Summary: a stats book that looks like a baseball book
Comment: Most baseball fans like statistics, so it should not be a disappointment to them to find out that this is an elementary statistics book where the statistical methods are taught to explain how to adjust batting averages in order to compare players in terms of their batting averages. The average baseball fan would be interested in comparisons of Ty Cobb, Tony Gwynn, Ted Williams and others who are acknowledged as the best hitters for average in the game. Schell considers factors that make direct comparisons unfair and he provides methods to adjust for these factors based on the vast amount of statistical data available to him that has been gathered throughout the history of major league baseball.
Key effects include the home ball park, stage of career and interventions such as the lowering of the pitcher's mound after 1968. To adjust for players whose abilities decline substantially in the latter years of their career Schell uses only the first 8000 at bats to gauge the players hitting ability. This helps players like Mickey Mantle whose performance declined appreciably at the end of his career due in part to injuries.
Schell provides a lot of interesting statistics and comparisons. Ty Cobb had the highest lifetime batting average but after all the adjustments finishes second to Tony Gwynn, a result that will surely create controversy.
Nevertheless Schell's approach makes sense and his results are not too surprising. As he notes his adjustments move many of the modern players whose numerical averages are lower than the players from the late 1800s and early 1900s, ahead on the list.
Schell relates how he showed up to meet and congratulate Gwynn on the date of his 8000th at bat when he clinched first place based on the Schell adjustment system.
Mike Schell is a sports enthusiast and a professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina. In 2002 he was one of the invited speakers at the Sport Statistics Section Session of the Joint Statistical Meetings.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pay attention when you read
Comment: If other reviewers of the book noticed, in the introduction to the book, Schell writes that batting average is not the best way to rate a baseball player-Schell clearly states that the book measures the best HITTERS, not the best BATTERS-in which case he would have used many other batting stats("Statistics that combine various hitting events...are searching for the best batters. The search in this book is for the best hitters, that is, the players with the best chance to get a hit in a given at bat."). Unless you know about statistics the book is confusing, but you don't have to read all the technical notes. His conclusions, and his methods are very interesting and definitly worth reading, (although you may not agree with the methods he uses). Again, you may not fall in love with the book, but it's worth reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Valiant Effort to Level the Playing Field
Comment: Schell's methods are an excellent approach to putting individual performances in context. Those criticizing the book because it is statistically oriented are not Schell's audience: if I didn't like baseball poetry, I wouldn't buy a poetry book. If you don't like baseball statistics, don't buy a statistics book.
Those criticizing Schell's use of batting average haven't read the book carefully: Schell freely admits that batting average isn't the best statistic to measure players. But batting average is easily understood and known to most fans. How many typical fans can name the career leaders in on-base percentage or slugging average or explain how they are calculated?
Anyway, Schell's methods have lit a path that others may follow with other statistics like on-base percentage and slugging average. Indeed, toward the end of the book Schell applies his methods to on-base percentage and briefly discusses the results. Just because he chose a more popular statistic to introduce his methods doesn't undermine the usefulness of those methods. I found the book a little hard to read without a strong background in statistics, but I understand what Schell is trying to do, and it makes sense to me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Waste Of Paper
Comment: In this day and age, how can anyone take this book seriously? To rate hitters by batting average is simply a waste of effort because on-base percentage and slugging percentage correlate far better with scoring runs and winning games than batting average.
Customer Rating:
Summary: For Nerds Only!
Comment: BOOKLIST claims that "buried within every true baseball fan is a Nerd with a calculator and a scorecard" - a statement mildly amusing if not deeply offensive to 80-90% of the nation's dedicated baseball fans. There is far, far more to this beautiful game than mere number-crunching. Try poetry, drama, romance, myth, legend, simple competitive excitement. This book seems to miss the other 80-plus percent of the game and those other 80-plus percent of the readers and fans. And even for those who would rather sit in front of their computers than in the outfield bleachers, the author's measure of hitting greatness is at best the most narrow possible measure - the standard but highly unrevealing category of batting averages. There is much ado about nothing here.
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