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Stat One | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
Category: EBooks
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $7.96 (44%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 56041
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357
ASIN: B0013D32EY
Publication Date: December 17, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Get ready for the mother of all numbers. If you had to give just one number to determine a baseball player's success, which would you pick? Batting average, RBI, OPS, home-run percentage? It's impossible to choose. Now you don't have to. For the first time ever, there's a formula that incorporates every aspect of a player's offensive game into one stat that gets straight to the core of performance. The Offensive Production and Efficiency Average, or P/E Average for short, gives you a comprehensive measure of everyone who has ever played the game. Stat One walks you through the calculations and then takes you around the field to analyze, rate, and rank the greatest players in baseball history at every position. You'll find surprising answers to the questions that really matter: Who's better on first, Foxx or Gehrig? Is Jim Rice a Hall of Famer? Would Derek Jeter come up short next to old Honus Wagner? How does Mantle compare with Mays? And much more--plus the 100 greatest players of all time.
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| Customer Reviews:
He doesn't have the courage of his convictions May 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This author introduces a new statistic to use to rate baseball players. And in this he resembles a lot of sabermetricians. But then his actual ratings don't even follow his new statistic. For example, Mantle outdoes Mays according to his measure. But then, when he lists the all time top centerfielders, he puts Mays in the top 3 and not Mantle. So why bother with his new statistic, then?
If he wants to introduce a new measure of baseball competence, he ought to USE it in rating the players!
 Opinions yes, facts no February 27, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book sets Sabermetrics back 30 years. I could go on and on, but the fatal flaw of this analysis is that it totally ignores context, be it league average performance or ball park adjustments. At least the Babe is still #1.
 Yet Another "Ultimate" stat February 21, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book's ultimate statistic is constructed based on how the author thinks various statistics should be weighted. While the author's thoughts on the individual statistics used to compute the statistic are reasonable, the end result is less than satisfying because you really can't create a good statistic that way; by avoiding complexity in the construction of his statistic, the author adds complexity to the actual statistic, which doesn't have any units and therefore doesn't mean anything in relation to anything but itself. That makes the statistic rather hard to grasp compared to statistics that can be translated into more familiar units like runs and wins.
The other major problem is that the statistic treats all eras of baseball the same - a home run in 1915 when clubs were struggling to score a couple of runs a game is worth the same as a home run in today's game, in which runs are much more plentiful. The end result is a lot of odd rankings where hitters from the dead ball era and the 1960s are outranked by vastly inferior players
The author is clearly a big baseball fan and is a capable writer. If you don't take the statistic too seriously and want to read about the merits of ballplayers from throughout the history of baseball, you might enjoy the book. But those looking for a statistic to take seriously should look elsewhere.
 Stat One January 27, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Stat One was a great read. It was a little bit of a stretch for me because I'm not a huge stat junkie, but the book is so much more than that. The way it's laid out and broken down by position made it easy to follow and it was also very informational. More often than not, you don't think of the greatest hitters of all time by their positions, you just read all the stories and see highlights of them hitting.
After you cover all the different players by position, the author adds even more to the discussion by offering his Top 100 in clear and concise statements. These statements coupled with each positional summaries really gives you a lot to think about and information to help you form your own opinions.
The P/E stat he came up with, in itself made more sense to me than I thought it would. It really simplified things and allowed me to view player statistics beyond just Batting Average, RBI's and Runs. It is a great way to evaluate players from different eras and players who come from World Series teams and players who weren't so lucky. The bottom line is the P/E stat leveled the playing field for proper comparison.
I even created a P/E calculator on Excel and worked some numbers in on some newer players that weren't covered by the book. If people in baseball picked up this book, free agency for certain players may mean something different. In addition, I was impressed by Bill Madden of the New York Daily News stating that he would consult Stat One when he was thinking about his HALL OF FAME vote.
Great book to read before Spring Training and a great book to have during the season when using the formula to evaluate performances, especially the guys in the smaller market teams who don't get much attention.
Don't want to ruin it, but the P/E stat may shock you a bit. There are two players who I thought were the best at their position who ended up being number 2. The Stats don't lie and neither do the other factors the author threw in like post season appearances and share of MVP votes. Some people may not like some of the analysis. It's what makes this book fun.
I recommend.
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