|
| The Bill James Gold Mine 2008 | 
 enlarge | Author: Bill James
Publisher: ACTA Sports
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $11.50
You Save: $10.45 (48%)
New (20) Used (11) from $5.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 49534
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0879463201
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3570973021
EAN: 9780879463205
ASIN: 0879463201
Publication Date: February 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New, clean, bright, and unmark copy. Shipping every business day.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 enjoyable book well worth the purchase March 11, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Please note this is not the old Abstracts but in this book Bill James mixes plenty of essays along with his usual endless supply of statistics. Even with so much information, it is surprisingly very readable. The Team by Team analysis has historical and comparable stats as well as a number of "nuggets" of interesting information throughout.
The essays contain Bill James's trademark humor and unique point of view, so if you are a fan of his past work, you'll probably like this too. It pushes his website a lot but having a hard copy at my convenience to flip through rather than searching my computer far out weighs the marginal one time cost.
 The best populist sabermetrician in the game March 11, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Granted, the Gold Mine is not a revival of the Abstract. Nor does it contain thoroughly explained academic studies. Lastly, it's not a book that will give you short answers that will help you draft a better fantasy team. Rather than worry about what it isn't, as you consider buying it appreciate it for what it is. What we have here is a treasure chest of the things that caught Bill James's idiosyncratic attention over the past year or so. His eye is a sharp as ever, his questions are unique, his wit still sharper than anyone else playing at being the next Bill James. What's clear from reading this book, particularly if you read it as a companion to the lengthier essays on the new web site, is that Bill's sabermetrics are populist rather than elitist, in a good way. There are academic sabermetricians who do excellent work and you can learn from them if you can get through to the end of their essays, but Bill's the one you'll want to have a cup of coffee with, sit next to at the ballpark, and learn more from when it comes to improving your own ability to think creatively about baseball. There's material here you won't find on the web site, though the book is consciously designed as an introduction and complement to the site. So if you're interested at all, buy the book. You will end up subscribing to the site because you'll want to.
More than weird stats April 7, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Bill James is well known for revolutionizing baseball statistics. Many fans, however, are satisfied with traditional baseball statistics and may avoid his books. If so, they are missing a hanging curveball. James is also the most talented writer among the current crop of baseball authors. While I find his analysis very insightful, I would not pay for a book of numbers and poorly written text. This man will one day be inducted into the Writers' Wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He is the Babe Ruth of baseball writers, in my estimation.
There's gold in them thar pages March 20, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
When Bill James came out with his Baseball Abstracts in the early 1980s, I thought I had discovered forbidden fruit. For this first time, here were cogent numbers accompanied by scintillating commentary, the best of both world's for a fan. Each team's major players got their due, as James offered his "scouting reports" on their strengths and weaknesses. Each year seemed to get a little bigger and better and soon there were others who sought jump on the statistical/textual analysis train, including the Elias Baseball Analyst series, and The Scouting Report, which had several incarnations. James' work was often imitated but never duplicated in terms of quality.
James eventually turned to other book projects, applying his keen eye to the lore of the game in The Bill James Historical Abstract and Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? among others. I didn't care much for his weighty volumes composed solely of charts, tables, and numbers. I leave that to the hard-core statheads. In addition to the books by James, there are several about him and his contribution to the way the game is viewed and enjoyed by everyone: fans, front office personnel, and broadcasters alike.
That said, James is the angel or the devil for what he hath brought to baseball, depending on your point of view. On the one hand, he opened the door to a new way of thinking about things, using number to prove or disprove conventional thinking about a player's reputation and the actual quality of his work, issues which are not always the same thing.
On the other hand, James opened the door to a new way of thinking about thing, which for traditionalists can confuse with facts. Of course, there are those who say, to, paraphrase the situation, that the devil can quote scripture to serve his purpose. Likewise there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
James has gone on to fine tune his statistics and analysis to the point where he is much sought after, serving as a consultant for the Boston Red Sox. His new book, The Bill James Gold Mine is at once wonderful and frustrating. His observations are just as spot on as in the past, as he has learned to adjust to the times (is he following them or leading them, one wonders. After all, the Red Sox gig...). He intersperses his team capsules with essays on such diverse topics as "The Turk Farrell Award" (given to the pitcher "who best represents the idea that a really good pitcher doesn't have to have a really good record"); "Cigar Points," about players who come agonizingly closer to numbers that would push them into the elite category; and "Atypical Seasons" (just what it sounds like).
While Gold Mine does offer several nuggets, there's also a lot of dust (Hey, I didn't name the book, so don't blame me for the analogies. For example, he only provides record for a handful of players on each team. For example, to take one player totally at random, James writes about the Sox' Hideki Okajima, whose
favorite pitches were his fastball, his chanegup and his curveball, in that order. But when in a lefty-lefty matchup, he relied more on the curveball (25% of the time) than the changeup (19%). Against righties, the curveball was fairly rare (only 12% of his pitches).
The comments are accompanied by a Pitch Type Analysis chart shows that he threw a total of 1,062 pitches, out of which 516 (or 49%) were fastballs, 180 (17%) were curves, 349 (33%) were changeups. Plus five pitchouts and another twelve pitches that missed being charted (at least he's being honest).
James does similar things batters as well, breaking their accomplishments down by the types of pitches they swung at (or didn't) and where in the strike zone they were (or weren't), and similar data.
One complaint is that he doesn't do it for everyone. I can't say I blame him; a book like that could easily be more than 1,000 pages and cost substantially more than the $21.95 list price. Another quibble is that there is no glossary, so anyone coming late to the Bill James table might be a bit confused by some of the terminology. That cold have been easily addressed in an appendix without any undue hardship.
Still, Gold Mine marks a welcome return to the "abstract" world for James. here's hoping he isn't such a stranger to his fans in the future.
Still at the top of the game April 4, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've been reading Bill James since 1983, and for years I anticipated his newest book. However, I approached the Gold Mine with trepidation, as I would an aging rock star who lost his chops. I didn't like the Bill James Handbook series at all because it was minutiae that didn't leave room for imagination nor wit.
However, this book returns to the best of Bill James: humor, unusual insights and ideas, social commentary, and sheer unpredictability. This book blazes so many new paths that it's impossible to decide where to go first, and you just sit there thinking, "Well, I hope all those smart sabermetricians follow up on the ideas that Bill has raised."
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
