Customer Reviews

STATS All-Time Major League Handbook

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Alphabetical lists of every player who performed in major league baseball. Contains standard stats- hits, hr, avg, era, etc. plus harder to find GIDP, HBP, SF, SH, IBB as well as unique stats like park effects and runs created. Pitcher batting stats and comprehensive fielding stats are included. A must have for serious baseball statisticians, although much of the information can be found for free on the internet. Print is very small.

If you're the type to pour over baseball statistics, for any reason, this is the best book available. I've owned every edition of Total Baseball, MacMillan's Baseball Encyclopedia, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball, and this one. And this is the one.

Not only is every batting and pitching stat in here, but fielding is here, by position, and by year as well. Better yet, this edition estimates innings in the field, so that range factors for defensive susbstitutes are now graded properly (sadly, though, the defensive innings are not published).

This book is particularly good for those who play baseball simulations and enjoy creating their own ratings for players (charts, computer files, whatever). For roughly the cost of one Red Sox ticket, you can have this book and enjoy it for years to come (or at least until the 3rd edition is released).

This book takes up where Macmillan's and Total Baseball leave off statistically. For years, I looked for full fielding stats and pitcher's hitting stats and couldn't find them. The Handbook provides these in full.

The only drawback is that team and record information is not provided. But, then again, who'd be able to lift the book?

A must buy for statistics freaks!!!

This book is stunning. It weighs in at around 9 pounds and none of the weight is wasted <g> on essays, articles, summaries, etc. There are actually some great pieces on statistics at the beginning of the book, but the focus is on the numbers. A lot of weight is put on the Runs Created stat, so some understanding of that is helpful. The book has some very useful numbers for each player: for pitchers, the League ERA (either for the year you are looking at or over the pitcher's career; for hitters the league Runs Created per 27 outs (again by year or career); for fielders, the league Fielding Percentage (year or career). These are great comparison numbers.

This book does not replace Total Baseball (which is a must have for its great essays, leader charts, etc.) but its a must for the hard-core fan. I can't wait to see the All-Time Major League SourceBook!!!

Complete stats of every player. Includes fielding stats for all position players and batting records for pitchers! If you have seen the first edition, you must buy the 2nd edition.

This is more complete than "Total Baseball". A true sports fan will appreciate this great work!

I've long been skeptical about the ability of anyone to compile a true representation of baseball's complete history in a statistical format, but I've got to tell you - STATS and Bill James have done it! Every player, every stat imaginable is in here. Nothing was left to the imagination, and I'm damn glad it wasn't! Great job STATS people!

This book, while promising to have every stat imaginable, left out the one statistic I was looking for. Blown Saves. I have not found one single publication that listed individual blown saves statistics. So mr. James, if you ever get wind if this, please, put blown saves statistics into one of your books. Thank you. PS (Every other aspect of the book was flawless)

Just got the 2nd edition. I like that the park factor is now listed alongside the league averages, and that the park factor is half-weighted on that year and half on surrounding years. I like that the range factor is now based on estimated defensive innings instead of games. I was disappointed that there was no "win shares" calculation; re-examining the ad in the 2000 handbook, I see Win Shares is actually a separate book which hasn't come out yet, not a new stat in this book as the ad originally made me think.

A week or so ago, I ordered the All-Time Baseball Sourcebook, and it was missing many statistics, and this gave them in concise format. Every pitching, batting and YES fielding stst is included, including three not given in any other book, sacrifice hits, errors, and player's fielding pct. right next to league fielding pct. at his position.

There's absolutely no question, this is better than Sourcebook and doesn't cost a penny more.

I was promised by STATS, Inc. over the phone that this book would have the stats that I so long deisired for. However, upon receiving this publication I found thousands of pages of misreprensative interpretations of performance, but not the actual on-field statistics that I was looking for. With the advent of computers, I thought that STATS could have been much more accurate and complete with baseball history, like Macmillan.