the book are based, in large part, on a new invention of yours called Win Shares. I know that it's not something you can fully explain in 200 words or less, but could you give us a quick sketch of the method, and the philosophy behind it?

Bill: Win Shares is a system of crediting the accomplishments of teams to individual players -- in essence, a way of saying how many games have been "won" by each individual player. Every thing that a player does may be seen as being a piece of a win; if he gets a hit, if he steals a base, that's a small piece of a win. If he pitches an inning, that's a small piece of a win; if he pitches a shutout, that's a big piece of a win. If he turns a double play, that's a piece of a win. Win Shares is a way of adding up a player's small pieces of wins into his share of the team's success. It's like Runs Created, only it is, in essence, Wins Created.

.

[Skipper Steve]

There is an absolute 3-to-1 ratio between Win Shares and Wins. If a team wins 100 games, their players have 300 Win Shares, absolutely and without exception.

For many years, I assumed that it would be impossible to figure a player's contribution to his team's wins in this way without giving an unfair advantage to a player on a good team. When I realized that this was untrue -- that one could figure Win Shares in such a way that a player on a bad team would rate just the same as the same player on a good team -- then I began working through the system, figuring Win Shares for every player in major league history.

Rob: There's more to your player rankings than Win Shares, but they are certainly the foundation upon which the rankings are built. A few years ago, I devoted a couple of months' worth of columns to ranking the best players at each position, and I wound up with Arky Vaughan as my No. 5 shortstop. This was higher than you'll see him ranked nearly anywhere else and so a number of readers asked, "Arky who?" Well, you've got Vaughan as the second-greatest shortstop of all time, behind only Honus Wagner. Do you think this is the single biggest surprise among your rankings? And what made Vaughan such a great player, yet so underrated since?

Bill: Vaughan was a great offensive player, a competent, workmanlike shortstop. What made him a great player was .320 to .385 batting averages, with a lot of walks, with terrific speed, with some power, playing short.

A series of things have happened since 1941 to obscure his reputation. First, he left baseball during World War II before reaching 3,000 hits and the other "career" numbers that would create an easy identity for him in the minds of people who didn't see him play. Second, he died young, in a boating accident, so that he was never "around" to be a source of stories. Third, when people think of great shortstops, they look first for great defensive shortstops, which he wasn't. And fourth, although he is the second-greatest shortstop of all time, he is also the second-greatest shortstop in the history of his own team. As great as he was, he could never make people forget Honus Wagner.

A contrast would be Lou Boudreau, essentially a contemporary of Vaughan's. Boudreau was a great player, but Boudreau was slow while Vaughan was fast, and Arky hit 25 points higher and had more power. But Boudreau stayed around the game for years afterward as a broadcaster and public figure, so people my age remember him, even though we never saw him play.

As to who else would be a surprise in the rankings ... well, it all depends on who it would be a surprise to, doesn't it? Most of your readers, I suspect, have some idea how I think, because we often reason along the same lines. Are people surprised that Bobby Grich and Lou Whitaker rate ahead of Billy Herman and Nellie Fox? I suppose some people are, yes. I rated Stan Hack ahead of Pie Traynor; that's certainly not a consensus pick. I rated Alan Trammell ahead of Pee Wee Reese, Jim Fregosi ahead of Maury Wills.

[Skipper Steve]

Somebody reviewed the book and was irritated that I had ranked Hank Greenberg only eighth at the position. He should talk to the George Sisler fans in St. Louis; Sisler was 24th. But you can't rate each player where his fans want him to be rated.

Rob: When I came up with my rankings, I wrote about the Negro League greats, "The problem is, where do they rank? Like it or not, the lingua franca of these discussions is statistics, and the statistics we have for the Negro Leaguers are essentially worthless. ... So while I freely acknowledge that some pre-Jackie Robinson players were quite possibly good enough to rank among the all-time greats, I can go no further than that."

In retrospect, I wish that I'd written that those pre-Jackie Robinson black players were quite certainly good enough. But I still wouldn't try to actually slot even the greatest players.

