Bill James became famous exposing readers to a world of new statistics in his Baseball Abstracts of the ’70s and ’80s. Although his name remains synonymous with sabermetrics — “the study and mathematical analysis of baseball statistics and records,” according to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary — James’ latest work, the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, has much to offer the statistically disinclined.
A thorough revision of the award-winning tome, which was last updated in 1988, the New Historical Abstract should have universal appeal. Baseball fans without a hearty appetite for statistics may read the majority of the 1,000-page book without tripping over a secondary average, a power-speed number or a catcher’s ERA. James knows a lot more about baseball history than numbers, and it shows.
Indeed, diehard James fans will have to wait until next spring to get their full statistical helping. James promises another book, Win Shares, that will fully explain his new player-evaluation system. In the New Historical Abstract, James devotes but a few pages to the method, which he employs for the ambitious task of apportioning every win by every team in baseball history to the batting, baserunning, pitching and fielding feats of individual players.
The Game
The New Historical Abstract is divided into two main sections: “The Game” and “The Players.” Much of “The Game” will be familiar to old readers, as it retains the majority of James’ excellent writing from earlier editions. What James set out to do in “The Game,” he writes, is to examine how the National Pastime has evolved and to give readers an idea of what it was like to be a fan in each decade of professional baseball’s existence.
For every decade, James includes a discussion of “How the Game Was Played,” which provides a flavor for the period. Take, for example, this excerpt of James’ discussion of the ’90s — the 1890s:
Dirty. Very, very dirty. The tactics of the eighties were aggressive; the tactics of the nineties were violent. The game of the eighties was crude; the game of the nineties was criminal. The baseball of the eighties had ugly elements; the game of the nineties was just ugly. Players spiked one another. A first baseman would grab the belt of the baserunner to hold him back a half-second after the ball was hit. Players tripped one another as they rounded the bases. Fights broke out more days than not. Players shoved umpires, spat on them, and punched them. Fans hurled insults and beer bottles at the players of opposing teams.
Sounds like fun, huh? Or how about that lionized era, the ’50s?
The baseball of the 1950s was perhaps the most one-dimensional, uniform, predictable version of the game which has ever been offered to the public. By 1950, the stolen base was a rare play, a “surprise” play. In the first seven years of the decade, no team stole a hundred bases in a season. In 1920, or arguably even earlier, power trends had gone into motion toward an offense based more and more around the home run, and less and less around everything else. Batting averages, which had jumped early in the lively ball era, began dropping after 1930. In the early 1950s, every team approached the game with the same essential offensive philosophy: get people on base and hit home runs.
“The Game” isn’t written in long, continuous chapters. James treats every decade with a collection of articles, sidebars and text boxes. The “Decade-in-a-Box” format survives from the previous editions. Who were the best teams? Who were the best players at each position? The hardest thrower and the best control pitcher? The best switch-hitter? The best bunter? The best double-play combination? And about 100 other pieces of information in each box.
James has updated the ’80s and added chapters on the Negro Leagues and the ’90s. The Negro Leagues section provides an overview of black baseball from the 19th century to integration, discusses styles of play and ranks the top 10 players at each position. James also presents a “Negro-Leagues-in-a-Box” summary. The list of nicknames alone is worth reading, including such monikers as Ankleball Moss, Dr. Cyclops, Sparkplug Reese, and Steel Arm Davis.
The ’90s
James’ section on the ’90s chiefly discusses two questions that baseball writers have endlessly debated: what are the causes of the current offensive explosion and how can baseball fix its economic problems? He suggests that the offensive explosion is a result of the new ballparks and the culmination of five historical trends:
1. The acceptance of strength training.
2. The abbreviating of pitcher’s motions.
3. The use of aluminum bats in amateur ball.
4. The policy of fining and suspending players automatically when there is a fight.
5. The evolution of bat design.
James’ approach is novel. The only one of these factors commonly discussed in the baseball media is strength training. James rejects the stale suggestion that expansion has diluted pitching talent, arguing that population growth more than makes up for expansion. He does contend that overuse of pitching changes by managers creates an artificial shortage of pitchers, since this demands more pitchers to be carried on each team’s roster.
Regarding the acceptance of strength training, James makes a curious point in his section on the ’80s:
The immense growth of baseball salaries gave ballplayers the opportunity to see themselves as professional men, and did, no doubt, increase professionalism. As late as the early 1970s baseball players — even stars — needed to work off-season jobs to make ends meet. The million-dollar salaries of the 1980s enabled players to spend the off-season in conditioning programs. This raised the bar, so that survival in a highly competitive business soon required that players spend their off-season in conditioning programs.
