18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A nice Bill James work, March 12, 2008
This review is from: The Bill James Gold Mine (Paperback)
This is kind of an odd work. It is a book filled with snippets about each of the major league teams. And some of these are delightful! There are also essays interspersed among the team discussions, and intriguing little "sidebars" scattered throughout the volume.
But there are lots more goodies on the web site BillJamesOnline (for $3 per month). I would rather a few more data from that site be in this volume, but--nonetheless--this is still a fun work!
A few illustrations. Do you know the worst middle reliever in terms of highest ERA while recording a "hold"? Doug Brocail of San Diego, with 7.87 (ouch!). Then there is a comparison with the hitter most like a team when it wins--and loses. Take Arizona. When it won in 2007, its hitting statistics were much like Dave Winfield's; when it lost, stats were like Dave Stegman's.
In terms of teams, coverage is a bit thin, as already noted. For my White Sox, I see the 2007 pitching and hitting statistics for the everyday players and top pitchers--but scarcely anything on reserves and lesser used pitchers. There's a nice sidebar on where Jim Thome's home runs go (lots to the opposite field, as a matter of fact).
A nifty little piece is "cigar points," players who came close to milestones and just missed (e.g., one victory short of 20 wins or .299 instead of .300). Top player in "cigar points"? Greg Maddux. Clutch hitter of the year? Brad Hawpe who drove in 45 clutch runs.
One of my favorite bon bons here--consistency. James works on a formula to rank baseball players for consistency, and then assigns them a grade from A+ to F. Can you guess Number 1 all time? Henry Aaron (makes sense, doesn't it?). Least consistent? Bill Sweeney. Other noteworthies--Nellie Fox (one of my favorite players)-A-; Carl Yastrzemski (for my Red Sox Nation fans)-A; Mickey Mantle-A-; Jesse Barfield-B+; and so on. It's just fun to see who rates where in terms of consistency.
Anyhow, a lot of fun for the Hot Stove League debates going on. While it could use more meat than it manifests, this book is still most enjoyable to leaf through. Well recommended for baseball fans who like a healthy dose of statistics.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Bill James Gold Mine 2008, March 13, 2008
This review is from: The Bill James Gold Mine (Paperback)
If circumstances only allow you to purchase and/or read one baseball book this spring, you cannot make a better choice than "The Bill James Gold Mine 2008."
In this book, James provides fun and informative statistical analysis on every big league team - in addition to 17 new essays that are a treat to read.
Among my favorites were:
"Three to Five Run Records" - which shows you the best and worst teams when they scored or allowed three to five runs in a game.
"The Dave Kingman Award" - where James uses "HR/[RC+10]" to show us which batters over the last 30 years were the "best" at "hitting home runs without doing anything else positive as a hitter."
"The Turk Farrell Award" - which identifies good pitchers who had terrible records because their team stunk.
"The Nolan Ryan Award" - given to unreformed power pitchers via James' formula of "[W*L*SO*BB]/IP."
"End Game" - which identifies "the moment at which it ain't over, but it's over" for a team with respect to their place in the standings. (This essay suggests that the three greatest collapses in baseball history belong to the 1951 Dodgers, 1964 Phillies, 2007 Mets, and 1978 Red Sox - in that order.)
"Closer Fatigue" - where James shows how fatigue level of a closer impacts success for his team.
"Strength Up the Middle" - that confirms good teams are strong "up the middle" - and it's more true that bad teams are weak in this area.
"Bullpens and Crunches" - that establishes teams with good bullpens "tend to exceed expectations" in one-run and close games. But, it also shares that there's no definitive evidence that teams with strong bullpens do well in the post-season.
"Herbie" - where James introduces a stat that identifies "a more reasonable candidate for the league's best pitcher than the actual ERA leader."
Brass tacks, if you were a fan of The Bill James Baseball Abstracts, you will enjoy this book. And, if you've never read James' Abstracts, and always wondered what the fuss was about, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book.
"The Bill James Gold Mine 2008" is the type of baseball book that's so much fun, and enlightening, that you'll want to re-read it, again, the minute you finish reading it for the first time. And, there's a good chance that you'll want to read it a third time after that - as there's so much good stuff in it.
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Basically a glorified advertisement for his web site, March 10, 2008
This review is from: The Bill James Gold Mine (Paperback)
I was really looking forward to reading this book. I think Bill James made a big mistake when he stopped writing the abstracts. So is Bill back and better than ever? Unfortunately, no. As is indicated at the beginning of this book you are essentially reading a piece of his new web site. The commentary on each team is weak and consists mostly of data (with extremely limited analysis). The "essays" pale in comparison to what James used to put out each spring, and consist primarily of data surrounded by a few text boxes.
Save your money and pay $3 for a month's worth of his web site (where you can read all of the material in this book).
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