You have, though. You've got 12 black players born between 1867 and 1918 in your top 100, which strikes me as eminently reasonable. But do you have any confidence that Mule Suttles is the 43rd greatest player of all time -- as you have him listed -- rather than the 23rd or 63rd greatest? And if so, why?

Bill: Well, I tried to slot them in somewhat. I slotted them into the top 100 players of all time, without respect to position. But I didn't try to slot them in by position -- Biz Mackey next to Buck Ewing among the catchers -- because of exactly the problem you cite: there would be too much guesswork. Perhaps somebody who knows the Negro Leagues better than I do could do that; I couldn't.

When we attempt to rate the Negro League players, or if we were to attempt to rate players with no statistics whatsoever, we face exactly the same question we face with white players: How good a player was he? The question doesn't change; what changes is the quality of the evidence. And yes, the quality of the evidence regarding Negro League players is not nearly as good as the evidence about white players.

Still, about someone like Mule Suttles, you can ask the same subordinate questions you would ask about a white player. What did he do well? What did he do poorly? Who was he comparable to? For how long a period of time was he a great player? These are the same questions for Suttles as they are for Jim Rice or for Del Ennis. And we know enough about Mule Suttles, from the work of researchers like John Holway, James Riley and Phil Dixon, from the autobiographical works of people like Quincy Trouppe, Buck O'Neil, and Sol White, to have a reasonably good idea what the answers to those questions are.

Rob: Last week in a chat session, I somewhat rashly offered to take questions from my readers for you, and forward them along in the course of this interview. To that end, Scott Lemieux writes, "I would be interested in hearing more about why Bill ranks Mattingly several slots ahead of Hernandez. By the Win Shares methodology, it seems that Hernandez rates ahead (slightly behind in peak, well ahead in career). I'm guessing, then, that Mattingly rates ahead on subjective factors? I agree entirely with James that players should not be ranked by formula alone, but this seems odd to me. After all, Hernandez was a respected team leader on two World Championship teams; Mattingly was a respected leader on teams that won almost nothing. Is Hernandez downgraded because of his drug use or something? His ranking of Mattingly implies that DM is a HOFer, and I just don't see it. Incredible book, though ..."

Bill: I didn't downgrade Hernandez for any reason, and I certainly didn't give Hernandez a low subjective number. After all, Hernandez ranks ahead of four first basemen (Dan Brouthers, Norm Cash, Roger Connor and Jake Beckley) who had more career Win Shares than he did. I may have given Mattingly a fairly good subjective number; I certainly didn't give Keith a bad one.

Lemieux says that, by the Win Shares method, Hernandez rates ahead, but why? Mattingly's best seasons are 34, 32 and 29 Win Shares; Hernandez's are 33, 29 and 29. Mattingly's best five-year run is 146 Win Shares; Hernandez's is 136.

I read that as saying that, at their best, Mattingly was ahead by a notable margin. The fact that Hernandez hung on a little longer doesn't necessarily outweigh that. I think they are close enough together that the statistical method doesn't reliably distinguish between them, and that good arguments can be made for either man.

Rob: Here's another question, from Seth Bonime ... "Bill, I'm thoroughly enjoying the book, and so far I have one big question ... What happened to Peak Value and Career Value? This was one of the more interesting ideas in the original book, that these are two fundamentally different questions. The answer this time is, well, you take two parts Peak, one part Career, and average them. Why the change? Just because two rankings were too confusing?"

Bill: In the 1970s there was a U.S. Senator who had, as a part of his stump speech, a one-liner that became very famous. After a while he stopped using the line, but the line had become so famous that he was frequently asked why he no longer used it. "Everybody's heard it," he explained. "Only in politics, having made a joke a hundred times, are you expected to go on repeating it for the rest of your life."

I still made that distinction, between peak and career value, sometimes in this book, when it was relevant. But in the other book, the original version of this book, I was mainly concerned with ranking the players, and only occasionally with trying to say something else about the player. In this book, I was primarily concerned, or at least centrally concerned, with trying to evoke images of the players. I didn't want to spend more time than I had to explaining or elaborating on the rankings; I wanted to write about the players themselves. It would have been an awkward construction to deal with separate lists.

