2007 Bill James Handbook Review

By Thomas Fischer - Contributing Writer
01/04/2007

Most baseball fans would not likely recognize the name Henry Chadwick, though being a fan of the history of the game I recognize him as one of the true pioneers of early baseball who influenced the game with his pen, not with a bat. As a member of the press, Chadwick developed the contemporary box score, introduced statistics such as batting average and earned run average, wrote several manuals and edited various baseball guides. Additionally he was a prominent member of baseball’s early rules committees and his diligent work and committed love for the game greatly aided in popularizing baseball during its early years.

Bill James is a modern day baseball pioneer, and like Chadwick he has influenced the game of baseball with the pen and not a bat. It seems as though each year the Bill James Handbook presents some new facet of the game that people have not considered before. For the past two years James has looked at scoring efficiency and team efficiency and that was not something that was really thought about much before then but for those saber metrics fans such as myself it is deeply fascinating.

In this year’s version of the Bill James Handbook, once again excellently presented by Baseball Information Solutions, there is something new to go along with all the statistical features we fans have come to look forward to every year. New this year is an analysis of Manufactured Runs, and the Fielding Bible Defensive Awards.

As defined in the Handbook, a Manufactured Run is a run created in one of two ways:

• "Manufactured Runs (TYPE 1) are runs created by deliberate acts such as bunting and stealing bases"
• "Manufactured Runs (TYPE 2) are runs created by things such as infield hits, taking advantage of the defense, moving up two bases on singles, advancing on outs, and advancing on throws."

Mr. James thoroughly explains the concept of this analysis and then presents the new statistics for manufactured runs for each team in each league. Not only is this statistic presented in terms of Manufactured Runs but also it is broken down into each type of Manufactured Run as described above.

The other new feature in this year’s handbook is the Fielding Bible Defensive Awards. As the author of the Fielding Bible, John Dewan was encouraged by Bill James to assemble "a panel of experts" to determine who the best defensive players were in 2006. Mr. Dewan explains the process that he used to determine who the best were, and furthermore his panel determined not only the best at each position but they also recognized the other outstanding defensive players. As Dewan explains it, the Gold Glove Awards are presented each year without any mention of those players who came in as the runner up to the winner much less which player was the runner up to the runner up. These awards let the reader know all the position players that were considered and how they finished in the voting.

The usual features of the Handbook include primary statistics for each player that appeared in a Major League Baseball uniform in 2006, and for those players who have little major league experience, their minor league statistics are included with their primary statistics. Other regular features include ballpark indices, base running statistics, fielding statistics, and lefty-righty splits for batters and pitchers.

There is also analysis of each team’s skipper. It doesn’t matter how many times we read the local news paper article about how the boss man is doing this season, nothing can compare to actually breaking down the numbers Bill James developed to assess the performance of Major League managers.

The Career Assessment section is always interesting to explore. Whether you are interested in how much of a chance Barry Bonds has to break Aaron’s home run record or if you are more interested in which active pitchers have the best chance of reaching 300 career wins, this section is always a fan favorite.

Far and away this is the best source for statistics in the publishing industry on a yearly basis and I recommend any fan would enjoy digging into the quantitative side of baseball that is presented in this annual treasure.

Visit http://www.actapublications.com/, then click on Sports.