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Last minute holiday gifts for baseball fans are always a bit problematic.  It is the off-season after all.  How about a book?


The Hardball Times Annual 2007 and the Bill James Handbook arrived at my home this month, and I opened them with the anticipation of someone 20 years younger.  The Hardball Times website is a regular daily stopping point for me, for the fascinating statistics, thoughtful analysis and entertaining writing.  And as for Bill James, how about saying that he is the pre-eminent baseball analyst of the last 30 years, and leaving it at that. I wish that I could recommend these books unreservedly, but that is impossible.

It is becoming harder and harder to write an annual with insights about major league baseball.  The information that is freely available on the internet is astounding, courtesy of thehardballtimes.com, baseballprospectus.com, baseballreference.com, baseballanalysts.com,  retrosheet.org, baseballmusings.com and many others.  It still would be possible to distil much of the information that surrounds players and teams (as the old Bill James annual abstracts did) into a useful and interesting package, but neither of these books achieves that difficult goal.

Instead, both books have collections of material of varying interest and quality.  The best material is purely original work.  In the Hardball Times Annual, that would be John Walsh's historical study of outfield arms.  Kill rates and hold rates are calculated for outfielders from the "retrosheet era", covering the careers and peers of Roberto Clemente, Jesse Barfield, and Vladimir Guerrero.  In this case, the results were entirely expected for me, but it is still very helpful to see the data and may be of special interest for those who did not see Jesse Barfield. In the Bill James Handbook, the original work on 2006 player baserunning (advancement rates, outs on the bases, bases taken) was interesting and useful.

The Hardball Times Annual also contains a summaries of the 2006 season from the perspectives of each of the teams, and also of the post-season.  The team summaries may be something that I will look back in 20 years, as I do the old Biil James annual abstracts, and find nuggets of gold, but for now, they seem to be a less thorough review of what I read every day on the internet.  The same can be said of the post-season summary.

The Hardball Times statistical package on its website is probably the best available on the internet, for the breadth and helpful presentation of the "ball in play" information, breakdowns for pitchers and batters of batted ball type- ground ball, fly ball, and pop-up, as well as calculated ratios, such as HR/fly.  The statistical package in the Annual carries this data a little further by providing run values for each batted ball type for each player.  There is unfortunately little of interest on the issue of defence evaluation- disentangling the role of pitching and defence in run prevention remains an important and understudied topic. 

Some of the best work in baseball research in 2006 concerned minor league baseball.  The Hardball Times writers Jeff Sackmann (minorleaguesplits.com) and Chris Costancio (firstinning.com) are at the cutting edge of these efforts.  The Annual contains an interesting and controversial top prospect list from Costancio, but none of the recent fascinating work from Sackmann.  Hopefully, we will see more minor league material in the 2008 Annual.

All in all, I can offer a qualified recommendation for the Hardball Times Annual 2007. It's a book that contains some insight and entertaining writing, and is good value at $19.95.  It can be ordered here.

The Bill James Handbook 2007 has less of interest to baseball fans in general, and perhaps more of interest to fantasy baseball aficionados.  Much of the book is taken up with career statistic summaries, which are less helpful than one can find on baseballreference.com.  Following the statistic summaries are player projections.  The batting projections for 2007 are reasonable, but there is no reason to believe that these projections will be more accurate than several other projections that are available such as Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA.  Career batting projections are provided, and frankly, they are headscratchers.  They assume good health for many years, even in players in their late 30s and early 40s.  The pitching projections are interesting, but unlikely to be reasonably accurate.  It is very difficult, or perhaps impossible (as Bill James suggests in the book), to project pitchers.

The Handbook could be helpful as a reference tool for fantasy players, but for others, I would take a pass.  It can be ordered here.

The Hardball Times Annual 2007/The Bill James Handbook 2007 | 15 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Pistol - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 11:24 AM EST (#161252) #
Mike - What'd you think of the Tommy John article in HT?

I haven't purchased the book, but I'll pick it up if I see it in a bookstore.

