Bill James Interview

it's not bad. interesting to see he also tows the "varitek does all the little things" line beloved by red sox fans trying to demonstrate that he's actually a better catcher than posada.

http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1197.html

Too basic for the indoctrinated, but not very common to see him get that much time on a general-interest show.

Daily Bulletin Q&A

Q: Should players known to use (or strongly suspected to have used) performance-enhancing drugs be treated differently in history? Was the Baseball Writers Association of America electorate correct in not voting Mark McGwire to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot? Are you cheering for Barry Bonds?

A: I'm not cheering for Bonds, but then, I didn't much like (Henry) Aaron, either. I look at it this way. There's a rule in basketball against traveling but the NBA has pretty much stopped enforcing it. Well, they still call traveling but they will allow you to take about five steps without dribbling as you are running toward the basket. There was no "decision" not to enforce this rule; they just kind of lost track of it. They started not calling one step and progressed to not calling two steps, not calling three steps, and eventually they just kind of lost track of the rule. Should the players who took advantage of this failure to enforce the rule be banned from the NBA Hall of Fame? After all, aren't they cheating? They're not obeying the rules. Julius Erving, out. The Hall of Fame doesn't need cheaters like you. Kobe, Michael, get out. If you don't play by the rules the way Elgin Baylor did, you're not deserving.

Or it is, rather, the responsibility of the LEAGUE to enforce the rule? It seems to me that it might be the responsibility of the league to enforce the rule rather than the responsibility of the media to punish those who didn't obey the rule that wasn't being enforced. I won't name any players, but there are a whole bunch of superstars who are now or are going to be involved in the PED accusations. We CAN'T start picking and choosing who we honor on that basis. It's hypocritical, and it's impractical. And it diminishes the game.

Bonds has hit more home runs than anybody else, or will have in a few weeks. That's kind of the end of the story as far as I'm concerned.

a sports-media fungus shakes its head in wonderment at how many on-air hours of filler that would eliminate.

So why doesn't he like Bonds or Aaron?

That IS kind of baffling.

RACIST~

I'm waiting for Sheffield to make that call.

White, likes neither Bonds nor Aaron, works for the Red Sox...

well, for starters Aaron didn't walk a whole lot.

Um he was pretty good despite that. 9 straight WARP3 11+ seasons and 15 straight 9+ is pretty darn good.

Bill James on Jason Veritek (which reads like something Morbius would post to the Dumbass Media thread):

"My favorite player to watch on the Red Sox is Jason Varitek. Jason has a lot of hustle and a lot of leadership, plus he has a lot of subtle skills that you don't see unless you focus on him.

I don't know if I can describe it. He's very interactive with the other parts of the game. He interacts with the umpire. He interacts with the other infielders. He interacts with the dugout. He interacts with the pitcher. Of course, much of this is the nature of the catcher's position, but there are catchers who just go through the motions. Jason's very alert to how all of those other parts of the game are moving, always looking for ways to contribute."

Varitek's Interaction Win Share is 11.2.

I guess that we file that in the "Things that are okay to say so long as you're accepted as the Father of Modern Baseball Analysis and not a former player" column.

Well admittedly he saying that it's FUN to watch Varitek because of these intangibles NOT that he should be considered the best catcher ever because of them. I mean that's a pretty sizeable difference.

As long as we're making irrational arguments, how about all those rings Posada has compared to Varitek.

well, posada is having a pretty phenomenal year. until torre completely kills him, at least.

torre hates anyone who isn't white, right?

let's not forget that the entire premise of james's answer is wrong since THERE WAS NO RULE.

A more appropriate analogy would have been to question whether we should throw those NBA players who ate jelly donuts before games (Barkley, Stockton) out of the hall of fame.

he means a "rule," stenc.

I recall James ranks Aaron as a great player, obv. He likely just doesn't feel as passionately about him as he does, say, Mays.

SS, what year is that Varitek quote from?

