Baseball's Complete Players: Ratings of Total-Season Performance for the Greatest Players of the 20th Century

Rating:
Summary: An Important Work
Review: As a long-time baseball fan with an interest in the comparison of players, I read this book with considerable interest. I am acquainted with the developments in the field over the past thirty years - as is the author, which is evident from the many references in the book. And I was impressed with the credentials which Prof. Hoban brings to the table (he is a mathematician with an obvious love for the game and he has been published in the SABR Research Journal). He makes it clear that he admires the work of such people as Bill James and Pete Palmer - while not agreeing with everything that they have said.

Do I agree with the author's methods and results? I am not sure - the jury is still out on that. But the question is not really whether I agree or not. The value of the book is that it raises some very important questions about some of the assumptions made by some analysts over the years. Assumptions like adjusting for era and ballpark. And these questions are raised in an intelligent and understandable way.

And perhaps the most important thing of all is that I found it very difficult to argue with the author's conclusions about the best offensive and defensive players of the century. And his deliberately simple counting approach has much to recommend it. I would not have believed before reading this book that it would be possible to achieve these results by a relatively simple counting process. But, of course, that is the genius of the book - making somewhat complicated maneuvers seem so simple that anyone can understand (and criticize)them.

Agree or disagree all you want. But you must read this important book if you think that you know something about the analysis of baseball numbers.

A significant contribution to the field.

Rating:
Summary: SABRmetrics at its Best
Review: Bill James has defined sabrmetrics as "the search for objective truth about baseball." The author of this book is a member of SABR and has devised one of the most thoughtful, objective ways to view the accomplishments of the great position players. What apparently disturbs a few is that Prof. Hoban, a mathematician, has come up with an original (and simpler) approach that is both valid and intuitively pleasing and they cannot recognize that it is sabrmetrics at its best.

It appears that some people have difficulty realizing that we do not have a definitive way to compare the great players. And many of the complicated formulas devised by some over the past twenty years have only served to alienate many fans who cannot relate to them.

That is why this is such an important book. Hoban has devised a common sense approach to judging hitting and fielding accomplishments which can be understood by any fan. And his system obviously works. Just look at the results. And he goes into great detail in the book to explain the rationale behind what he has done. In fact, the points raised by his few critics here have been explained in detail in the book. Have they even read the book? I think not!

If you are interested in a new, thoughtful and logical approach to comparing the great position players in basball history, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: Superficial, weak analysis
Review: How seriously can you take a book that concludes Earl Averill was a better player than Mickey Mantle? You can't. The book is very flawed. Hoban simply chooses to disregard park effects and league context, and you cannot correctly evaluate players without adjusting for context. To take one obvious example: Chuck Klein's 1930 season was not the seventh best offensive season in history. I seriously doubt it was one of the top 50 seasons. Klein compiled these statistics in the best offensive season in the century, and in the best hitter's park in baseball. He hit .443 with 26 HR's at home, and .329 with 14 HR's on the road. Mickey Mantle's 1956 season, which did not make the top 25, was far better (to mention one of many possible examples).

It would be easy to keep pointing out more absurd statements the author makes, for instance: despite the HEQ score,Ellis Burks in 1996 did not have the 32nd best season of history; Coors Field grossly inflated his stats. One last point: of Hoban's top 20 offensive seasons, all but one was during the big hitting era of 1920-39. I would ask those readers who gave this book a good review: Is it really plausible that 95% of the greatest seasons in baseball history just happened to be in this era? This is simply not believable . This book is not worth the time of a serious fan of baseball. If you want a real analysis of baseball greatness, read Bill James' Historical Baseball Abstract.

Rating:
Summary: Very Impressive Research
Review: In 1998, Alex Rodriguez had the grteatest all-around season by a shortstop in major league history. He is the only shortstop to combine a 700 hitting season with a 400 fielding season. The only other infielder to ever achieve this 700/400 combination was second baseman Rogers Hornsby (who did it twice).