Mike Green - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 11:54 AM EST (#161253) #
The Tommy John study was interesting, but unfortunately did not have the analytic comprehensiveness to persuade me of the conclusion that pitchers in general are better after Tommy John surgery than they would be otherwise.  I was persuaded before the study that relief pitchers and control pitchers can and do succeed and thrive.  Unfortunately, there is no breakdown in the study by K rate and by workload post TJ. 
ayjackson - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 12:27 PM EST (#161254) #

I enjoy the HT site quite a bit, though I am still a novice when applying these advanced analyses of player worth and effectiveness.

I was reading the article on WSAB for free agent pitchers and had a question.  The anaylsis presented states that Suppan and Zito would provide two or three wins to the team that signs them over the course of a season.  Does this benchline analysis assume that a team could forego signing one of them, insert my mother into the rotation instead, and still count on 65 wins (provided the rest of the team was benchline)?

danjulien - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 12:47 PM EST (#161255) #
I'm finishing up Feeding the Monster today and it's fantastic!  It covers all aspects of Red Sox management and players along with their acquisition and good chapters about the playoffs.  Just if anyone's looking for any other suggestions :)  I'm pretty sure both the books discussed are under the tree waiting for me.
AWeb - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 01:09 PM EST (#161256) #

 Does this benchline analysis assume that a team could forego signing one of them, insert my mother into the rotation instead, and still count on 65 wins (provided the rest of the team was benchline)?

It assumes one has a benchline starter to ready to go. Janssen and Marcum, at their performance levels last year, were pretty close to this level, and most teams can scrounge up someone like that from AAA if they have to. KC is probably the best example of "baseline level" pitching, no one was much better for them last year then you would expect a decent AAA starter to manage.

I guess it depends on good your mother is in the end. Can she throw a knuckleball?

 

Mike Green - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 03:48 PM EST (#161257) #
Marcum was significantly above bench level last year; over his career to date, Marcum has been just a smidgen shy of average and actually average when one takes into account quality of opposition faced.  Bench level is 60% of expected. 

Ty Taubenheim would be a better example, although he had a lower ERA in 35 innings than Marcum.  Most teams have a "bench level starter" throwing in triple A. 
ayjackson - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 06:07 PM EST (#161258) #

I checked my mother's stats on the HT sites and she did come out a little worse than benchline - still better than Towers though, which is encouraging if you're my mother.

Truth be told, her sport of choice was rugby as a child.  She once ran down legendary fly-half Barry John from behind in a pick-up game in Llandeilo.  No shame for The King, as he went on to become the greastest fly-half the world has ever known.

rotorose - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 06:25 PM EST (#161259) #

I was just given a new book too: The Mind of Bill James by Scott Gray (Doubleday, 2006). Here is how Bill James introduced himself in his 1983 Baseball Abstract:

“Hi. My name is Bill James and I am an eccentric. The reason that I am eccentric is that I spend all of my time analyzing baseball games. Well, not all of my time – I have a wife to neglect – but most all of my time. I count all kinds of stuff that lots of people are sort of interested in, but nobody in his right mind would actually bother to count. I devise theories to explain how things in baseball are connected to one another”

An interesting book, and a description that could apply to most Bauxites…

Wildrose - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 11:45 PM EST (#161261) #
I'm a little  disappointed in the  Bill James book  as well. Many of the stats  can be found elsewhere on the internet for free.  What it does do is  provide a tantalizing glimpse at what the book could possibly be with partial  access to some amazing numbers found nowhere else.

These include breakdown by pitch type and velocity. You can learn Brad Penny had the highest average fastball in the N.L. last year. Roy Halladay threw the most curves, A.J. Burnett had the lowest opponent BPS  while using his curve.   Also some unique stuff on defence,base running and park factors is to be found, just not enough in detail however.

Rich Lederer at the fine Baseball Analysts web  site is currently doing a book review on the James book. 
Wildrose - Wednesday, December 20 2006 @ 11:57 PM EST (#161262) #
Rich's comments reminded me of the leaders in fly balls section found in the book, and  for the A.L. by a substantial margin it  was Frank Thomas.