A Posnanski piece on James's relationship to the Red Sox' troubles of the past two years:

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/38300880/

Posnanski and James are friends. Even though I'm a big fan of both and predisposed to give them the benefit of the doubt, it does read like one of those anonymously-sourced political pieces after the election's over where some higher-up gets cut loose from the damage.

His five favourite films, in order:

1. Airplane!
2. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
3. Being There
4. Unforgiven
5. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Sight & Sound ballot for 2022 pending.

James is plugging a radio interview he just did with Joe Morgan:

We got into discussions of a lot of the things that he and I have disagreed about over the years...Brandon Phillips, Dick Allen, Jack Morris, the value of won-lost records, the value of strikeouts...etc., and I may not have defended "our" position the way that you would have done it or the best way that it could have been done, but I did the best I could with it and I thought it was good radio. I wanted to post this notice here.

No information on when and where it would air, though. If anyone finds out anything--or whether it can even be heard online--please pass that along.

Boundless intellectual arrogance: it's the core of why he's so great, and sometimes a mixed blessing. (He'd undoubtedly argue that his stance on this particular point is the opposite of intellectual arrogance.)

Just for the record: You probably didn't mean any fine point to be put on the vocabulary and I realize that your reference to Eisenreich was just in passing anyway, but....Eisenreich's condition isn't a "psychological" one. There are various ideas of how Tourette Syndrome should be viewed, but none of the main current ones are that it is psychological.
Asked by: MarisFan61

Answered: 6/9/2014
Psychologists are entitled to their own opinions.

re: tourette's syndrome: you said that "psychologists are entitled to their own opinions." please elaborate: do you have a differing opinion, or was that your way of avoiding admitting that you don't have a clue on the subject?
Asked by: yorobert

Answered: 6/9/2014
I never believe experts, because they are experts. I think it is weak-minded to do so, and most of the great follies and fallacies of history came about from weak-minded people accepting what experts told them. The fact that experts now say something about Tourette's Syndrome, to me, doesn't mean shit to a tree. Rational people do not decide what is likely to be true based on what experts say.

(Didn't know he was a Jefferson Airplane fan.)

Posted five huge articles (broken into seven sections each) the past week about pitchers--W-L record and luck, "good game" scores as new way to evaluate, lots more. I've barely begun reading.

Three quick things:

1) He says no Cy Young winner has ever literally been below average, although Vukovich in '82 was close.

2) More contentious: no 20-game winners since '52 have literally been below average, with the exception of Stan Bahnsen in '72; Vida Blue and Paul Splitorff in '73 were close.

3) Gaylord Perry's line in '72 vs. winning teams: 251 IP, 18-11, 176 H, 167-56 K/BB, 1.69 ERA.

That got me looking at the '72 Indians offense. It was a big pitchers' year all around, and a few games were lost to the strike, but still:

-- not one regular slugged .400
-- highest BA among regulars was Chambliss at .292 (with 6 HR)
-- highest OBP among regulars was .327; four guys were under .300
-- Nettles led with 17 HR and 70 RBI
-- they were shut out 17 times
-- 472 runs in 156 games; the Rangers and Angels were even worse

http://deadspin.com/bill-james-calls-for-revolutionary-changes-to-the-ameri-1595361407

limiting the infinite rewarding of CEOs is a more hopeless reform than outlawing the DH

There's a disclaimer underneath that the data is based on regular-season play, but some of James's rotating sidebars sure look funny right now. The two hottest teams are the Nationals (108°) and the Dodgers (107°), and the hottest hitter is Justin Turner (103°). He should probably consider taking those down once the season ends.

James piece by Posnanski on the NBC site:

http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/bill-james-statistical-revolution/

Sometimes James gets ridiculed here as guy whose own creation has long since passed him by. Anyone who feels that way will have their feelings confirmed by Posnanski's piece. I feel the exact opposite, not surprisingly. He continues to question everything.

