Customer Reviews

Baseball's Complete Players: Ratings of Total-Season Performance for the Greatest Players of the 20th Century

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is one of the most frustrating books on baseball ratings I have ever read. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that the author raises some good points about effectiveness versus potential.

I have several problems with the methods used in this book and I will site just a few. First of all, the rating explained in the book claims to be the "first objective total-season statistic." This claim is countered by the author in the initial explanation of his system when he states "it is important to realize that some of these decisions were somewhat arbitrary on my part." I hate to nitpick, but when the author goes on ad infinitum about what a brilliant system he has devised, this bothers me.

Many reviewers have stated that the author clearly defines his rationale for his rating. This is simply not true. For instance, why does he multiply walks by .5? Why are RBI weighted as much as stolen bases? He never states these reasons, and those are just a couple of examples. When the author poses a question about how he came up with his system, he doesn't provide a very scientific answer. For instance, when he raises the question of whether adding in runs and RBI is in essence adding home runs two more times, he defends this by saying "I finally determined that the home run is the ultimate offensive weapon and ought to be very special." I agree with that statement, but it says nothing about his reasons that substantiate this claim. This seems very sloppy to me.

His work with defensive statistics, while admirable, is far from perfect. His attitude is exemplified in a statement he makes in his chapter on Hall of Fame Numbers. Regarding his system he says, "No one sat down ahead of time and said, 'Now how much weight should we give to hitting and how much to fielding?'" Doesn't this seem like an important question to ask when adding these two elements together to create an all-encompassing statistic?

As stated by a couple of other reviewers he does not add in any park or yearly effects to his system. He justifies this by stating that park factors are "essentially a subjective notion." Subjective notion? We have many statistics that prove that certain parks have effects on statistics. Road vs. Home hitting. The fact that the outfield fences are different distances in most parks should be some clue that this might effect statistics. Is there a perfect way to figure this out? Probably not, but you can't just ignore it.

I have many other problems with the system he has created, but I want to touch on a few of the other issues that bother me. One sentence he writes sums up one these issues. The author states, "The HEQ study lays no claim to being the definitive comparison of players. It is essentially a simpler and more complete approach... than any existing system." In one sentence he says it isn't the definitive system, but it is the best system ever developed. Although not exactly the exact same things, it seems to me he wants to set the system up so that it won't be challenged either way.

The final problem that I have is a little frivolous, but another reviewer mentioned it so I feel it is legitimate. The fact that author mentions that he his a mathematician so many times and the fact that he names the system after himself, just seems way too self-aggrandizing to me.

In closing I just want to mention that according to the author's system, the greatest season by a baseball player ever was Chuck Klein's in 1930.

Outs don't count; no league adjustments; no park adjustments. These are "counting stats" amalgamated. As such, this might be one of the better counting systems around. You know, in a counting system, longevity is everything. So if you have a lot of hits and runs for many years you do well. I imagine Harold Baines will do very well in this system.

Who wouldn't do comparatively well? A productive player who didn't have a lot of longevity and who didn't make a lot of outs while playing in the Astrodome or Dodger Stadium in a strong pitching era.

You can bet Jim Wynn, who does well in Bill James' Runs Created system, will rank comparatively low in HEQ.

Readers should be aware that this book was roundly skewered on the listserve of the Society for American Baseball Research.

My suggestion: don't waste your money. Check it out of the library.

I found much to dislike and little to like about Baseball's Complete Players. It presents a new player evaluation system (called HEQ) that purports to gives fans a simple and accurate idea of a player's overall effectiveness. Unfortunately, I did not find HEQ to be nearly as good as those currently in wide use among baseball fans and researchers. In my opinion, Batting Runs, Runs Created, Extrapolated Runs and Total Player Rating all give fans a much better idea of what a player accomplished on the field than HEQ.

I also found the book to be poorly written and very tedious, and I definitely would not recommend this title to another baseball fan.

This book is a crude attempt to rank players by taking a few basic stats and simply adding them up. Unfortunately, that's not the way that real baseball works. On the field, a team gets only 27 outs to do its scoring, and good players use up fewer than their share of these outs while poor players consume more than their quota, thus hurting their team's chances. "Baseball's Complete Players" (a terrible misnomer) does not recognize this basic fact, and therefore rewards players who simply accumulate high numbers without considering the "opportunity cost" of their performances. The result is predictable -- sure, Babe Ruth comes out first (he does in every rating system ever devised), but less distinguished players such as Earl Averill wind up being very overrated.

The fielding stats section is, if anything, even more misguided. And how can a book call itself "Baseball's Complete Players" when it leaves out 40% of the player population -- the pitchers?

