The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
Encyclopedia
The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is a reference-type book written by Bill James
featuring an overview of baseball decade by decade, along with rankings of the top 100 players at each position. The original edition was published in 1985 by Villard Books
, followed by The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract in 2001. In the 2001 edition, James introduced his Win Shares
system, an attempt to quantify a player's overall contributions to his team, which he used as part of his player ranking system.
Bill James
George William “Bill” James 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...
featuring an overview of baseball decade by decade, along with rankings of the top 100 players at each position. The original edition was published in 1985 by Villard Books
Villard (imprint)
Villard, also known as Villard Books, is a major publishing imprint of Random House, one of the largest publishing companies in the world. It was founded in 1983. Villard began as an independent imprint of Random House, and are currently an imprint of Ballantine Books, itself a subsidiary of Random...
, followed by The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract in 2001. In the 2001 edition, James introduced his Win Shares
Win Shares
Win shares is the name of the metric Bill James describes in his 2002 book Win Shares.It considers statistics for baseball and basketball players, in the context of their team and in a sabermetric way, and assigns a single number to each player for his contributions for the year. A win share...
system, an attempt to quantify a player's overall contributions to his team, which he used as part of his player ranking system.