Bill James Bio?

Scott Gray is a musician and nonfiction writer. He served as consulting editor on a series of nine sports titles for Ballantine and is the author of:

Chicks Rule: The Story of the Dixie Chicks
Heart Song: The Story of Jewel
On Her Way: The Shania Twain Story
Perfect Harmony: The Faith Hill and Tim McGraw Story.
Livin' On Country: The Alan Jackson Story

He was raised in Oklahoma and lives in New York City and Charlottesville, VA.

I think it's Yanc3y's pseudonym.

http://www.aarongleeman.com/2006_02_19_baseballblog_archive.html#114058442013189069

I can attest that Bill is not as svelte as the bobblehead (last I saw him).

--writer Bill James, on using baseball statistics to understand the game (Palm Beach Post)

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/sports/content/sports/epaper/2006/04/02/sb2a_statguys_0402.html

he'll be appearing on The Simpsons this season

a harvard lampoon alum wrote him in no doubt

Different book, but I bought and read this last year:

http://www.amazon.com/Bill-James-Changed-View-Baseball/dp/0879463171

Truthfully, it wasn't all that exciting. You had a number of contributors saying the same thing 14 different ways.

pretty sure I overheard Bill telling a Noodles Hahn anecdote this morning

bought the paperback historical baseball abstract for $1 @ a book sale and there was a $2 bill inside

Hard not to read this thread title as akin to Ronny James Dio.

Has he (or anyone similar) ever written about team win/loss streaks... in season only, not the plexiglass principle.

Probably the year after the Tigers' 35-5 start (meaning the '85 Abstract), James wrote a long thing on when a fast start starts to become significant; i.e., 5-0 doesn't mean much, 10-0 means a lot, etc. That's the only related thing I remember.

A couple of you in the past have indicated that James may have lost something over the years, that he's now part of the same baseball establishment he once questioned at every turn. Most of the time I still love reading him, but sometimes he'll write things that do make me wonder. There were back-to-back "Ask Bill"s this morning that were puzzling.

1) One thing I still remember from an old Abstract is where he tried to systematically look at a player's IQ based on factors like strike-zone judgement, number of caught stealings, the ability to improve over time, etc. I remember he identified Alfredo Griffin as the dumbest player in baseball--he may have stopped short of using those exact words--and, I think, Lou Whitaker as the smartest. He got a question today complaining about Alfonso Soriano, and whether he still thinks baseball intelligence can be quantified.

"I don't think you can reliably infer intelligence from a player's baseball statistics, no. I do think we could do a better job of charting on-field mistakes, and perhaps in that way identifying players who just don't play the game very well."

2) Right before that, there was a question on whether or not to shut down Strasburg, which was basically the exact same question he fielded a month ago.

(July 13) "No, I wouldn't shut him down. I never understood the logic by which limiting the growth of innings pitched year to year could protect a pitcher, and I think most serious analysts agree that that was just sloppy research."

(today) "Well...I think (shutting him down) is reasonable, yes...Strasburg is coming back from Tommy John, and he is still very young. You're asking him to do A LOT for a pitcher one year away from Tommy John, and you're exposing a 23, 24-year-old pitcher to a full workload."

Not that I know the right answer myself, but there's quite a disconnect there.

The first problem seemed poorly stated to begin with. And what's so strange about him changing his mind 30 years later? I'm sure that plenty of things in the early Abstracts were written on a whim anyway.

There isn't necessarily a contradiction in the Strasburg stuff ... I would agree that it's reasonable to shut him down, but at the same time, I wouldn't do it.

I'm always quoting and defending James, so it's weird for me to take the other side. Changing or modifying your views over time, especially as it relates to the availability of more and better information, is a good thing--actually, James's vigilance against being boxed in by dogma is one of the greatest things about him. The reason the first one caught my eye is that it does seem to line up with the idea that he's more reluctant to pointedly criticize players since he joined the Red Sox. This makes sense--once you've had more direct contact with players on the inside, it stands to reason you're a little more guarded about doing things like trying to quantify their intelligence. (Not to mention that people generally soften with age anyway.) It's just something I noticed.

