The Bill James Handbook

Baseball Info Solutions

Every year I get a package from my friend Steve Moyer. Sometimes it comes when we’re together in the beginning of November at Ron Shandler and Rick Wilton’s First Pitch Arizona conference (which is a blast, a chance to see many of the next year’s rookies up close, and did I mention it was fun?) and sometimes it comes in the mail at home. What I know is that if it’s the first week of November it’s the Bill James Handbook.

What I remember, back in the day, was the Red Book from Stats, which also had Bill James’ name attached and which, for a while, Steve worked on, too. But Stats was sold to Fox and niceties like really useful baseball reference books became too small scale for them.

Steve has made a business off of the opportunities Fox threw away when it bought Stats, which isn’t to say that Fox was wrong, just that as a baseball fan I really much prefer what comes from Steve’s company, Baseball Info Solutions.

The Bill James Handbook, under the BIS aegis, has become a comprehensive statistical review of the previous baseball season, and it comes out less than 30 days after the season is over. It now has fielding rankings, managerial tendencies, home-road splits, batter and pitcher splits, projections for hitters and pitchers, and an assortment of other really interesting baseball data.

You can support this site by buying the Bill James Handbook from Amazon through the link below, or you can buy it somewhere else. My point is that there isn’t another baseball book that is more useful all season long.