James tackles a number of subjects related to baseball economics, including revenue-sharing, labor wars and competitive balance. Concerning competitive balance, James writes,
The onset of the free agent era in the mid-1970s was accompanied by frequent lamentations that this would destroy competitive balance, as the rich would grow richer and the poor would grow livestock for the rich. This didn’t happen. The 1980s, the first full decade of free agency, were by far the most competitive years in baseball history up to that point. When I was in high school we knew this kid who drank like a sponge and drove like a maniac; we all used to say he would kill himself in a car wreck by the time he was 30. Boy, were we wrong; he didn’t kill himself in a car wreck until he was 40. It would be a mistake to conclude that, because the destruction of competitive balance didn’t happen when we expected it to occur, it therefore isn’t going to happen. Many things suggest that free agency now is destroying competitive balance, although it took twenty years for this to happen.
To read more of James’ discussion of the ’90s, visit the excerpt posted here by ESPN.
The Players
In “The Players,” which is almost entirely new material, James briefly introduces his Win Shares method, then proceeds to rank and comment on the 100 greatest players at each position as well as the 100 greatest players of all-time. The comments are not primarily statistical. As James stated in a recent interview, the purpose of the comments, which range from a single word to several pages, is to create an image of each player in the reader’s mind. Media accounts, quotes and anecdotes embellish the descriptions of hundreds of players.
Win Shares are not fully described in the New Historical Abstract. What readers learn is that Win Shares attempt to measure how many of a team’s wins a player contributed through his batting, baserunning, pitching and fielding. Each Win Share constitutes a third of a win, and all the Win Shares of all the players on a team must add up precisely to three times the team’s win total. Next spring James will publish the Win Shares book to explain the method in detail. For the time being, readers are left to accept on faith the results of James’ statistical undertaking.
Like all rankings, James’ lists are bound to be controversial. Not only are they based on a partially unexplained new method, but they also reflect James’ subjective judgments. In many places, particularly beyond the top 10 at each position, they seem downright arbitrary. After consuming a few of the comments, though, readers will realize that the rankings are not as important as the wealth of knowledge about hundreds of players that James has crammed into the New Historical Abstract. Readers who can avoid getting hung up on whether, for example, Curt Flood at No. 36 should rank ahead of Kenny Lofton at No. 41 should enjoy James’ player descriptions regardless of their opinion of the rankings.
For active players, the rankings and comments are two years out of date, since James prepared them after the 1999 season. James explains that in the course of writing the New Historical Abstract, he made a breakthrough in his Win Shares research that delayed publication by a couple of years. James includes an update section that discusses how the lists might have changed since he originally developed them. James also includes an article on how his 100 best players of all-time compares to lists compiled by other authors and analysts.
Craig Biggio
James ranks 15 major-leaguers who were active in 2001 among his 100 greatest players of all-time: Roberto Alomar, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Ken Griffey Jr., Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson, Barry Larkin, Greg Maddux, Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Cal Ripken and Frank Thomas. Probably none of James’ rankings has raised more eyebrows than that of Biggio, whom James names as the best unrecognized player of the ’90s and includes with Bonds and Henderson as the most unappreciated superstars of his lifetime. In defense of ranking Biggio the 35th-best player of all-time, James contends,
Craig Biggio is the best player in major league baseball today. If you compare Craig Biggio very carefully to Ken Griffey Jr. in almost any season, you will find that Biggio has contributed more to his team than Griffey has. Look, I’m not knocking Ken Griffey. Ken Griffey Jr. is a great player. Craig Biggio is better. The fact that nobody seems to realize this … well, that’s not my problem. I’m not going to rate players by how many Nike commercials they do.
Bear in mind that much of the New Historical Abstract was written before Biggio’s injury-plagued 2000 season, when he was coming off a great five-year run from 1995 to 1999. On the other hand, James makes two significant assumptions: that being better than Ken Griffey Jr. makes Biggio the best player in baseball and that being the best player in baseball as of the end of the 1999 season justifies Biggio’s place among the top 100 players of all-time. Part of the basis for Biggio’s high ranking is, according to James, the little things he does:
Biggio has the best “little stats” of any player in baseball history, this being one of the reasons that he has been tremendously underrated. If you compare him to, let’s say, Jim Rice in 1984, Biggio has a hidden advantage of 69 extra times on base, since he was hit by pitches 33 more times (34 to 1), and beat the throw to first on a double play attempt 36 more times (0 to 36). Those little stats that get left out of USA Today, in this comparison, have an impact roughly equivalent to 100 points of batting average.
