It was developed by sabermetrician Pete Palmer and was popularized in the Total Baseball series of encyclopedias during the 1980s.
[1] Total player rating is computed using linear weights, in which each event in a baseball game (for instance, a base on balls, a double or a stolen base) is assigned a value in runs.
[citation needed] TPR helped disseminate the notion that players should not be given credit for events over which they have no control.
[citation needed] As an example which embraces giving such credit, the runs batted in (RBI) statistic awards a hitter with runs which scored when he collected a hit or a walk, even though the player has no control over whether the players who batted before him got on base, which is a significant influence on whether he is able to drive them in.
Bill James presented some of these criticisms in his book Win Shares, foremost among them being the observation that an average player has a TPR value of 0, whereas in fact an average player has substantial positive value.