With Strasburg (I didn't quote either of his answers in full), more than the first issue, I do find the contrast strange. His first response was an emphatic no, there's no reason to shut him down (the rest of his answer: "I think they need to be careful with Strasburg, perhaps limit his pitches, be extra careful about looking for signs of fatigue. But drawing an innings limit and pretending that that's somehow going to protect him is perilously close to magical thinking"). The second could have come from the Nationals' GM himself.

did anyone read his true crime book

Yeah. He's kind of a nut nowadays, but I thought it was a fun read.

I read the crime book and--no bias here--liked it fine. Don't think I've read any true-crime books other than In Cold Blood, though, so that was a limitation of sorts.

i heard it was kinda wackadoo

It is kinda, but that's almost part of its charm. He keeps coming up with formulas to calculate like "how sordid was this crime on a scale of 1-20" or whatever, it's pretty funny.

Bobby Valentine said he didn't hear from Bill once when he managed Boston, so if he's a nut he may be crazy like a fox.

Won't be able to read this till later tonight. It's long, free for now, and surely has lots for everyone to hate.

http://www.billjamesonline.com/how_the_democrats_can_win_kansas/

mostly just clueless

"But it rather seems to me that you could and should have won this election by, oh, I don’t know, 538 to nothing or thereabouts" is a good place to start.

This is not directed at you personally, mookie, but I don't really understand the ILX tendency to brush aside people like James, Marcus, and Christgau--older writers who don't necessarily have the visibility or the influence they once had; I suspect if Kael were still writing, especially somewhere other than the New Yorker, she'd get the same treatment--with curt dismissals. Your post reminds me of some of the reaction when I linked to Marcus explaining months ago why Trump might win. I don't agree with everything James writes, but there's a lot there, and I'd say at least half of it is spot-on. It's as good an election postmortem as just about anything I've read from people who write about politics for a living.

haha i actually thought about going deeper last night but figured why bother. 'clueless' was the wrong adjective, tbf.

i haven't read a great deal of james, marcus or christgau. i have nothing at all against marcus. i think christgau is a prick and while i respect his sheer dedication to listening to literally everything, i've generally found his reviews to be useless. it's impressive that he turned being gnomic into a career, but whatever.

i respect james' grasp of statistics and willingness to challenge the received baseball wisdom of 30-40 years ago. he was a pioneer and his ideas have won the day in the game. i don't think any of that makes him a particularly insightful political commentator. among baseball writers alone, i suspect keith law and rany jazayerli and jonah keri have much more useful things to say about politics.

in this particular piece, i find his suggestions risible. these are not ideas on how the democrats can win kansas; they are ideas on how the democrats can win his (idiosyncratic) personal full support.

a package of severe inheritance taxes, intense business regulation, free college education, and massive support for inner cities doesn't really sound like a winner in kansas. nor do these interventionist policies square with his insistence that national health care be jettisoned.

Well, it is every bit as despicable to call someone a racist who is not a racist as it is to actually be a racist; in fact, I would argue that it is more despicable to do this, since it both promotes racism and debases public discourse.

this is straight-up bullshit, as is his insistence that neither trump nor jeff sessions nor anyone involved is a *real* racist.

if bill james wants to talk about baseball i'd be happy to listen. he has no particular expertise elsewhere and his (horribly written) political tracts are no different than any other 67-year-old dude ranting on facebook.

Explanations help--much prefer that kind of response than the one-line dismissal.

I think he goes a little off the rails when he argues for the Nazi-in-all-of-us. I'm pretty self-critical, I think--have often written about my passive-aggressive vindictiveness--but I don't think I'm secretly harboring a Nazi inside.

I was surprised he went anywhere near race. He regularly ducks baseball questions that are too close to his job with the Red Sox, so why he thought that would be a good subject to take up, I don't know. I think some of what he says is good: "You’re letting David Duke out of his cage. If you call a million people racists, he’s just one of the millions, just another guy," and "you might as well put $20 in an envelope and mail it to Rush Limbaugh." The line you quoted above--the "more despicable" formulation--no.

