Customer Reviews

The Bill James Gold Mine

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I admit I have a strong bias in favor of the Gold Mine and the people involved in it. Many of them are friends of mine, but my 5-star reviews of past editions were based on merit, not friendship. I believe the Gold Mine serves a couple of important purposes in the sabermetric marketplace. It's entertaining, accessible, and it keeps Bill's work on the bookshelves -- too much of the sabermetric work being done right now is inaccessible to the vast majority of fans and almost unreadable to anyone with literary standards. That's where the Gold Mine comes in. This year's edition is on par with previous editions, so, in my estimation, the 5-star review is warranted. My challenge is to find something new and honest to say about it.

This year's Gold Mine is, by its own admission, a collaboration among Bill James, John Dewan, editor Greg Pierce, and Baseball Info Solutions (among others). Dave Studeman of The Hardball Times is involved as well. The upshot is that the book is less of a compendium of Bill's essays -- subscribers to his site already get a high volume of essays -- and more of a revival and update of the STATS Scoreboard, using contemporary metrics, supplemented with some of Bill's best essays from 2009. The package is a generous 341-page sample of what's available to subscribers of Bill's website for $3 per month.

Sum: Just like previous editions, the 2010 Gold Mine is a collection of fascinating observations of small but telling details (nuggets), and concise insights drawn from those details, presented in a reader-friendly manner, in addition to Bill's more substantive essays. Unlike much of the academic sabermetric work being done, the Gold Mine's sabermetric work is highly readable, with the reader's entertainment kept in the foreground. Simply put, it's a book you'll actually read, not just shelve as a reference resource.

Who is the book for? In all candor, it's for most serious baseball fans but it's not for everyone. At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, there's a distinction between statheads who put writing first and those who put science first. The Gold Mine strikes a good balance between the two. Bill's no slouch as a sabermetrician, and it would be hard to argue that he's not still the most creative and interesting sabermetrician in the game, but it's fair to say he's a writer more than a scientist. What's more important to you, the writing or the science? The questions or the answers? If you favor good writing and interesting questions, then the Gold Mine is a good buy.

Recently there has been some discussion in the sabermetric community about burnout, ennui, and so on -- a perception that too much energy is being spent on minutiae, or that effective presentation of data has been given too little attention by the more scientifically inclined analysts. The burnout has largely been expressed by the writer-first group, who might also be concerned (consciously or not) that the sabermetric field has passed them by. The cutting edge of sabermetrics might in fact be inaccessible to the liberal arts crowd and the Gold Mine won't appeal as much to professional or academic sabermetricians, but the vast majority of baseball fans, including liberal arts-minded sabermetricians, will find the Gold Mine to be perfectly accessible, insightful, and -- because of Bill's essays -- worth reading again years later, and, because the Gold Mine puts communication first, the book might give them some consolation that field has not passed them by. Bill is still at the top of his game. He just doesn't hide his light under a bushel.

I've been reading Bill James since stumbling on his Baseball Abstracts back in the early 1980s. The Gold Mine is not intended to be the kind of systematic review of players and teams that the Abstract was. For that, you should buy the Baseball Prospectus. The Gold Mine does have a section on each team, but there is no attempt to sum up the 2009 season or look ahead to the 2010 season. Instead, the team entries consist of a one-page statistical overview, which gives the basic stats for "Key Players" and "Key Pitchers." The only non-standard stat given is Win Shares. The rest of the team entries are taken up by "nuggets," which consist of brief entries describing telling -- or oddball -- facts about the team, such as the 2009 Red Sox having given up the worst stolen base percentage allowed in the history of the American League. As I understand it, James researched and wrote only some (a few?) of these, although he apparently looked at them all and, perhaps, did some editing. The nuggets are of varying quality and, frankly, if the book was composed entirely of them, I don't think it would be worth buying.