What would I have done? Listed the players by peak value, listed them by career value, then written comments about them on a combined list? Then I would have had three lists, plus I'd have had 150 players per position ... Jeez, I'd never have finished the book. It gives me chills just thinking about it. It was just something that didn't work for this book.

Rob: As Wayne Campbell would say, "Good answer, good answer ..."

You mentioned Win Shares earlier in the interview, and according to a note in your new book, they'll be explained in greater detail in another new book. Can you tell us what to expect in the Win Shares book, and when we can expect to see it?

Bill: Due out in March. The Win Shares book has a long, long explanation of the Win Shares system, a few dozen articles looking at various issues and player comparisons in different ways, and many long charts of Win Shares.

Rob: Thanks very much for doing this interview, Bill. I did finish reading your new book while we were doing this, and now I'm going back and rereading some of my favorite parts. Before we let you go, could you briefly tell us what Win Shares says about Barry Bonds' 2001 season? Again, thanks ...

Bill: Barry Bonds in 2001 had the greatest season by a hitter in the history of baseball. He is credited with 52.2 Win Shares for his work as a hitter -- three more than anybody else, ever.

Comparing him to Williams and Musial ... well, my approach to this is that, as long as Bonds is active, I rate him as low as he can reasonably be rated. I can always move him up; but if I overrate him now, it's hard to explain why he moved down the list.

Williams and Musial are such great players that, to achieve the status of being clearly better than they were is all but impossible. Bonds hasn't done it yet, although he is clearly in the same group. I think Musial and Williams still have more career Win Shares than Bonds does.

[Skipper Steve]

Another good link - - 'tho I won't copy the text here:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/s/2001/1113/1277686.html

[nightal]

I did like the new abstract, overall. I'd like to see what some of you think about "win-shares" Biggest suprises: 1. being how low George Sisler is, 2.How high Craig Biggio is, 3. Turkey Stearnes 4th greatest player ever. And my favorite two subjects, 5.The flip flop of Musial and Williams and 6.Rogers Hornsby being rated 3rd instead of 1st.

[Skipper Steve]

Another good link:
http://espn.go.com/page2/s/neel/011114.html

Nightal - Turkey Stearnes 4th greatest player ever?
In the book I bought, he's #25.
I think you mean Oscar Chaleston.

[Skipper Steve]

Another good link:

http://dynamic.espn.go.com/espn/chat/chatESPN?event_id=807

[hmrsf]

bought the book! Hope it lives up to the hype. I have been happy with Total Baseball.........will I now be overjoyed?:p

[Skipper Steve]

Trust me, you will be - - it's a great book.

[hmrsf]

Amazon.com? I also get my computer tommorow........yes, now I can use Lee's new CD!!

[nyy26wc]

For $45, you get at least $20 worth of good material. But, you also get at least $20 worth of crap. There's a lot of superficial analysis. There's a lot of conclusory statements without much supporting evidence. There are signs of James giving up on sabermetric beliefs and resorting to conventional wisdom. In fact, he even explicitly admits to it in his comments about Mickey Mantle vs. Ty Cobb. There are too many examples of him based his comments on the discredited stat of batting average.

For years, James did criticized those who came with a superstat to measure players. So, did he create Win Shares because he's a hypocrite or just because he likes to sell books?

For years, James emphasized the importance of showing your system works BEFORE you use it. Did he come up with this book, and have the other one that explains Win Shares not come out until the spring because he's a hypocrite or because that way he can maximize the sales of both books?

For years, James's methods were based on judging individual's players own personal value. Win Shares is based on first looking at the team's performance and then allocating that among the individuals. Why did he backtrack? I haven't found the answer in this book.

For years, James criticized those who claimed to come up with a perfect formula but had just manipulated the numbers to make sure that the totals exactly matched league or team totals. That's exactly what his current system does, by having Win Shares be exactly 3 times the number of team wins, no exceptions. Again, I ask if he's just a hypocrite or just hasn't made money off books for a while so he's selling whatever he can peddle.

But, there's also a lot of good stuff in there, too. I've read a lot of pages in a non systematic, open to random pages method, as well as about the first 100 straight through. There's enough occassional good tidbits for me to not give up on eventually reading the rest, straight through.

