The Bill James Handbook 2008

by Baseball Info solutions

Simply put, The Bill James Handbook 2008 is the best and most complete annual baseball reference guide available today. Avid stat fans look forward to it every year, and casual baseball fans enjoy its comprehensive content. This book contains a myriad of stats on every hit, pitch and catch in Major League Baseball's 2007 season. New and key features Fielding Bible Awards Manufactured Runs Analysis – Improved Manager Records Baserunning Analysis Career data for every 2007 major leaguer Pitcher Projections Hitter Projections Team Efficiency Summary Player Win Shares

Genres: Baseball, Sports

482 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2003

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boy, do I enjoy grabbing a copy of this book year after year, One of the enjoyable features of tis book is the odds of players reaching major milestones, such as 3,000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 victories and so on. 3,000 hits? Adrian Beltre has a 94% chance, Miguel Cabrera an 81% chance, Albert Pujols a 73% chance, and Ichiro Suzuki a 71% chance. Then, a major drop off to Robinson Cano at 40%. 300 wins? Bummer. As the years go by, it seems harder and harder to get to 300. The best bet? Clayton Kershaw--with just a 31% chance. And so much can go wrong. He has "only" 98 victories to this point. Is there a chance for anyone to beat the all-tine home run record? Well, Cabrera is deemed to have a 1% chance. And that's it. No one else on the horizon.

Then, there are performance projections for the upcoming year. I like the way Chris Sale (White Sox) pitches. He is predicted to have a 15-8 season with a 2.96 ERA with 230 strikeouts in 207 innings pitched. We shall see. There is also a nice feature where the book considers projections off the mark from the prior year.One whiff? Chris Davis: projected to hit .277 with 41 home runs and 113 RBIs. The actuals? .96 with 26 homers and 72 RBIs. A good prediction? Adam Jones was predicted to hit .281 with 29 homers and 93 RBIs. He actually hit (believe it or not) .281 with (believe it or not) 29 homers and 96 RBIs.

Many other items are included--the records for each player, fielding prowess (not just fielding percentage), and so on.

Another good job in 2015.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book, but his projections are always way too optimistic. The average team should be .500 by definition, and yet if you add up the average teams wins and losses based on his numbers, the average team would win way more than 50% of their games. At the samem time, every year's handbook has plenty of insight into new ways of looking at things, and while I have issues with his current way of doing projections, his whole approach is clearly brilliant.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

An annual rite of late winter me is to pick up of Bill James's stuff and look at it. I have friends who religously quote James as if were a sacred writing. He does manage to put the game of baseball into a framework that causes you think outside the lines so to speak. He is a pioneer in making stats really show the value of a player. I usually pass through the stats because they bore me a little, but his commentary on players are fun to read.

[Sam Bauman · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was some cool stuff in it. Maybe I will refer back to it again. The problem was it was 90% stuff easily found on the Internet and I probably won't bother to look for information not found on the Internet ever again.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like baseball and endless charts of statistics, then this will be a great book for you.
-m