Pete Palmer

Who is Pete Palmer?

Pete Palmer is an American sports statistician and encyclopedia editor. He is a major contributor to the applied mathematical field referred to as sabermetrics. Along with the Bill James Baseball Abstracts, Palmer's book The Hidden Game of Baseball is often referred to as providing the foundation upon which the field of sabermetrics was built.

Palmer began his career as a baseball analyst when he worked for the Raytheon Corporation as a radar systems engineer. At night, after his co-workers had left for the day, Palmer used the company's cutting-edge computers to run advanced simulations analyzing historical baseball statistics. In 1982, Palmer gained notoriety when he recognized a scorekeeper's error as he pored over decades-old box scores, discovering that Nap Lajoie's 1910 batting average was several points higher than Ty Cobb's, causing the official Major League Baseball record books to be re-written. Palmer also innovated the Linear Weights method of estimating a player's offensive contributions, an invention that will likely be his lasting legacy.

Many of Palmer's early works were written in partnership with John Thorn, including The Hidden Game of Baseball and Total Baseball; the latter book also featured, in later editions, the contributions of editor Michael Gershman. Palmer edited or served as a consultant for many of the sports reference books produced by Total Sports Publishing. Palmer's most recent work has been in collaboration with Gary Gillette. Since 2003, the pair has produced five editions of the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, and several other baseball annuals.