“But because that is true, I ASSUMED that these were complex, nuanced, sophisticated systems. I never really looked; I just assumed that the details were out of my depth. But sometime in the last year I was doing some research that relied on these WAR systems, so I took a look at them, and … they’re not very impressive. They’re not well thought through; they haven’t made a convincing effort to address many of the inherent difficulties that the undertaking presents. They tend to get so far into the data, throw up their arms and make a wild guess. I don’t know if I’m going to get the time to do better of it, or if it will be left to others, but...we’re not at anything like an end point here. I assumed that these systems were a lot better than they actually are.”

his brain's been rendered obsolete but yeah i'm with him on WAR lately, just knowing the small amount of stuff i know about certain factors, mainly the rudimentary position and park adjustment numbers. the sheer difference in fielding figures pre- and post-2002 is enough to make it hard for me to compare modern players to old ones.

i wish people out there would try developing some new megastats using different methodologies and practices. just irritating that WAR's achieved a certain stature and everyone seems to have given up on coming up with other angles. even a replacement that uses SIERA instead of FIP/ERA or considers handedness in park adjustments. don't have to wait for statcast figures to come out when we already have plenty of choices.

I probably shouldn't ask, but why do you think he's obsolete?

The one area where I think he's lost something stems from being inside the game now, instead of on the outside; he's a lot more inclined to defend GMs, managers, commissioners, umpires, players--everyone--than he used to be. Part of that is a natural softening that comes with age--with most people--but it's mostly, I think, a function of his changing relationship to MLB.

for reasons he himself was talking about, how massive amounts of people with actual math backrounds took everything much further. i don't really get the sense that he pays all that much attention to them either.

I always found him pretty strong on math, but that's fair. Given a choice between a better understanding of math or a better understanding of the game, I'd take the game, but obviously you want both.

In a Hey Bill e-mail today, someone found this in The New Historical Abstract, which came out in 2001 (he's talking about Palmeiro's Gold Glove): "If the United States were to use a system like this to elect the President, the absolutely certain result would be that, within a few elections, someone like David Duke, Donald Trump, or Warren Beatty would be elected President...an unconstrained plurality vote gives an opening to someone or something who has a strong appeal to a limited number of people."

be careful what you extemporize theoretically on.

Some research on another venerable bit of old-school wisdom/myth (take your pick): the "stopper.:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/stoppers/

Haven't read this yet, but there's a piece by Rob Neyer up on James's site: "Should Sportswriters Write About Politics?" I take it from the intro that Neyer was let go by whoever was housing his blog (I've forgotten already).

http://www.billjamesonline.com/should_sportswriters_write_about_politics/

i could google but wasn't it fox? i follow neyer on twitter and he seems relatively liberal, so that could make sense

A lot of stuff on the election and polling:

http://buffalonews.com/2016/11/09/bill-james-fears-civil-war-says-time-overhaul-polling-methods/

Yeah, it's the polling that's the problem. (Admit to willfully misreading the headline.)

The two ideas are joined together in the URL, not in the piece. He's talking about why he thinks the polling was so off from a data-guy's viewpoint--not that it had anything to do with the result. I don't know anything about polling models, but I found his remedy interesting (also fits with the way he approaches baseball stats, which is basically not to decide x and y are irrelevant and discard them):

Pollsters say there is a right method, but there is not. Pollsters say you call people on the phone so you know who you're talking to. You know whether they're likely to vote or not. You know whether they voted last time. You know whether they're registered Republican or Democrat because you have the voter list.

Junk it. It doesn't work. Deal with people you don't know. Use 25 different models. Go to a shopping mall and set up a booth where you hand out candy bars to anybody who'll fill out a poll for you. Walk down the street and stop every seventh person you see and ask. Put up buckets with pictures of Trump and Hillary and ask random people to drop a quarter in one or the other and count them up. Do it a hundred different ways and see if you can figure out 900 more. Then you get a broader understanding rather than a narrow understanding.