Baseball's Complete Players: Ratings of Total-Season Performance for the Greatest Players of the 20th Century

Who had the better season in 1980: George Brett, who batted a phenomenal .390 with 24 home runs, or Mike Schmidt, who clouted 48 homers and hit a ho-hum .286? The author, using what he calls the Hoban Effectiveness Quotient (HEQ), says the answer is Schmidt - and it's not even close.
The HEQ is baseball's first objective total-season statistic. Some might see this work as controversial, because finally we get an analysis based on a player's actual productivity, rather than traditional percentage-based measures. The book ranks current players and Hall of Famers by offensive production, defensive reliability and overall score. In the process, the author redefines "Hall of Fame numbers," "MVP," "Gold Glover" and "Hall of Famer."

Michael Hoban is a professor of mathematics and dean of the Schalaefer School at Monmouth University.