Customer Reviews

Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most baseball fans like statistics, so it should not be a disappointment to them to find out that this is an elementary statistics book where the statistical methods are taught to explain how to adjust batting averages in order to compare players in terms of their batting averages. The average baseball fan would be interested in comparisons of Ty Cobb, Tony Gwynn, Ted Williams and others who are acknowledged as the best hitters for average in the game. Schell considers factors that make direct comparisons unfair and he provides methods to adjust for these factors based on the vast amount of statistical data available to him that has been gathered throughout the history of major league baseball.
Key effects include the home ball park, stage of career and interventions such as the lowering of the pitcher's mound after 1968. To adjust for players whose abilities decline substantially in the latter years of their career Schell uses only the first 8000 at bats to gauge the players hitting ability. This helps players like Mickey Mantle whose performance declined appreciably at the end of his career due in part to injuries.

Schell provides a lot of interesting statistics and comparisons. Ty Cobb had the highest lifetime batting average but after all the adjustments finishes second to Tony Gwynn, a result that will surely create controversy.

Nevertheless Schell's approach makes sense and his results are not too surprising. As he notes his adjustments move many of the modern players whose numerical averages are lower than the players from the late 1800s and early 1900s, ahead on the list.

Schell relates how he showed up to meet and congratulate Gwynn on the date of his 8000th at bat when he clinched first place based on the Schell adjustment system.

Mike Schell is a sports enthusiast and a professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina. In 2002 he was one of the invited speakers at the Sport Statistics Section Session of the Joint Statistical Meetings.

This book was published just one month after his other book on home run hitters. The methodology is quite similar. This book got a lot more fan fare due to the publicity regarding Tony Gwynn.

Baseball fans love to engage in "who's the best" debates. When I was young, that was the primary topic of conversation between the boys in my neighborhood. Since we did not have a great deal of knowledge concerning the history of the game, our debates were primarily over the current teams and players. Occasionally, we did delve into the "of all time" areas, but our arguments were always weakened by issues such as the differences in the ballparks and how the game had changed over the years. We always considered these issues to be ones that we could not resolve, so little time was spent on them.
In this book, statistical techniques are used to adjust for the differences in the era, different ballparks and how the rules have changed over the years. The conclusions are somewhat surprising and while they can be controversial, it is difficult to argue with the methods used to arrive at the conclusion. Schell's conclusion is that Tony Gwynn is the best hitter of all time. Tables abound, demonstrating statistics adjusted for the appropriate changes. Some of the most astounding statistics are those regarding the effect that a ballpark can have on a career. On page 190, there is a synopsis concerning Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox. It was a park that favored the pitchers until 1934, when there was a major renovation. Since 1934, one-third of the American League batting champions was a member of the Red Sox. Coors Field, the home of the Colorado Rockies, is the best park for hitters, a conclusion easily supported by the data. For all three years covered in this book, the Rockies won the team batting title and the individual title was a race between Tony Gwynn, Mike Piazza and someone from the Rockies.
As a lifelong baseball fan and a teacher of statistics, I loved this book. It is also not necessary to completely understand all of the statistical concepts to appreciate the conclusions. There is also a list of the best players based on each position other than pitcher, although all outfielders are grouped together. Schell lists "Actual and Recommended Hall of Fame ***" where *** is the given position, based on the statistical adjustments he has performed. Although there is some room for controversy regarding Schell's conclusions, he provides a fascinating look into how the game has changed over time and how it can change from ballpark to ballpark.

Schell's methods are an excellent approach to putting individual performances in context. Those criticizing the book because it is statistically oriented are not Schell's audience: if I didn't like baseball poetry, I wouldn't buy a poetry book. If you don't like baseball statistics, don't buy a statistics book.

Those criticizing Schell's use of batting average haven't read the book carefully: Schell freely admits that batting average isn't the best statistic to measure players. But batting average is easily understood and known to most fans. How many typical fans can name the career leaders in on-base percentage or slugging average or explain how they are calculated?

Anyway, Schell's methods have lit a path that others may follow with other statistics like on-base percentage and slugging average. Indeed, toward the end of the book Schell applies his methods to on-base percentage and briefly discusses the results. Just because he chose a more popular statistic to introduce his methods doesn't undermine the usefulness of those methods. I found the book a little hard to read without a strong background in statistics, but I understand what Schell is trying to do, and it makes sense to me.

