Charles F. Faber

In which the author uses a rating system which he has devised to rate nineteenth-century baseball players. This is basically a reference book with bits of commentary on the ratings tables. To his credit, he takes a little space to explain the methods and assumptions he uses for his system, but some of the assumptions, especially the ones for the pitchers, strike me as very dubious. The most useful portion of the book is his fielding ratings, since they are difficult to come up with in any case, particularly for the pioneer era. The book is something of a way station on the way to sabermetrics, which was just emerging at the time this book came out.… (altro)