Given the way the ball carries in the Rogers Centre (particularly for right handed hitters as the book points out) and given his tendency to  hit moon shots, Thomas if healthy, is set to hit many a home run at the old ball yard.

fozzy - Thursday, December 21 2006 @ 12:06 AM EST (#161263) #
Roy Halladay threw the most curves

This kinda surprises me, to be totally honest. It seems like Roy relies on his curve now less than ever, since he seems to be inducing so many more groundball outs. The big curve used to be his K pitch during his Cy Young campaign (I still have visions of batters turning away, thinking they were going to be hit in the face, as it broke right to the inside of the plate at the knees) - and it seems to been relegated to a 'show me' pitch to keep batters honest on his fastball, while he relies on his two-seamer and (subjectively less) his 9-to-3 slurve towards the dirt. It also surprises me that someone who throws one of the fewest pitches per nine innings can throw the most of a particular pitch, especially when you consider some of the AL pitchers that rely so heavily on it.
Wildrose - Thursday, December 21 2006 @ 08:24 AM EST (#161264) #
Halladay was tied with Mussina, 23.4 % of their pitches being  delineated as curves. Burnett who had the most effective curve, was not among the top ten in utilizing this pitch.

Great stuff I'm sure they don't include all the data because they probably sell this stuff to the clubs  for lots of bucks.

Dave Till - Friday, December 22 2006 @ 06:54 PM EST (#161293) #
It might be hard to define "curve" when referring to Halladay's pitches, as everything he throws bends a bit in some direction or other.

vw_fan17 - Friday, December 22 2006 @ 07:40 PM EST (#161296) #
Halladay was tied with Mussina, 23.4 % of their pitches being  delineated as curves. Burnett who had the most effective curve, was not among the top ten in utilizing this pitch.

I think fozzy read this as "Halladay threw the most NUMBER of curveballs", not the highest percentage of curveballs.

And if I can add in some subjective feelings, I'm not surprised AJ had the lowest BPS (BA + SLG, right?) on curveballs - MOST of them were either amazing curves where the guy just turned and walked to the dugout, or they were WAY out of the strikezone, and the guy took it. If he was fooled, he flailed away.

I don't think this means AJ has the best curveball - it's too inconsistent, IMHO. I'd like to see: #of curveballs SWUNG at, vs. number of curveballs taken. If you rank it as x:y, or x/y (the higher the number, the more swings), I'll bet Roy's x/y is much higher than AJs. But, that's just my guess.

VW
fozzy - Saturday, December 23 2006 @ 07:22 PM EST (#161321) #
I actually read it both ways, but regardless, I'm still surprised that he throws it almost 1/4 of the time.

Wonder why he seems to have abandoned his 12-to-6 curve ball for the 10-to-4 version. Something to do with the forearm troubles he experienced last year? Is it possible to find out how many curves he threw in his Cy Young campaign, for comparative purposes? I admit that what I can remember is purely subjective, so a hard number to see would certainly go a long way in my analysis.

Then again, it seems every year Doc surprises us with a revamped, refined approach. Part of his mystique, and likely a large reason he's so successful - it always seems like a craft that he's tweaking, and it's quite admirable. I just long for the 'big hook'.

On a related tangent, it seems to be that a lot of the Jays are moving away from the curveball altogether. Doc and AJ's curve has a lot more sideways break on it like a slider, while Frasor and McGowan have abandoned it altogether. BJ, League, Rosario, Accardo, Janssen, Ramirez, Taubenheim and Tallet all use sliders only, while Towers and Marcum both mix it in briefly as a 'show me' pitch. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Downs, and sometimes (though it seems like he never uses it) Chacin using it exclusively. With Lilly now gone (I'll miss his huge curve) it seems the club just doesn't throw a lot of hooks anymore.

The Hardball Times Annual 2007/The Bill James Handbook 2007 | 15 comments | Create New Account
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