Assuming that the difference is in fact worth 100 points of batting average, the “little stats” James discusses indeed have a huge impact, but the comparison also represents a best-case scenario for Biggio, taking his best “little stats” season and comparing it to one of the worst “little stats” seasons in baseball history. While Biggio vs. Rice might be worth 100 points, in the typical season Biggio’s advantage over most players likely does not approach that magnitude.
Until the Win Shares book is published, there is no easy way to evaluate James’ support for his argument about where Biggio belongs on the all-time lists. The editors of Total Baseball, who use a different player-evaluation system, ranked Biggio among the best players in baseball in 1995, 1998 and 1999 and as the best player in baseball in 1997. Total Baseball also includes Biggio among its 100 best players of all-time, although about 60 places lower than James’ ranking.
Among all-time second basemen, James ranks Biggio behind Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Rogers Hornsby and Jackie Robinson but ahead of Nap Lajoie. But James writes in his update section,
Of all the ratings I did a year ago, there is only one that I now regret enough to mention the fact. A year ago, I rated Craig Biggio fifth at second base, ahead of Nap Lajoie. This may have been a mistake. While I yield to no one in my admiration for Biggio — the greatest unappreciated player of my lifetime — it has been my policy, in doing these ratings, to avoid getting ahead of events. In this case, I did. Biggio had a poor and injury-plagued season in 2000, and it is no longer apparent that he deserves to rate ahead of Lajoie.
If Biggio is not among the top five at his position, he certainly belongs in the top 10. It is difficult to argue that Biggio is clearly less of a player than Ryne Sandberg, Charlie Gehringer, Rod Carew or Roberto Alomar, who round out James’ top 10. And James is probably right that Biggio is among the most unappreciated players of his era. Even many Astros fans disagree that Biggio is a truly great player.
Astros
Of all the Astros, Biggio gets the most discussion in the New Historical Abstract, but other Houston favorites, including Alan Ashby, Bagwell, Bob Watson, Phil Garner, Bill Doran, Ken Caminiti, Doug Rader, Dickie Thon, Jose Cruz, Jimmy Wynn, Cesar Cedeno, Terry Puhl and, obviously, Nolan Ryan, make the top 100 lists at their positions. Glenn Davis, Enos Cabell and Craig Reynolds just miss the lists at their positions. A few excerpts:
Bill Doran, a career .277 hitter through 1988, was hitting .280 with 7 homers, 46 RBI on June 25, 1989, then went into the mother of all slumps to finish the season at .219. “I’ve given the word ‘slump’ a whole new meaning,” Doran said. “Instead of saying, ‘I’m in a slump,’ they should say, ‘I’m in a Billy Doran.'”
Would Dickie Thon be headed for the Hall of Fame, had he not been beaned by Torrez? I think he probably would, yes, at least a 51% shot. Thon, only 25 years old, was one of the five best players in the National League in 1983.
Had he played in most other parks, it is clear that Jose Cruz would have won multiple National League batting titles. In 1983 Cruz hit .318, missing the National League batting title by five points; this was the closest that anyone would ever come to winning a batting title in the Astrodome.
Jimmy Wynn did not reach the heights of stardom attained by Joe Morgan, but he was a very effective player. If the Astros had come up with two more like them and held on to them, they would have been a powerhouse.
Terry Puhl has the second-lowest error rate, compared to the league norms for his era, of any outfielder listed here. Puhl was a terrific mechanical player, but just didn’t have the power or the arm to be a top-flight right fielder.
ESPN has also published an excerpt of some of James’ player comments, which is available here.
Its format makes the New Historical Abstractideal for piecemeal reading. Want to read about the ’30s? About left fielders? About Honus Wagner? Many of the hundreds of topics are digestible in a few minutes. Almost any of them can be read in less than a couple of hours. James remains a witty, sometimes sarcastic writer, although his prose doesn’t always flow quite as easily as it did when he was writing annually. Producing the New Historical Abstract took James five years, so it was likely at times more work than fun for him.
This takes little if anything away from the overall pleasure for readers, though. Love or hate numbers, concur or disagree with the rankings, the New Historical Abstract should leave most fans looking forward to the opening of spring training in a few short months — assuming baseball still exists after Bud Selig gets through with it. If there’s a work stoppage, at least there’ll be something good to read.