By the standard of James's previous work, this book is terrible. By the standards of most books, I'll rank it above average, but not too far from the average level.

[nyy26wc]

Originally posted by hmrsf
I also get my computer tommorow........yes, now I can use Lee's new CD!!

Yeay!!!!!!!!!!

[nightal]

Don't know why I put Stearnes #4, I of course meant Charleston. Sorry for the confusion on my part. But as for the rest of my earlier comments, I stand by them.

[Skipper Steve]

Good feature:

http://usatoday.com/sports/bbw/2001-11-21/2001-11-21-cover.htm

[SmedIndy]

Personally, I like the book. It's offering me some more insights and antecdotes on the past. And also, for some of my less stat-geeky friends, there is more of a balance.

I also like his knocking, as usual, some things off the pedestal that we all (or most of us) took for granted. Such as, the Union Associations status as a major league.

Now if I can get my hands on the Federal League book published by SABR about a decade ago.

[Skipper Steve]

Originally posted by SmedIndy
Now if I can get my hands on the Federal League book published by SABR about a decade ago.

Go to: http://www.kypris.com/Baseball/

and select baseball books - - he has it.

Maybe he would sell, trade, or lend (for a deposit)?

[timconnelly]

Barnes and Noble is such an odd store. They actually put out chairs so you can read their books without paying for them. (Well, after not being especially excited about a certain book, I told my wife, I'd LOVE it as a Christmas gift)

Last night I went by and looked at the new Historical Abstract for 3 hours. It was quite simply the most entertaining baseball book I have ever come across. The original was very good but didn't quite realize its potential. This one goes over the wall for a home run.

Do I agree with everything? Of course not. But the book gives me refreshing information, insightful opinions, colorful stories, and an understanding of sabermetrics that is astounding. It is at times technical and at other times pure entertainment. It moves in and out so easily: it is like a movie masterpiece with James directing the show with the same astonishing skills of a Lucas or Spielberg.

James writes with an edge that is often brash and borderline offensive. And then he becomes so sensitive on another issue: I just marvel at the complexity of his personality that is evidenced in his writing.

Sometimes because of my own aspirations as a baseball man, I find myself in competition with him. I want to jump down his throat when he is wrong (or at least I perceive him to be wrong) But in reading him last night I realized there is no one else like him. He combines statistical insight with historical insight with psychological insight, all with a writing style that is unapproachable.

Hope to have the book on Christmas. I'm sure a lot of my posts will reflect articles that I've read from it. You'll see me agreeing, disagreeeing, and basically using it as source for ideas.

(Steve, I couldn't find the old thread for this. I know you're going to move it and that's ok. But I thought I'd write it and let you locate the old thread.)

[TGwynn19]

Tim,

i also received the book as an early x-mas present. It is simply awesome...i have only given it a quick glance through but i love where he gets beyond the stats and talks about the players as humans and how they were as people.

[sweaver]

Just got my copy as a late Christmas/ early birthday present. Cool.

[KCBOOMER]

My daughter was supposed to get me this book for Xmas but she hasn't done it yet. She knows me well because keeps telling me, "Don't buy that book. I will get it for you."

[Xanadu Dragon]

Originally posted by KCBOOMER
My daughter was supposed to get me this book for Xmas but she hasn't done it yet. She knows me well because keeps telling me, "Don't buy that book. I will get it for you."

You'll be happy when you get it - for sure.

[satchel]

I just got it myself. So far I have enjoyed both reading it straight through and flipping open to random places. (I found the excellent Babe Ruth discussion using the latter method, in which it is revealed that the Babe may have been corkin' from time to time, and that it never makes sense to walk a batter each and every time he comes to the plate.)

I have found myself reading it with two other books handy -- Total Baseball, to fill in statistical gaps in mentions of players I am not familiar with, and Ken Burns' Baseball, to provide illustrations to accompany Susie James' uniform descriptions.

I think Lee's criticisms are very interesting and probably valid (I am not qualified to judge) -- I intend to keep them in mind as I read. James in the afterword more or less apologized for some of the more controversial calls, like the now-famous Biggio ranking.