I don't know if his prescriptions more accurately represent Kansas or him alone. He's been writing about Kansas regularly for almost 40 years, so I'm inclined to trust that he has some understanding of the subject, but I really don't know.

Other than choosing to write it as an open letter, a device I never like, couldn't disagree more with "horribly written." I think his influence as a writer may even outweigh his influence as a baseball analyst.

Knowing almost nothing abt SABR/James apart from a skimread of Moneyball once, I gave his true crime bk a go a little while back and thought it was atrocious - ignorant, reactionary, bombastic and self-regarding. And yes, horribly written. I mean, I don't like Christgau, and have huge problems w/ Kael and Marcus, but all three of them can turn a sentence on occasion, whereas James really can't (I was just about to write that he reads like a typical pompous old git on Facebook until I saw mookieproof's final sentence!)

I read very little true crime, but I liked James's book just fine (since then, I've read books about Paul Bernardo, Charles Whitman, Richard Speck, and Manson). We must have very different Facebook feeds--the people over 50 on mine aren't the problem.

Sensing there's not a great future for this discussion. But I do agree Kael can turn a sentence on occasion.

That article was very James-ian, that's for sure. I agreed strongly with some parts, shook my head in frustration in other parts, and wondered why he took so long to get to the point for at least half of it. In other words, I had much the same reaction as I do with his baseball writing.

He just opened it up to reader comments last night--waited two days before doing so; good idea with contentious online material, I think, forces people to think about what they want to say, instead of just venting--and it looks like he'll be putting in some time defending parts of it. (The early focus seems to be the idea that Clinton is as corrupt as Trump.) I like the way one reader puts it:

"I think there's a split in the article, between (1) the basic message -- which I think is just about 100% right on (and yes, as was suggested in a 'Hey Bill' post, I hope it will be widely disseminated); and (2) the specific suggestions, which I think are problematic, no less so than the specific things that the Democratic Party was putting forth."

Blaming Republicans for Trump is like blaming Poland for Adolph. He invaded the party and took over. What were they supposed to do about it?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) August 5, 2017

missed this bit of keen political insight

hahaha

wow

i'm gonna guess he still doesn't think trump and sessions are racists

I can read some of his political stuff; sometimes I just stop and head elsewhere. The worst thing is, when people write in to question him on something, he's at his most abrasive. (Aka, rudest.) I think he said he voted for Hillary, reluctantly.

was there any other way?

He's got a new book coming out next week. Not about Trump, so it should be safe. (Evidently co-written with his daughter.)

If the Orioles traded Manny Machado, I don't know if they would stay in competition this summer.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) May 1, 2018

Sometimes I feel like a fatherless child.

okay, this was funny

Did you know that Mike Trout has never in his career been credited with a Sacrifice Bunt? Complete player, my ass. . .

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) May 23, 2018

Giving money to political candidates is NOT helpful. What is helpful is NOT giving money to political candidates. If you have a Dumpster Fire on your left and a Dumpster Fire on your right, you don't put firewood in either dumpster. https://t.co/z8Gtbp9U0a

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) June 15, 2018

Is he a libertarian?

Not a Pandora's Box worth opening...

you should never put firewood in any dumpster, regardless of whether it's on fire or not

His Twitter feed is on the front page of his site now. He's got a poll question up there this morning: "If you could have Bryce Harper or Andrew Benintendi for the rest of his career, who would you want?"

Answer aside, I believe that's what's called sticking-it-to-you on Seinfeld.

There's a card of him this year you can also get as a poster.

https://www.topps.com/2018-topps-allen-and-ginter-bill-james-base-poster-d-to-99.html

This is not behind the paywall:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/privacy_and_the_past/

Anyone who's decided he's a useless crank now will have every worst fear confirmed here. Like any crank, he doesn't care.

(One thing that really bugs me is when he complains about people being rude to him. He can be exceptionally rude to some of the "Hey Bill" questioners.)

I can think of one example specific to my own life where I agree with him 100% (and that I've been complaining about to anyone who'll listen for the past few years): the OSR, or Ontario Student Record. Every kid has a folder that follows him or her around from school to school. They've been around at least since I went to school in the '60s and '70s. Everything goes into the OSR: reports, standardized testing, transfers, anything involving discipline, etc. An average student, the OSR doesn't have a great deal in it; a kid on an IEP, the OSRs are sometimes the size of carry-on luggage.

