The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches by Bill James, Rob Neyer

From the Publisher

Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them — these days it's the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information. That's what preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer realized over lunch more than a dozen years ago. Since then, they've been compiling the centerpiece of this book, the "Pitcher Census," which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. The Guide also offers:

• A "dictionary" describing virtually every known pitch
• The origins and development of baseball's most important pitches
• Top ten lists: best fastballs, best spitballs, and everything in between
• Biographies of some of the great pitchers who have been overlooked
• More knuckleballers and submariners than you ever thought existed
• An open debate concerning pitcher abuse and durability
• A formula for predicting the Cy Young Award winner
• Something fresh and new: Bill James' "Pitcher Codes"

The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers is about understanding pitchers, and baseball's action always starts with the pitchers. It's also about entertaining debates and having a great deal of fun with the history of a game that obsesses so many.

Library Journal

Pioneer stat maven James (The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract ), now senior baseball operations adviser for the Red Sox, has teamed with ESPN.com baseball columnist Neyer for an unusual book. Aiming to fill what they see as an information gap, they detail the key pitches of pitchers both great and small throughout the game's history-a compendium of what they threw and how. The heart of the book is a "Pitcher Census" covering some 2000 moundsmen. Each entry provides some bare-bone stats, a notation about pitch selection or key pitch, and quotations from books, articles, and other sources documenting the information. This is in many ways a reference book, as it is hardly something a fan would want to read from cover to cover. The authors do make things entertaining, however, by inserting thought-provoking essays on some overlooked near greats (e.g., Billy Pierce, Bob Friend, and Lon Warneke) and some lively, if debatable, lists of best pitchers and pitches in different eras. Stat-heads will enjoy! Recommended for larger baseball literature collections.-Paul Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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