Stat One: A New System for Rating Baseball’s All-Time Greatest Players

By Craig Messmer and Eden O'Neill

Presents a system that provides one definitive ranking for the greatest players of the baseball game. This title introduces a formula which adds up the aspects of a player's offensive resume into one... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071496335
• ISBN13: 9780071496339
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.9" x 1.0" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Stat One

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.