Every September we have to sign these things in, and in June we sign them out and organize them by next year's classes. A tremendous amount of energy goes into moving them from school to school. The province hangs on to them for a couple of decades once the student is "retired" from the system. They're completely useless--other filing away reports, I might go back and check something about a particular student once or twice a year.

At the very least, they should spend some money to digitize everything. But what they really ought to do is get rid of them altogether.

"other than"

The bigger problem with trying to debate ideas on twitter is that anyone can join in, so discussions run all over the map. A productive discussion pushes toward understanding of an issue. A twitter discussion jumps from one issue to a related issue to a related issue to another, the fourth idea having no relevance at all to the first. Different people pull the discussion in different directions, so no progress is made in any one direction, and the heart of the discussion is almost instantly torn to shreds by the competing efforts to move it in different directions. All discussions on Twitter are drawn and quartered, and then the quarters are drawn and quartered, and then the smithereens are drawn and quartered.

the same diagnosis could apply to discussions on ILX, which i still enjoy and frequently learn a lot from reading, even when the original point is sometimes lost

I definitely wouldn't categorize detours as inherently bad or good; sometimes I enjoy them, sometimes I'm impatient. In my own writing, I veer off into personal anecdote and barely related matters all the time. I mean, that was one of my first attractions to James, as a writer who could do that masterfully--he'd be talking about Steve Sax, then he'd segue into something that happened to him in the army 20 years ago, and eventually he'd make his point and bring everything back to Steve Sax.

I don't read (follow, whatever) Twitter at all, so I can't speak to that.

haha, yeah well he went on to say that the same problem applies to his website (and to conversations between human beings in general, anywhere, i'd add). i'm interested in trying to get through the rest because it looks like it gets really dark (sample line i skimmed across: "This is not "history"; this is political warfare. Peter Strzok and the semi-attractive woman that he was Strzoking...") but i'm not sure i'm ready to read new yorker length bill james tonight!

the law is basically nothing but old documents ffs. documents from which we are apparently supposed to glean how 18th-century people would feel about machine guns and the internet; documents that establish precedents such that we needn't argue every single incident from first principles.

is he really arguing that brett kavanaugh should be judged on his interview rather than the things he's actually written? i don't care what dumbass ideas bill had in his youth -- if someone is up for a lifetime position that will shape the entire country for decades to come, i'd rather have one of the other 330 million people who *didn't* write dunb shit

i'm not gonna defend twitter or its discourse -- i can totally understand why he or anyone would want to use a different medium -- but nevertheless he remains an utter clown about anything but baseball

This Kavanaugh story today should be a good example of why James is wrong--it should disqualify him under the present circumstances.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/brett-kavanaugh-watergate-decision-might-be-wrong/

Of course, it won't matter.

Sounds like someone is having problems with the IRS.

"Most people--99% of Americans, I would say--feel that we need to find some way to 'come together' as Americans. I don't see it happening, really, and I believe that we are better off admitting that we are no longer one country and dividing peacefully into three or four separate nations; you guys take care of your problems, and we'll take care of ours. But we're not at the point yet of admitting that our marriage has failed and it is time to move on to divorce."

And then you guys can have four presidents, and we can have four simultaneous political threads on ILX.

dividing peacefully into three or four separate nations

i'm sure he has a totally common-sense plan for doing this

He's a writer; writers do take artistic license. I'm guessing he didn't feel the need to devise a carefully worked-out plan before posting that.

You really do hate him (non-baseball-wise), don't you?

haha not really. i suspect (for no good reason, i guess) that he means well? he just seems to have little sense for politics or history that doesn't involve him projecting his own rather idiosyncratic ideas on everyone else

anyway, fess up -- you absolutely post this stuff to goad me

No, not at all, unless there's something subconscious going on there (have you been polite to me over the years? if you have, make that an unqualified "no"). I tend to post things where his idiosyncrasy leads him to some core idea that I agree with, or at least find interesting. Here, it's that that chasm is unbridgeable; I do believe that. Obviously the country's not splitting up any time soon, and I'm sure he's aware of that.

