The Bill James Gold Mine 2009

by Bill James

For decades, the name Bill James has been synonymous with cutting-edge baseball statistical analysis. In his latest work, James lives up to that reputation with the The Bill James Gold Mine 2009 - a groundbreaking collection of original essays, statistical profiles, and hidden "nuggets" of information worth their weight in gold. In seventeen original essays and numerous new statistical measures, Bill James goes beyond the numbers and provides the witty, irreverent, and stingingly accurate analysis for which he has become famous.

Genres: Nonfiction, Baseball

320 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2009

About the author

George William “Bill” James (born October 5, 1949, in Holton, Kansas) is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose. His Baseball Abstract books in the 1980s are the modern predecessor to websites using sabermetrics such as Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Primer (now Baseball Think Factory).

In 2006, Time named him in the Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world. He is currently a Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox. In 2010, Bill James was inducted into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James

Reviews

[Rodger Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill James is a terrific baseball writer, but these recent annual Gold Mine books are not nearly as good as the old Abstracts were. Mostly, James reports statistical oddities -- interesting, but some focus on small sample sizes that the author taught readers to ignore long ago. Still, some new James is better than no new James. I especially enjoyed the occasional short essays between some of the team pages. For example, this book includes an interesting bit of research producing what James calls "U scores." Essentially, he's looking for unusual performance by aging players -- and many of the players listed in results reflect a who's-who of suspected steroid users.

[Lee (Rocky) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as great as the old Abstracts but still several great essays and the usual insight and analysis. Bill James can do no wrong by me.