[sweaver]

My favorite part is the same as in the first edition, the first part on history. It is much the same as in the first edition, with a Negro Leagues section added, and of course the 1980's updated and the 1990's added. Some of the other stuff has been rewritten, most is as it was.

The second part, the much expanded player rankings, seems like a continuation of the "Baseball Biographic Encyclopedia" project started in "The Baseball Book" which came out 1988-90. I enjoyed that, and enjoy the discussion of the players in this one, even though the articles are shorter. I don't always agree with the rankings, but it's still fun.

I would like to know more about the Win Shares for fielding. I am intrigued, guess I gotta wait for the book.

[mandamin]

I'm jumping into this discussion REALLY late, but I finished the book (yeah, all 1000 pages, word for word) about two days ago, and I have to say something about it...I'll be posting an extensive review on my own shoddily-designed, never-updated website in a few days (not a shameless plug, just to say that if there's anybody out there who REALLY wants to get into a discussion about it, check there in a few days, read the review and e-mail or PM me about it)...
Anyway. I don't want to be too quick to judge the Win Shares system--I don't think it's necessarily "backtracking," since he's not abandoning his past analysis, but rather (apparently) using it to attempt to assign credit for the team's wins to individual players--but it IS really strange that he put this book out before the book that explains the system. I think (or hope) that having the explanation handy would help explain certain inconsistencies in his player rankings. It seems to me that at certain points, James abandons his findings entirely so that he can rank players where he feels they belong. The "subjective rating" he implemented in the system is only supposed to effect the ratings by one or two places; there are places where it seems like he's off by as many as five, ten, or even twenty spaces from where his system suggests that a player should be. For example:
-Don Mattingly. In my mind, that's the most glaring inconsistency. James rates him 12th; he has fewer career Win Shares than anyone else in spots 1-24. The sum of his top 3 seasons (95) is worse than everyone in front of him except Cap Anson, as well as Will Clark (115, rated 14th by James), Dick Allen (116, 15th), Roger Connor (98, 22nd), and a few others; his best 5 consecutive seasons are nothing special among the top 30; and his average per 162 games is worse than almost everyone in the top 25. I can't see any reason to rate him any higher than 20th, and that might be generous. I e-mailed Rob Neyer to get his take, which was "geez, ya got me."
-Eddie Murray, rated 5th among 1Bs. Similar deal; his career Win Shares are impressive, 2nd-best all-time, but his other three columns (which would be the categories I talk about in the Mattingly comment, if I'm confusing you) compare more closely to the players in spots 20-30 than in spots 1-10.
-Craig Biggio. Absolutely insane to rate him #5 among 2Bs--James admits almost as much in the follow-up comments to the ratings. Frustrating, because his reasoning for rating most OTHER modern-day players as low as he did (i.e. A-Rod 17th among SS) was to avoid just this sort of bias.
-Bert Blyleven. I know I'm biased in Blyleven's favor, but he's ranked 39th, and he beats Nolan Ryan (24th), Don Sutton (31st), and Dennis Eckersley (32nd) in all four Win Shares categories, and has almost all of the pitchers in spots 25-40 beat in at least two, usually three, of the four. Definitely got shafted at least a few spots; I personally think he belongs around 25th (based on James' own stats alone).

There are others; those are just a few examples. So those are the things that are nagging at me. Overall; great book, fun read. I think he's done some excellent work, some great discussion starters, and the stories he tells are almost ALL wonderfully entertaining. But I think I almost have to wait for Win Shares (and the second edition of this book; the editing, as somebody mentioned up there, is AWFUL) before the final verdict is in...

[Xanadu Dragon]

Don't forget to give us a link to the review once it's ready! Thanks.

[sweaver]

I wonder if some of the placings mandamin refers to aren't related to James discounting by a certain percentage of older players, on the hypothesis that competition has improved and it is tougher to dominate the league. Wouldn't explain contemporaries like Will Clark and Mattingly, though.

[KCBOOMER]

Finally got the damn book and now have to block out a ton of time to read it. Looks a long couple of week-ends of reading.

[KCBOOMER]

Okay I finished this sucker about a week ago and have had some time to digest it. I have never read his previous editions of the Abstract so my comments may seem somewhat simplistic to you guys.