The biggest problem I've had with James lately--I've mentioned it before, and a reader called him out on it the other day--is this blatant disconnect between how aggressively rude he can be to the occasional "Ask Bill" questioner, and how quick he is to complain when he perceives rudeness towards him. But if you were to point this out to him, and try to explain yourself, he'd edit your comments down to a sentence and call you a jackass.

A recent example of the above--my single biggest issue with James:

Bill, earlier in the year you seemed to have doubt that Shohei Ohtani could be successful both pitching and hitting in the majors. Now that he has almost 300 plate appearances and over 50 innings pitched has your opinion changed on him? Do you think it would be better for him to get Tommy John surgery and both pitch and hit in 2020 or should he just hit in 2019?
Asked by: Steve9753

Answered: 9/9/2018
I thought events had clearly validated my doubts. Are you not following the news?

I'm assuming James means one of two things (because clearly Ohtani has been successful as both a pitcher and a hitter): that instead of having a very good full-time hitter or full-time pitcher, the Angels have settled for half of both; or, more likely, the injury never happens if he's a position player only.

So all he has to do is say that, instead of responding in a way that suggests the questioner is stupid. And, as I said above, he's forever complaining about perceived rudeness towards him.

Bill James getting owned by his daughter is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on this site pic.twitter.com/rSv1Q7u4UO

— 🎃 Spooky Betts 🎃 (@michaelarria) October 13, 2018

Fess up -- you absolutely post this stuff to goad me.

haha, maybe. i don't think you're too invested in his non-baseball opinions, though (or at least i hope)

his current baseball opinions are kinda shit as well

this guy

https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2018/11/07/red-sox-senior-advisor-bill-james-thinks-all-baseball-players-are-replaceable

The #RedSox Statement Regarding Bill James’ Recent Remarks: pic.twitter.com/JffB08Hqad

— Boston Red Sox (@RedSox) November 8, 2018

Billy Beane: "no comment"

Bill musta loved that spring training lockout with the replacements

(maybe he was just garbling his admiration for the Stinson brothers)

BJ needs to stfu before his rep sinks to Goose Gossage level

this guy

I think the idea that vote fraud is negligible is stupid, and the party hurts themselves when they say that. 10-20% of people cheat like crazy in fantasy leagues. It's not credible to suggest that a comparable percentage would not cheat in something that people care so much about

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) November 7, 2018

there's at least one important difference between cheating in fantasy leagues and committing voter fraud, gee, what could it be

james is slowly morphing into scott adams

lol, follow the rest of this thread

Cheating at fantasy football is not a felony and the sad part is many Americans care more about fantasy football than politics.

— Scott Harris (@rockthechalk) November 7, 2018

stfu bill james

important poll

Is there any such thing as a major league baseball player who is underpaid?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) November 8, 2018

brian kenny out here being all 'bill james is a genius who is thinking on a level you don't understand' about a guy who casually interpolates cheating at fantasy football into voter fraud with no evidence

he's about 5 or 6 public fartstorms away from getting fired for being a dumbass, at which point he'll portray himself as a victim of the dum-dums and complete his transformation pro blowhard

I think I've removed bookmark from this thread at least a dozen times... why do I keep coming back?

ILB’s favourite baseball writer has had a busy day. (Check that--my favorite, ILB’s least favourite.)

I have to read up on the fantasy league/election part of this. I expect the worst.

The idea that all MLB players are replaceable is obviously crazy. Max Scherzer and Jose Altuve and all the way down to the bottom 10 or whatever % of players are not replaceable. Back in the Abstract days, he used to say that MLB treated talent like it was a precious, finite resource, and that some of the time they had players at the Triple-A level who were just as good or better than the Joe Biaginis of the league; I think that was basically the beginning of the replacement-level concept, and that seems defensible. If he’s saying all players are replaceable, then again, crazy.