For my money, the best part of the book is the 16 essays by Bill James. They vary in length, but together take up about half the pages of the book. The essays cover all kinds of subjects, from an in-depth analysis of the two 2009 Cy Young races -- surprisingly, he agrees with the choice of Lincecum in the NL, but thinks Hernandez may have been a better choice in the AL -- to reflections on watching a replay of game one of the 1974 World Series. The essays are tremendously entertaining and have the unmistakeable Jamesian voice. If they dropped the "nuggets" and had twice as many essays by James, this book would be an easy five stars for me.

As I understand it, some -- or maybe all -- of this material originally appeared on James's subscription web site. There are a couple of places where it's clear that some of the essays were written during, rather than after, the 2009 season. For instance, the essay on "Percentage of Full Career" cites Albert Pujols and Carlos Beltran as having "near-perfect careers." Given that Beltran ended up missing half the 2009 season, he's no longer a good example. But that's a quibble and, overall, the level of editorial work on this year's edition is clearly better than last year, when the book was marred by a number of typos.

So, if you like James, but don't subscribe to his web site and haven't seen these essays before, I think you will enjoy them.

This is the Bill James I remember from my (relative) youth. The 2010 Gold Mine is filled with interesting statistical tidbits for every team, and many, many, many fascinating articles from the one, the only, Bill James. James compares pitchers across eras to rank the best of all time, chimes in on the value of RBI in determining MVP votes, debates the worthiness of steroid era Hall of Fame candidates, and much, much, more. I am extremely pleased with my purchase, and expect to refer to this book repeatedly over the next few months.

I got to this book late, but it was worth waiting. Bill James remains the master of SABRmetrics. In addition to his analysis of the 2009 season, there are essays that cover everything from steroid use to the reasons behind the increase in health and college tuition costs, all written through the filter of baseball. Good for both the sabr member and the baseball fan.

Bill James is in solid form with this Gold Mine of facts plus a variety of keen analytical essays. First, readers get a brief but ever-fascinating look at each of baseball's 30 teams and its prior-year performance. We see each key players' Win Shares, how certain pitchers changed their pitch selection, how certain batters hit more or fewer fly balls, etc. Don't forget the prior season's top clutch hitter (Ryan Howard), plus an inventory of young talent for each team. Interspersed with the per-team chapters are a host of analytical essays about many finer points of the game. In these essay we see trends toward increased player mobility and per-game strikeouts, the likelihood that Earl Webb's 1931 season record for Doubles (67) will soon be eclipsed, and which players historicallly performed near top expectations over their career (Hank Aaron, Tommy John, Al Kaline, etc.) versus those that fell short (Lou Gherig, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, etc.) often due to health reasons or military service. As a Chicagoan I enjoyed the comparisons of outfielders (Andre Dawson vs. Minnie Minoso), closers (Bruce Sutter vs. Lee Smith), and the analyisis of the 1959 White Sox, who won the AL pennant despite finishing last in homers and 6th (of eight teams) in runs scored.

I admit to missing the old 1980's Abstracts for their strong analysis of each team for the prior and upcoming season, something the Gold Mine doesn't really do. Still, the book provides interesting data, thoughtful essays, and remains, as do most Bill James books, a must for hardcore baseball nuts.

Many of the bits of information about each team are the types of things that broadcasters would point out about players or teams, if (1) they recognized that some awfully fascinating thigns exist in statistics and (2) they were not Tim McCarver or Joe Morgan. Yes, I suppose I just took a gratuitous slam at two announcers who annoy the bejeezus out of me. But anyhoo. While James is uber confident, he is at the same time self-deprecating, never claiming his views are the only or the best in analyzing performance. You know what? I've convinced myself to add another star to the rating -- just realized in the course of writing how much I am enjoying this book.

I am a member of the site, so I have seen most of this. It could stand to have more stats in there.

Numbers are science, and science can give a glimpse of things to come. "The Bill James Gold Mine" delves into the finer points of statistics and how analyzing them gives a greater understanding of the game of baseball. Every aspect of the game is analyzed as Bill James gives readers much in depth thoughts and theories to who shined and who sunk this year. "The Bill James Gold Mine" is an absolute must for any baseball fanatic who enjoys the deeper, scientific aspects of the game.