Customer Reviews

The Bill James Handbook 2006

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you're looking for Bill James' insightful and humorous player evaluations and comments, hold on to your money. However, if you're looking for the most comprehensive and nicely packaged stats for the upcoming season, then this is a good purchase at a low price.

The heart of this book is the same as it's been for the past couple of years. Lots of player stats presented in an easy-to-read format, managerial tendencies, projections for 2006, career and injury projections, and a glossary of statistical terms for the uninitiated. You won't find any discussion or essays, which I'm sure we'd all love to see more of from James. And if you're not used to dealing with statistics, I'd probably recommend reading some of his other titles to accompany this, as they tend to give better explanations of what the stats mean, and how/why they were developed.

Another reviewer mentioned that most of these stats are available for free, and that's true. But most of us, I think, would rather have a book we can just grab off the coffee table and flip open, instead of pulling out our laptops and heading to the BP or Baseball Reference sites.

As with past editions of this book, I'd recommend it to all baseball statheads or those who are looking for a handy reference for 2006. Along with the Baseball Prospectus annual, which will likely be out in February, I'd consider this an essential purcahse.

The bulk of the book is taken up by the career stats of most active players. That's nice and all, but in this day and age, when anyone with a computer has easy access to those stats and more, I would like to get a little more out of something I'm paying for. The book does have projections, win shares, and a bit more; these are the reasons I bought the book. Still, they make up a small fraction of the text, and some of the projections seem poorly (or lazily) thought out. The career projections in particular often don't pass the laugh test: he has numerous active players blowing past 600 career HR, Pujols with 830, and a crippled, de-steroided 41-year-old Barry Bonds reaching 900. It's like he just took their career production to date, projected it forward some number of games, and threw in some basic aging factor. The career projections do come with the caveat that they assume that the player will be healthy, but what kind of assumption is that? Isn't health a vital factor in any kind of projection, and isn't it predictable to some degree? In any event, what bothers me is not so much the methodology, as it is the fact that projections like that appear sloppy, lazy, and unedited. No one stopped to think, Do I really want to predict this many active players coming close to 700 HR? Will an injured 41-year-old really hit nearly 200 more HR in the remainder of his career?

The bottom line: the book isn't *bad*, but I expect more. I'm aware that James is something of a demigod in the stathead community, but I just don't think this is a very inspiring effort. You can do better for your money: Baseball Prospectus' annual contains stats you can't get elsewhere, more sensible projections, a LOT more analysis, and just plain more content -- all for about the same money you might spend on James' book.

Lets see how well this book holds up against it's publishers claims.

"Career data for every 2005 major leaguer (and a few bonus players) with more statistical categories than any other book." - Yes, but one can find this data online at countless sites. For free.

"Bill James' uniquely insightful statistics: Manager's Record, Win Shares, Team Efficiency Summary, and Career Assessments." - True, but notice this didn't claim "Bill James' uniquely insightful commentary," because there is hardly any sign of that throughout the book. What we do get is less than 1 or 2 pages per piece.

"New! Pitcher projections, plus hitter projections and career hitter projections." - James did not contribute - at all - to the pitcher projections, which were done by a bunch of people I never heard of. James did the hitter projections, introduced by a short, non-comprehensive piece comparing his projections for the 2005 Phillies and how they turned out. Most of that piece is just statistical comparison - little commentary. Beyond that, the projections are just projections with no essays, commentary or anything else you'd expect from James.

"New! Leaderboards; now with more leaderboards than ever before!" - So what! Get the vast majority of these online. For free.

"New! Baserunning Analysis" - Interesting to some, but not me, and I tend to be intrigued by stats.

This book, honestly, is a waste. There's little need for it - it's a book of stats, and the vast majority of these stats can be found online, for free. The amount of writing from James is extremely small, nothing beyond a few short introductory pieces to certian sections. By his standards, that's a disgrace.

There is an update to projections in this book later on this year - for 9.99 - almost the price of the book itself. My suggestion is, clearly, skip this. If you want an insightful baseball book with commentary for stats/projections... get Shandler's Baseball Forecaster, which offers projections updates for free. If you're just looking for strong baseball insight, check out the Hardball Times. But whatever you do, skip this.

What a ripoff this book is. I bought it, expecting a lot of player analysis from James, and all it basically is... is a book listing stats... 90% of which can be had online for free, with the remaining few so utterly obscure that they're not even worth worrying about.

So then I thought the 2006 projections would be the saving grace of this book, but that whole section again provides no meat. Just blind projections, with no individual explanations. Worse yet, James had nothing to do with these projections... he wasn't even involved, yet they appear in his book as if he was. A bunch of no-namers did the projections, a colossal disappointment.

If you bought this book expecting the type of analysis James provided in his "Historical Baseball Abstract," you'll be greatly letdown. I was looking forward to this book's arrival, but within a few minutes, I was thinking... what the hell did I waste my money on this garbage for?

I found it very useful in preparation for my fantasy baseball draft. The appendices alone were worth the money for the book. Bill James' expertise and the player projections and outlooks for 2006 helped me make some decisions for rookies and younger sophomore players (a la Kyle Davies or Robinson Cano). Since we are a keeper league, this book was a great companion book for me as he gave BA, DLG, and OBP percentages for players for next yr for batters, projections for pitchers down to wins/losses, innings pitched, ERA, saves, and probability of injury. Worth buying. I will buy this book every year now. It put me a step ahead.

What else do you need to say? Bill James is the master of baseball stats and this is another great publication.

This book provides all the numbers you'd want, including most of the Bill James / SABR calculations (win shares, et al). If you want more personal information on players (career accomplishments, for instance) you won't find them here.

This is the third year of the Baseball Handbook in its new incarnation, and once again, it offers all the expected excellence. This is not a glitzy analysis, but the best working sets of statistics and day to day information available in a well-reasoned format. The "forecasts" for hitters and (this year) pitchers may entice roto-heads, but the guts of this are the solidl presented numbers.

For those people who bought this book expecting Bill James' commentary, it's not the fault of the book that you didn't read the product description. This is a reference book and the best of its kind, well worth having at hand at any baseball function.

The only quibble I have is that more minor league statistics aren't given. Once a player has three years of major league play, even if it's one game each year, his minor league statistics are no longer shown unless he played there in 2005. Thus, this rating is really 4.5 stars, but I rounded it up to 5 to make up for the people below who gave it one star because they were too stupid to realize what they were buying.

This book has great stats and is well organized, and is essential if you want to be able to quickly flip through stats. Don't be a geek bringing your laptop to a draft. Bring this book and be confident.