I greatly enjoyed the sections on the different decades. It really gave you a great feel for how the game was played in those eras.

The top 100 lists was a bit much. After you got past player 10 on most lists the differential between players was razor thin. I didn't have any real problem with his top rankings with the exception of 2nd base. I'm still digesting that one.

Win Shares drove me nuts. It is hard to buy into them if you really don't get to see all the reasoning behind each one. I guess I'll have to read the Win Shares book when it comes out.

Probably the thing that infuriated me the most were the occasions when he reversed himself on previously held positions regarding Players. The Rizzuto/Stephens flip flop was unreal.

The book is enormously entertaining and a "must have" but certainly is flawed.

[Xanadu Dragon]

Seems to be the common review.

Still, James is laughing all the way to the bank.

[Skip]

Originally posted by nyy26wc
By the standard of James's previous work, this book is terrible. By the standards of most books, I'll rank it above average, but not too far from the average level.

The entire posting (not just the snippet I've copied here) is the best short review I've seen of the book. I enjoyed it in general, but it was maddening. And Lee didnt even mention the 8th grade quality editing.

[gyb13]

Pages 232-239.

BJ basically argues that one should use your top reliever for 2 innings when the game is tied or you're up by one, or for one inning when the reliever isn't tired/hasn't been used and the game is close.

Was wondering what you guys thought of his assessment?

[sweaver]

Funny where we stopped on this, and now have taken that discussion up again.

Anyway, I revived this thread because, while browsing at the bookstore today, I ran across a new paperback edition of the NHBA, complete with a player rankings update. A few were scrambled around, some current players moved up, and A-Rod is now #5 on the list of shortstops (but, according to BJ, NOT a threat to Wagner at #1. Or not a serious threat, anyway.)

[TimmyB]

I received this at Christmas and got around to opening it a few weeks ago. I've yet to have a good, long chunk of time to read, so I've been chipping away. I'm at the player rankings by position right now.

Overall, I've enjoyed it so far, with this caveat -- I never read the first one.

Though not as stat-proficient as some here, I do wonder about the Win Shares thing. I haven't read that one, either, but have followed it some here and on a site that tracks them through the season. I know there's another thread running on the subject so I'll leave it alone for now.

Enjoyed the decades chapters... though the '80s was a bit thin (especially for a decade he seemed to be saying he enjoyed).

Found the "what is a major league?" essay quite enlightening. Also enjoyed the Fidrych one, too.

One thing that jumped out at me as far as something of a flip-flop (or at least a major inconsistency in the same essay) was his talk about clutch play or big game play. In one breath, he defends Ted Williams for his so-so performance in a series of big games, and then knocks Don Drysdale (as he did in Politics of Glory for Drysdale's abysmal big-game performance). Granted, there's a difference between so-so and abysmal, and, in the bigger picture, a big difference in stature of Drysdale and Williams... but... that said, I thought he was either being too tough on Drysdale or too easy on Williams... if what he said about one is applied to the other.

Anyway...

It'll probably be a month before I finish it. And when it's done I still won't entirely understand why he can justify Oscar Charleston at #4... but, then again... what the heck. If he can't right a wrong he can at least bring the almost-right to a new audience.

[schernak]

What I've been confused at in the player rankings, has been the treatment of the Negro League Players. In the Negro League section Josh Gibson is rated as the top catcher, in fact "Probably the greatest catcher in baseball history, and probably the greatest right-handed power hitter."
Yet in the catcher section of the general top 100 he's not listed at all.

Overall I've enjoyed the book and would recommend it. Of course the best thing about the rankings is that they can be debated forever.

[sweaver]

I'm not entirely clear on why James did the Negro League players that way either. I guess because, with a top 100 at each position, it would be entirely too much guesswork. Not that such rankings don't involve a good bit of guesswork anyway, as I should know.

[Ytown Tribe fan]

When James did the top 100 at each position, he used a formula based on total career Win Shares, Top 3 seasons, Top 5 seasons, Win Shares per 162/games, and a "time line adjustment".

Negro Leaguers have NO Win Shares while in the Negro Leagues -- not yet, anyway -- and were not rated in the later sections.