Of course on-base and slugging percentages are much better measures of a hitter's worth, but that's not the author's point. He wants to take a particular statistic and show how it should be interpreted/reinterpreted, given the vagaries of time, location, etc. He could easily have chosen on-base, slugging, OPS, whatever, but batting average traditionally is the first one everyone looks at, as ill-informed as that may be. Implied is that the same arguments can be used for any of the other statistics. (And he does so, briefly providing the results.)

This is an interesting look at how to adjust for batting averages and compare players throughout baseball history. Schell uses a few methods to adjust the raw batting averages, such as adjusting for late career declines (he only uses the first 8,000 at bats), adjusting for eras, adjusting for league talent, and adjusting for home parks. Although these techniques are described in detail, I'm afraid most people won't appreciate it. The results of this book could have been written in a 5 page essay, but Schell decides to explain exactly how he went about the process. This is fine if you do care about the details, but not if you don't...so keep that in mind. I rated the book based on thinking the reader is interested in those details.

The other problem with the book is simply the topic. In this day and age, we understand that batting averages isn't the best measure of a hitter's contributions. Slugging percentage and on-base percentage are far more important. Schell does add a chapter on OBP near the end of the book. I suspect Schell understands this too as I see he has written a second book on Baseball's All-Time Sluggers. In Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters, he ranks Tony Gwynn as the best hitter of all-time. He defines hitter as one that gets hits. But the best hitter is not the best batter nor the best baseball player, so to me, this is almost a moot debate. Still, I appreciated the detail of how a statistician goes about looking at this issue. If you appreciate that kind of stuff, get this book. If not, avoid it.

If other reviewers of the book noticed, in the introduction to the book, Schell writes that batting average is not the best way to rate a baseball player-Schell clearly states that the book measures the best HITTERS, not the best BATTERS-in which case he would have used many other batting stats("Statistics that combine various hitting events...are searching for the best batters. The search in this book is for the best hitters, that is, the players with the best chance to get a hit in a given at bat."). Unless you know about statistics the book is confusing, but you don't have to read all the technical notes. His conclusions, and his methods are very interesting and definitly worth reading, (although you may not agree with the methods he uses). Again, you may not fall in love with the book, but it's worth reading.

Admittedly, you'd better love either baseball or statistical analysis to get into this book. It represents an alternative to the George Will "baseball is America" romantic view of the game, and provides interesting fodder for barroom debate. The math is well beyond me, but, like the <Baseball Prospectus>, the results are well worth review. Unlike the <Prospectus>, this book is more than just a reference, it is also an interesting read.

This is the most painstakingly objective attempt I have ever seen to level the playing field when comparing players across eras. The criticisms that have been levelled against it are unjustified. First, the complaint is made that only batting averages are being considered, not on base percentage or hitting for power (slugging average). In the first place, that's not entirely true- he also runs an analaysis of on base percentages, and devotes a separate chapter to this - leaving me to wonder if the one critic who blasted the author for not considering on base percentages has even read the book. Secondly, the book is about batting averages, so of course the main focus is on -batting averages. Thirdly, another book will be forthcoming from the author on slugging averages.

The other criticism - that the book is "for nerds only" - is just an indication of who the target audience is. Not every book is written for everybody. If you like baseball and are a stats junkie and like to argue about this player being better than that player, then this book is for you. If you don't like baseball and aren't a stats junkie and don't like such arguments - then the book is NOT for you. For what it is - comparing batting averages and on base percentages of different players from different eras - it is the best of its kind.

This book spends a great deal of time making (very reasonable) adjustments to the batting averages of baseball players. That's fine, but the problem is that batting average is a terrible measurement of offensive ability. It's less important than on-base percentage (OBP), and it's less important than slugging percentage (SLG) and thus, by implication, any reasonable measurement that combines OBP and SLG.

What a waste of time to go inte such depths when only looking into a terrible predictor of offensive ability.

Mr. Schell's book on baseball will disappoint nearly all ordinary baseball fans. It is loaded with statistical analysis that is nonintuitive and produces very counterintuitive results. For Mr. Schell, it seems that the facts must be made to fit the theory rather than the other way round. To be sure, some of the ways that are used to judge hitting prowess are not merely innovative but highly illuminating. But we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The idea that Tony Gwynn is the best hitter of all time and that Babe Ruth is far down in the standings is going a bit too far.

Mr. Schell has a more more recent book that will seem more sensible to most fans. It gives weight to slugging ability or so-called power hitting and restores Ruth to a high place in the pecking order and drops Gwynn to a spot we can believe in.