This is the sort of intriguing information that you can find in BASEBALL'S COMPLETE PLAYERS. I thoroughly enjoyed the author's attempt to combine both hitting and fielding skills.

A must-read for any fan who enjoys comparing the accomplishments of players who played in different eras of the 20th century.

Well written and very understandable.

Rating:
Summary: Very Impressive Research
Review: It is difficult for me to understand how any baseball fan could read this book and not enjoy it. That is, unless he feels that we already have all the answers - which is ridiculous.

The research and knowledge reflected in the book is very impressive. The author has attempted to combine the hitting and fielding acomplishments of all the great players of the century in a simple, understandable manner - and he has succeeded admirably.

This is the kind of research that we need - not complicated formulas that the average fan cannot even understand.

Babe Ruth as the greatest player and Willie Mays as the most complete player - makes sense to me.

A really good effort.

Rating:
Summary: This book does not offer any insight for most baseball fans.
Review: My brother, who knows what a baseball statistics nut I am, gave me this book as a birthday present. I have to admit that I am very impressed by the research that the book reflects and the fact that it is written for the average fan - not just for those like myself for whom baseball is a passion.

Rating and ranking the great players is always a tricky business. But, Prof. Hoban has done his homework very well and the result is a pleasure for all fans.

A great book!

Rating:
Summary: Not very good
Review: Outs don't count; no league adjustments; no park adjustments. These are "counting stats" amalgamated. As such, this might be one of the better counting systems around. You know, in a counting system, longevity is everything. So if you have a lot of hits and runs for many years you do well. I imagine Harold Baines will do very well in this system.

Who wouldn't do comparatively well? A productive player who didn't have a lot of longevity and who didn't make a lot of outs while playing in the Astrodome or Dodger Stadium in a strong pitching era.

You can bet Jim Wynn, who does well in Bill James' Runs Created system, will rank comparatively low in HEQ.

Readers should be aware that this book was roundly skewered on the listserve of the Society for American Baseball Research.

My suggestion: don't waste your money. Check it out of the library.

Rating:
Summary: Misguided, Simplistic, and Misleading
Review: This book is a crude attempt to rank players by taking a few basic stats and simply adding them up. Unfortunately, that's not the way that real baseball works. On the field, a team gets only 27 outs to do its scoring, and good players use up fewer than their share of these outs while poor players consume more than their quota, thus hurting their team's chances. "Baseball's Complete Players" (a terrible misnomer) does not recognize this basic fact, and therefore rewards players who simply accumulate high numbers without considering the "opportunity cost" of their performances. The result is predictable -- sure, Babe Ruth comes out first (he does in every rating system ever devised), but less distinguished players such as Earl Averill wind up being very overrated.

The fielding stats section is, if anything, even more misguided. And how can a book call itself "Baseball's Complete Players" when it leaves out 40% of the player population -- the pitchers?

Forty years ago, this might have been an interestingly flawed look at player analysis. But today, in the light of universally available computer analysis and the ongoing SABRmetric revolution, it is a tedious and self-important dinosaur of a book (the writing is excessively self-congratulatory and very repetitious) that can only mislead the average fan while driving more sophisticated observers up the wall with its myopic assumptions and questionable conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: A Significant Achievement
Review: This book represents a breakthrough in analyzing baseball numbers in order to compare players. The author, who is a life-long fan and a mathematician, creates a set of formulas to judge both hitting and fielding accomplishments. And he does this without using any of the common rate statistics like the batting average. It is like a breath of fresh air blowing away some of the old cobwebs covering baseball statistics.

Any baseball fan who thinks he has seen it all has to read this book and decide for himself whether he agrees with this approach. Only a mathematician who really knows the game would have had the vision and the confidence to develop this approach. And only a publisher like McFarland (of serious baseball research) would have had the foresight to publish it. If you want to open your mind to a new approach to an old effort, read this book.