Forty years ago, this might have been an interestingly flawed look at player analysis. But today, in the light of universally available computer analysis and the ongoing SABRmetric revolution, it is a tedious and self-important dinosaur of a book (the writing is excessively self-congratulatory and very repetitious) that can only mislead the average fan while driving more sophisticated observers up the wall with its myopic assumptions and questionable conclusions.

Many prior authors have developed methods for comparing the performance of very different players. Unfortunately, Mr. Hoban doesn't seem to have learned from any of his predecessors. The methodology which underlies his ratings seems almost random, or else designed to reward some of his favorite players. As analysis, it fails; as simple writing, it's not much better.

How seriously can you take a book that concludes Earl Averill was a better player than Mickey Mantle? You can't. The book is very flawed. Hoban simply chooses to disregard park effects and league context, and you cannot correctly evaluate players without adjusting for context. To take one obvious example: Chuck Klein's 1930 season was not the seventh best offensive season in history. I seriously doubt it was one of the top 50 seasons. Klein compiled these statistics in the best offensive season in the century, and in the best hitter's park in baseball. He hit .443 with 26 HR's at home, and .329 with 14 HR's on the road. Mickey Mantle's 1956 season, which did not make the top 25, was far better (to mention one of many possible examples).

It would be easy to keep pointing out more absurd statements the author makes, for instance: despite the HEQ score,Ellis Burks in 1996 did not have the 32nd best season of history; Coors Field grossly inflated his stats. One last point: of Hoban's top 20 offensive seasons, all but one was during the big hitting era of 1920-39. I would ask those readers who gave this book a good review: Is it really plausible that 95% of the greatest seasons in baseball history just happened to be in this era? This is simply not believable . This book is not worth the time of a serious fan of baseball. If you want a real analysis of baseball greatness, read Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract.

The system detailed in this book is not very impressive. It ignores much of the groundbreaking work done in the field over the past 25 years. Adding up counting stats, while ignoring the value of these stats and what context these stats were accomplished in, does not make for a very convincing way to rank players. Another problem is the book's insistence on ignoring performance rates, ewhich are vital to understanding any player's production. Overall, there's just very little interesting material here.

As a long-time baseball fan with an interest in the comparison of players, I read this book with considerable interest. I am acquainted with the developments in the field over the past thirty years - as is the author, which is evident from the many references in the book. And I was impressed with the credentials which Prof. Hoban brings to the table (he is a mathematician with an obvious love for the game and he has been published in the SABR Research Journal). He makes it clear that he admires the work of such people as Bill James and Pete Palmer - while not agreeing with everything that they have said.

Do I agree with the author's methods and results? I am not sure - the jury is still out on that. But the question is not really whether I agree or not. The value of the book is that it raises some very important questions about some of the assumptions made by some analysts over the years. Assumptions like adjusting for era and ballpark. And these questions are raised in an intelligent and understandable way.

And perhaps the most important thing of all is that I found it very difficult to argue with the author's conclusions about the best offensive and defensive players of the century. And his deliberately simple counting approach has much to recommend it. I would not have believed before reading this book that it would be possible to achieve these results by a relatively simple counting process. But, of course, that is the genius of the book - making somewhat complicated maneuvers seem so simple that anyone can understand (and criticize)them.

Agree or disagree all you want. But you must read this important book if you think that you know something about the analysis of baseball numbers.

A significant contribution to the field.

This book represents a valuable contribution to the attempts to rate the great players of the game. It shows very effectively that there are many different and valid ways to interpret the terms "best hitter" and "best fielder."

Using only the players actual numbers, Prof. Hoban creates two different lists of the best position players of the century (combining both hitting and fielding): one list based on peak performance and the second on career longevity. Take a look at these lists and see whether you can argue with them.

A wonderful achievement!

Excellent! At last, a good analysis of the defensive numbers. Is it possible that my fellow readers could miss the most important aspect of this book?

A friend who knows how important I consider fielding skills told me to check out this book and I am glad I did. Books and articles about hitting are a dime-a-dozen - but a really good analysis of fielding skills is as rare as hen's teeth. And this book is one of the best I have seen at looking at the fielding numbers in an understandable manner.

The author analyses the fielding numbers of all the great fielders of the century. Read the chapters on the defensive formulas and the Gold Gloves - as good as I have seen anywhere. And this analysis is based on the player's numbers - no opinions or media hype.

Look at some of the results (the best fielders of the century): Brooks Robinson and Craig Nettles at third, Rabbit Maranville and Ozzie Smith at shortstop, Bill Mazeroski and Nellie Fox at second and Keith Hernandez at first. I love it!

The material on the fielding skills alone is worth the price of the book. I just hope that the author continues to study and to write about the best fielders. It is about time that someone did. A wonderful achievement.