When Bill James published his original Historical Baseball Abstract in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the Chicago Tribune as the “holy book of baseball.” Now, baseball's beloved “Sultan of Stats” (The Boston Globe) is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium. Like the original, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is really several books in one. The Game provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In The Players, you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called “Win Shares,” a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the Reference section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.

The first-to-market, most comprehensive, insightful, and groundbreaking annual baseball book on the market. A must-have book or gift for every true fan, with lifetime statistics and leader boards for every player in the major leagues and projections for how they might do in the future.

Since he first began publishing his Baseball Abstracts in the 1980s, Bill James has constantly challenged conventional wisdom by asking simple questions like, "Is that really true?" or "What if we looked at the question this way?" He has sparked a virtual revolution in the way the game of baseball is understood and played, from how players are evaluated or positioned to whether or not they should attempt to bunt or steal a base. In Solid Fool s Gold James continues his lifelong work with new analyses of: Hot pitchers, clutch pitching, and "late career" players The predictability of RBI A better way to organize the minor leagues The 33 best starting rotations and the worst teams of all time The best pitching matchups of the 1980s (and 2010) How the "Expansion Time Bomb" will affect the Hall of Fame But it is not just baseball that draws James inquisitive eye. He discusses the growing expectation for tips and decreasing effectiveness of advertising; his new method for measuring rainfall; the counterproductive use of physical stop lights and red-light cameras; and the statistical inefficiencies of the federal Transportion Security Administration. James wonders how Buck O Neil would have related to his ancestor s cousin (Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds), proposes whimsical rules for Olympic NASCAR Racing, and poeticizes about Ricky Weeks and WikiLeaks. He compares the chances of a particular-size town producing a Justin Verlander or a William Shakespeare, imagines Roger Maris apologizing in heaven for having beaten Babe Ruth s single-season home run record, and explains how to "battle expertise with the power of ignorance." As a bonus, he includes one of his seminal articles from The Bill James Baseball Abstract 1983 titled "The Law of Competitive Advantage" and looks at how it has held up over the intervening years.

In this second collection of recent articles (the first was Solid Fool's Gold), groundbreaking sabermetrician and baseball historian Bill James takes his unique way of looking at the world and applies it to topics as diverse as the major league players who went out on top, whether ground ball pitchers are as good (or as bad) as people think, do hitters like Yasiel Puig have hot hand streaks (they do) and why (that's a different question), and do teams have tough stretches and soft patches in their schedules (they do) and how to mention them. Along the way, James takes several detours to discuss his views on classical music, fiction versus non-fiction, keeping will animals in captivity, conservatives and liberals, and several other things that interest or offend him. He even includes a couple of his favorite old baseball stories and a new way to summarize something's or someone's history in exactly 10-25-50-100-200-500 words.

The first and best annual baseball annual each year, containing top-flight analysis and the complete up-to-date statistics on every major league player, team, and manager in the major leagues through last season.

Arguing about the merits of players is the baseball fan's second favorite pastime and every year the Hall of Fame elections spark heated controversy. In a book that's sure to thrill--and infuriate--countless fans, Bill James takes a hard look at the Hall, probing its history, its politics and, most of all, its decisions.