Incredible Baseball Stats: The Coolest, Strangest Stats and Facts in Baseball History

by Kevin Reavy, Ryan Spaeder, Wade Boggs (Foreword)

As America's pastime since the mid-1800s, baseball offers the sights, sounds, and even smells that are deeply entrenched in our culture. But for some, the experience can be less sensory. Some, such as Ryan Spaeder and Kevin Reavy, live for baseball statistics. Stats give the game historical context and measurables for past, present, and predictive analysis.

Incredible Baseball Stats helps tell unique baseball stories, showcasing extraordinary stats and facts in baseball history, through the 2015 season.

For example, in 2015, the Nationals’ Bryce Harper broke out in a major way. He batted .330/.460/.649 with 42 home runs en route to his first MVP Award. It was his fourth MLB season, but he was still younger than NL Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant. He became the youngest player to lead the league in both on-base percentage and homers in the same season since Ty Cobb in 1909. Through 2015, he has a career .902 OPS (143 OPS+), the same OPS and adjusted OPS that Henry Aaron had through his first four seasons—and Hammerin’ Hank was nearly a year older!

The authors have scoured the records for untold tales and looked at familiar ones with new statistical insights, to create Incredible Baseball Stats , a perfect book for baseball fans from coast to coast.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.

Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2016

Reviews

[Chris Jaffe]

I got the book because I liked Spaeder's twitter feed (@TheAceofSpaeder), and I wanted to see how they'd try to translate that into a book format. It didn't seem like an easy fit - and apparently it isn't.

Meh. The book is pretty underwhelming. There's a chapter on each team, mostly 8-10 pages long. The typical chapter has a few chapter giving an overview of franchise history, and then it has a mini-section (2-3 paragraphs) on a half-dozen of the most important players from the franchise, with some various stats about how great the players were. Then there's a page to page-and-a-half catch all of random stats from the franchise. I mean...... that's pretty generic. You get a barely there covering of each franchise, and a brief overview of some of their best players. If you already a little familiar with baseball history, there really isn't much here to learn. And frankly, the stats can be a bit wearisome.

Some of the nuggets are fun. (Rod Carew could've gone 0-for-96 in 1977 and still won the batting title. Nolan Ryan's stats in his 40s are similar to Mariano Rivera's career stats), but mostly it's just pretty generic and wearying.

Because a few nuggets are nice, and the book is easy to get through, I'll give it two stars. But it's a lot closer to one star than it is to three stars.

[Steven Peterson]

A nice little bon bon. The Introduction note the context for the book: "Stat[istic]s tell stories." One feature of the book is a team by team analysis, based on sets of statistics appropriate for each.

One of my best friends has always been a Yankee fan. As an homage to him, here are some facts. Up front, we learn that "The Yankees were never sub-.500 during any span of 162 games played by Derek Jeter. Babe Ruth batted .401 through a 255 game period from April, 1923 through August, 1924. Another Ruthism: He had five seasons with these slashes--.350/.500/.725 (batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage). All other players in baseball history=4. We also see that about 15% of Lou Gehrig's stole bases were steals of home.

My favorite team is the Chicago White Sox. Growing up, my favorite player was Nellie Fox. Here's a stat on him. From July 1954 to June, 1959, he played 741 games. He was hit by pitches (60) more times than he struck out (59). Frank Thomas (The Big Hurt) had the highest on base percentage (.419) since 1946.

And so on. . . .

Overall, a lot of fun!

[Leslie]

Putting statistics -- and nothing but statistics -- in a narrative format is not a good idea. Charts and graphs are a much better choice. Alas, this book contains no charts or graphs.

And then there are the errors in their research. For example, “There was one piece of hardware that Schilling could at least share with Johnson in 2001-- World Series MVP. It’s the only instance the award has ever been split.” Wrong. The award was split in 1981 between Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager.

[Dick Hamilton]

There are things to like, and not like, about this book. First, there are multiple instances where the author repeats a fact - once is enough. Second, in making a point relative to performance, the author takes strange periods of time, say August 3rd of one year through June 1st of the next year, to provide a players statistics. While this is interesting, this is playing with the data - find the best time period possible and present this. Commissioned stock brokers play this trick. Last, the author will combine a group of statistics - say, a certain minimum number of doubles, stolen bases, and runs scored in a season - in such a way the the player being presented is either the only player to accomplish this or is part of a group comprised only of Hall of Famers. While interesting, again, this is another way of effectively misrepresenting results. Otherwise, the book provides a number excellent data points. By presenting the information by team only, some players, Rusty Staub is an example, who had excellent careers but moved around frequently, are omitted but this also allows the fan of a team to focus in on the team only.

