New York Times
[A] trenchant attempt to reorder the hierarchy. . . . [Schell's] calculations produce a new all-time greatest hitter, revealed in sometimes breathless prose.— Joseph Kahn
Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters: How Statistics Can Level the Playing Field
Michael J. Schell
Genre
Sports & Adventure
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
5.36 (w) x 8.24 (h) x 0.78 (d)
Pages
328
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Publication Date
March 2005
ISBN
9780691123431
Book ISBN 10
0691123438
About Book
Reviews
— Joseph Kahn
— Randall J. Swift
— Earl Gutskey
— New York Times
— Los Angeles Times
Tony Gwynn is the greatest hitter in the history of baseball. That's the conclusion of this engaging and provocative analysis of baseball's all-time best hitters. Michael Schell challenges the traditional list of all-time hitters, which places Ty Cobb first, Gwynn 16th, and includes just 8 players whose prime came after 1960. Schell argues that the raw batting averages used as the list's basis should be adjusted to take into account that hitters played in different eras, with different rules, and in different ballparks. He makes those adjustments and produces a new list of the best 100 hitters that will spark debate among baseball fans and statisticians everywhere.
Schell combines the two qualifications essential for a book like this. He is a professional statistician—applying his skills to cancer research—and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball. He has wondered how to rank hitters since he was a boy growing up as a passionate Cincinnati Reds fan. Over the years, he has analyzed the most important factors, including the relative difficulty of hitting in different ballparks, the length of hitters' careers, the talent pool that players are drawn from, and changes in the game that raised or lowered major-league batting averages (the introduction of the designated hitter and changes in the height and location of the pitcher's mound, for example). Schell's study finally levels the playing field, giving new credit to hitters who played in adverse conditions and downgrading others who faced fewer obstacles. His final ranking of players differs dramatically from the traditional list. Gwynn, for example, bumps Cobb to 2nd place, Rod Carew rises from 28th to 3rd, Babe Ruth drops from 9th to 16th, and Willie Mays comes from off the list to rank 13th. Schell's list also gives relatively more credit to modern players, containing 39 whose best days were after 1960.
Using a fun, conversational style, the book presents a feast of stories and statistics about players, ballparks, and teams—all arranged so that calculations can be skipped by general readers but consulted by statisticians eager to follow Schell's methods or introduce their students to such basic concepts as mean, histogram, standard deviation, p-value, and regression. Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters will shake up how baseball fans view the greatest heroes of America's national pastime.
— Joseph Kahn
Mathematical Association of America Online Book Review
[Schell] has provided a wealth of baseball trivia and statistics. The style of writing is engaging and often lively and, in fact, encourages continued debate over the data and conclusions presented. The text will undoubtedly become a part of the baseball statistics fan's library.— Randall J. Swift
Booklist
Buried deep within every true baseball fan is a nerd with a scorecard and a calculator. . . . To refute those who say players from different eras can't be compared because they played in different circumstances, Schell levels the playing field by building models to account for those varying circumstances: ballparks, pitching quality, night games, etc. . . . His conclusions are often surprising but well substantiated.The Los Angeles Times
Altogether, a good read. . . .— Earl Gutskey
New York Times -
[A] trenchant attempt to reorder the hierarchy. . . . [Schell's] calculations produce a new all-time greatest hitter, revealed in sometimes breathless prose.Mathematical Association of America Online Book Review -
[Schell] has provided a wealth of baseball trivia and statistics. The style of writing is engaging and often lively and, in fact, encourages continued debate over the data and conclusions presented. The text will undoubtedly become a part of the baseball statistics fan's library.The Los Angeles Times -
Altogether, a good read. . . .Joseph Kahn
Michael J. Schell, a biostatistician at the University of North Carolina and a lifelong baseball fan, has tried to rewrite history. He argues that raw batting averages are meaningful only to compare hitters playing in the same park at the same time with the same competition, not to rank superstars in the Hall of Fame. Mr. Schell's new book is a trenchant attempt to reorder the hierarchy using methods like those he applies to cancer research. He submitted batting averages of history's top baseball players to a gantlet of tests. He makes adjustments for the changing baseball talent pool, in part because blacks and other minorities were once excluded from the major leagues. He also tries to eliminate the distorting effects of quirky ball parks, end-of-career slumps and rule changes. The resulting list rocks conventional wisdom. It also takes the numerology among baseball fans to a new level of obsessiveness.— New York Times
Earl Gustsky
Schell, a biostatistics professor at the University of North Carolina, is also a lifelong baseball buff who applies statistical methods to "level the playing field" between the baseball eras to arrive at a ranked list of the game's 100 greatest hitters. And the winner is . . . Tony Gwynn. Factoring in elements such as turn-of-the-century ballparks, rule changes, hitter-friendly ballparks, hitter-unfriendly eras, on-base percentage, and an added, fascinating factor--base-on-balls percentage. Gwynn, Schell's number-crunching shows, emerges with an "adjusted" career average of .342, with Ty Cobb next at .340 and Rod Carew third at .332.— Los Angeles Times
