The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches (Paperback)

by Bill James (Author), Rob Neyer (Author) "It has been our policy, since we began this effort, simply to call every pitch by whatever name its author called it..." (more)
Key Phrases: pitch selection, pretty good fast ball, sinking fastball, Baseball Magazine, The Scouting Report, The Sporting News (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them -- these days it's the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information. That's what preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer realized over lunch more than a dozen years ago. Since then, they've been compiling the centerpiece of this book, the "Pitcher Census," which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. The Guide also offers:

• A "dictionary" describing virtually every known pitch

• The origins and development of baseball's most important pitches

• Top ten lists: best fastballs, best spitballs, and everything in between

• Biographies of some of the great pitchers who have been overlooked

• More knuckleballers and submariners than you ever thought existed

• An open debate concerning pitcher abuse and durability

• A formula for predicting the Cy Young Award winner

• Something fresh and new: Bill James' "Pitcher Codes"

The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers is about understanding pitchers, and baseball's action always starts with the pitchers. It's also about entertaining debates and having a great deal of fun with the history of a game that obsesses so many.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Fireside (June 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743261585
• ISBN-13: 978-0743261586
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #261,533 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worth getting, June 15, 2004

By	Mark (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews

First of all, the price is definitely right. There is a lot of valuable information in this book and it's fairly inexpensive.

The first section of the book consists of some interesting biographies of some very good pre-war pitchers that baseball fans should probably know more about, as well as some lists of who threw the best types of each pitch and definitions of different pitches. Best pitch I've ever seen? Has to be Mariano Rivera's cutter.

The second section is a census of pitchers with 1000 IP or 400 games, showing what pitches they threw. This section can get a bit dry at times. It is interesting to see, in certain cases, how pitchers threw differently pitches at different times in their careers.

The final section is a collection miscellaneous Jamesian-style essays that we know and love. There are some trivialities, such as the essay on "unique records" (i.e. only one pitcher has ever gone 24-5) but I enjoyed this section. James also tries to shoot down pitcher abuse statistics, but I didn't find this very compelling since the data set seemed too small and had the potential of serious biases (as mentioned in the follow-up article).

My one major criticism about this book is that a lot of the information in the pitcher's census part (which comprises at least 2/3 of the book) is more useful from a historical records point of view rather than an interesting read. It's an incredible research job, no question, but reading that some pitcher in the 1920s threw "1. Fastball 2. Nickel Curve" does not do it for me.

I would definitely recommend this book overall though. I'm sure I'll be dipping in and out of it for most of the summer. It's something you can come back to again and again, not something that you are necessarily going to read cover to cover. The essays are very good as always and the book has a "replacement-level" price and "all-star" (though not "hall-of-fame", to be sure) content :)

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, but worth the reasonable price, June 24, 2004

By	Victor Illonardo (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

I know I will be beaten with a sabermetric heresy stick for saying this, but the book was a disappointment. I've read all of Neyer's and James' books and eagerly anticipated this new one.

The majority of the book is a catalogue of what pitchers threw (fastball, slider, etc.) and, in some cases, a snippet of scouting information. I am a huge baseball fan, but it just wasn't interesting to me. Neyer and James must have spent an extraordinary amount of time to complete this task, and I admire that.

There are a few interesting bios of pitchers you otherwise would never have heard of. Also, James gives a terrific rebuttal of pitchers abuse points, a system developed by Baseball Prospectus.

The book is very reasonably priced and is worth it for the articles noted above. Still it doesn't compare with James' best (the Historical Abstract, What Ever Happened to the Hall of Fame) or Neyer's (Green Monster, Dynasties).

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An underrated and terrific book, September 11, 2004

By	Mark Cannon (Larchmont, NY) - See all my reviews

I judge a book not by what it doesn't have, but what it DOES have. And this book has all the things you'd expect in another great book from Bill James or Rob Neyer.

It has information you can't find anywhere else and probably never thought you could. Where else could you find accounts of exactly HOW all these pitchers pitched, all in one volume? It's the result of a decade of research by the two authors and their assistants.

In additional to the basic information, there are the usual essays, plus the usual Bill James digressions and asides. It's all very well organized. There's no trouble knowing where to find what you want.

And, as usual, it makes you THINK, and it makes you realize things that are relevant not just to baseball but to everything. One of the opening chapters focuses on how much the subject depends on linguistics and vocabulary, and how we might think a source tells us something but it doesn't really, because we don't understand the meanings of the words and phrases that are being used. Usually this is because the language has evolved over time, but sometimes it's because the language is used arbitrarily or sloppily. This is true about "knuckleballs" and "sliders" and "curves." But we readily realize that it can apply to anything.

The introductory chapter includes some duelling between the authors about things, some of which would seem to be "facts" but which are hard to pin down. It's interesting to see how much remains debatable about such a seemingly straightforward subject, even after years of research, and how much it will forever be arguable.

Especially interesting is the material about how the mechanics and strategy of pitching have evolved over the years, and WHY. In most instances there were specific reasons and fairly clear dividing lines for the major changes.

My one criticism would be that the content is indeed a bit erratic. One of the book's purposes is to catalog any noteworthy idiosyncrasies of a pitcher's style. But I notice that on some of the guys with the very most famous idiosyncrasies, you find nothing or almost nothing. For example, there's nothing about what Al Hrabosky was famous for, and almost nothing about Luis Tiant's hilarious mannerisms.

Still.....highly recommended for Bill James/Rob Neyer fans, and for anybody who enjoys interesting baseball material that's unlike what you've ever seen.