[Alyssa]

Truly enjoyable! but only if... you have a sabermetrics background and are willing to do your own research. For someone who dedicated one year of undergraduate study to baseball statistics, this book took me an incredibly long time to read; merely because every chapter I found myself researching a statistic, player, team, ballpark, time period, etc. As a stand alone, the book probably deserves 3 stars, as you will only remember so many of the thousands of statistics Reavy and Spaeder list. Readers would probably find the book more enjoyable if conducting research on a specific player or team, thus only reading sections rather than every page. I read from cover to cover, awarding the work with an extra star for the journey the book presented to me in terms of baseball research. The authors rejuvenated my appreciation for the greats and my love for the game.

[Tim Basuino]

Given my general love of baseball, I received this as a gift and was genuinely curious as to how it'd turn out. Didn't expect anything too deep, but thought it'd at least be an interesting journey.

Well, it wasn't. Yes, there was the occasional statistical nugget, i.e. Joe Smith hit so-and-so between date a and date b, better than 142 Hall-of-Famers. But, the effort drowns in self-awareness ("That's RESPECT, Man!") and inaccuracies.

I suppose this works if you're mildly acquainted with the game and want an entry drug to dig a bit deeper, but beyond that this is bathroom material.

[Cristian A. Huidobro]

Good book. Requires updating.

The great thing about digital books: they could be updated. This one surely could use some updating, specially for a Cubs or an Astros(*) fan. It also has some redaction errors that make hard to discern what kind of is describing. I'd give it 3.5 stars but I'm adding 0.5 EAR (read the book).

[Paul]

Lots of baseball stats.

I think any diehard fan of baseball should read this book. Basically this book is one that documents the interesting stats of each mlb team. definitely a fun read, although some illustrations or pictures would be better.

[Jeff Walzer]

Stats, stats, and more stats!

Incredible dive into every nook and cranny of every teams’ stats - just when you think you know everything, this book adds to your knowledge and exposes some unknown and wonderful nuggets that will wow you

[Barry Mann]

So many cool stats, can't keep any of them straight in my head, may have to read it again and again!

[Kyle Archibald]

Good baseball book

Good read. Good idea to go to the back of the book and review what some of the stats mean before reading. Plenty of information.

[Jim Blessing]

This was a book about each team's history of best players per the latest analytical statistics.

[Jerry]

It was ok. I think anyone with access to baseball reference could take some time and write a book like this if they have any interest in baseball.

[Terry]

Very interesting book. A lot of fascinating stats.
If you love baseball, this is a must read.

[Andy Polizzi]

You know what you're getting with a book titled and subtitled as this one is. But like too much ice cream, sometimes you can wind up with a headache. By the time you reach you reach the Giants, the last team in the book, you're reeling from the stats. Many are, as promised, cool, strange, and even incredible, but many are too manufactured just to fill up the white space of the page. Just one example of many, just from the Giants page: "3 - The number of starts in the World Series by Christy Mathewson and Madison Bumgarner, under age 26, with 0-1 runs allowed - a major league record." My comment: "Who cares?"

Also, there are egregious errors. One ""Stats Incredible" lists the number 114 as the total HRs in 1961 by Maris (61) and Mantle (54). Huh? Check your math! Another narrative refers to Kenesaw "Mountain" Landis as if Mountain is a nickname. Mountain was Landis' REAL middle name.

An OK book, but read it in shifts, and maybe take some "incredible" stats with a grain of salt.

[Ben]

Incredible Baseball Stats is a book that goes through every Major League Baseball team's brief history and looks at some of the most interesting and unique facts about the teams and their players.

I really enjoyed the facts about players, many of them are mind blowing compared to what normal players can do. The backstories of the teams were also very interesting, especially since many of them came from cities that seem unrelated to the teams today.

I didn't enjoy the fact that some of the team summary went on for a little bit to long and some of the stats were difficult to comprehend sometimes.

[Rick]

Reavy and Spaeder do a good job going team-by-team, highlighting a few great players from each team's history, as well some current players who deserve attention. It's a good way for newer fans (or newer stat geeks) to get acquainted with some history. I'd love it if the next book (is there a next book?) is a little more in depth, and brings new insights for hardcore fans.

[Randy Ades]

Overall a good read. Error in the year that Willie Mays won Rookie of the year, 1954 not 1961.

[Gerald Matzke]

While the stats that were included in this book were interesting, it was limited by the author's plan to cover all of the major league teams in one book. The most valuable information had to do with the beginnings of each of the teams. There just wasn't enough room for all of the information that could have been included.

[Paul Smith]

don't go into this expecting hard core statistical analysis. More of a trivia book, but one that uses advanced stats in passing on the trivia.