You can look at the question of players being overpaid in three ways. One, in relation to how much revenue a player generates--the idea of putting a value on every WAR and comparing that to what those wins mean in terms of attendance, merchandising, etc. In that sense, there are overpaid players and underpaid players and players who get just about the right amount.

Or you can start with how hard it is to make it to the majors, the idea that you’re one of the best 1200-1500 baseball players in the country. There are exponentially more doctors and lawyers than baseball players; if you win the lottery, you ought to cash in.

In a general sense, though--how a workaday person views professional athletes--sure, they’re all overpaid, with the exception of journeyman who shuttle back and forth to the minors. I don’t see that as an especially provocative statement. Troy Tulowitzki makes more money in one month than I’ll make in my lifetime. So I don’t have a big problem with that idea.

The biggest problem with James right now is how arrogant he’s become. He was ornery and stubborn when he wrote the Abstracts, but 1) that’s not as annoying when you’re a voice in the wilderness rather than (more or less) a well-paid, establishment guy, and 2) his arrogance has grown a hundred fold since then. And he always excuses this the same way: I was right about how important walks were, and I was right about how overrated stealing and bunting were, and I was right about Bobby Grich and Darrell Evans and the Pythagorean Theorem and just about everything else I proposed 40 years ago, so I’m also right about everything I say now. Very few people realized that then, and very few people realize that now--eventually, everybody will. On top of that, the team that employs him has won four World Series since he signed on--I don’t think that puts much of a rein on this tendency.

I’m actually a little surprised the Red Sox kept him on past his first flirtations with Trump (which mostly amounts with him treating Trump as a legitimate office holder--he insists he didn’t vote for him, and regularly calls him ridiculous; when he says more than that, and readers question him, he gets his back up and sometimes starts digging himself a deeper hole).

He's tweeting a lot today; people get in trouble, they tweet. There's a trace of humility too. I don't want him to start censoring himself (and I don't think he will), but if he reins in some of the rudeness he's sometimes prone to on "Hey Bill," I won't mind at all.

(When Scott Woods started the "Ask Greil" section of his Marcus website, I thought Marcus would be a cinch to be ten times ruder and more impatient than James. Much to my surprise, he's been the complete opposite--even with the occasional rude questioner, he's been gracious.)

would you say that bill james could be easily replaced?

major league baseball players are obviously overpaid on a societal scale . . . but it's a $10B/year business. paying the players less means the owners keep more, and for doing what, exactly? now there's a group that's replaceable.

this whole thing arose (i think) from scott boras' comments yesterday about teams tanking/not spending. boras is biased, of course, but i don't think he's wrong.

i don't have the evidence to back this up, but it seems that a team's profit is ever more divorced from its on-field success. there's tv money, profit sharing, parking, free ballparks, whatever. half the teams in any given year aren't even really trying to compete but rather hoping the rewards of shittiness can propel them into an astros situation.

analytics is making this worse! before long, fangraphs is going to tell us that the yankees and red sox are gonna win 95+ games next year, and that the blue jays will win 80 even *with* vlad jr. and everyone will be all like well, might as well keep him in the minors for an extra season of control!

that is a financial incentive to *not* put your best, most entertaining team on the field. imo that, more than infield shifts or long games or pitching changes, is Bad for Baseball. there is no outside force with the authority to make the (anti-trust immune!) teams adhere to a common good; before long we'll have 20 marlins each season and they'll have to expand the playoff field even more just to keep people interested.

anyway, bill james is weird and maybe twitter is . . . an even poorer medium for him than it is for everyone else

Not at all. Not in the good sense (all the brilliant things he wrote in the Abstracts that shape the way I think), and not in the bad sense, either (his more recent misadventures...he is different).

Another thing I've said before: just my opinion, but I think some of his current orneriness stems from never coming to terms with the acceptance of WAR over Win Shares as the common starting point of sabermetrics today. The old thing about the student parting ways with the teacher.

("Not at all" was in response to your previous post, not the one above.)

Two different posters...I should slow down and read more carefully.

I can definitely believe that he still holds grudges over the failure of Win Shares -- he was convinced that it would revolutionize statistical research and it didn't.

I bought the big Win Shares book online a few years after it came out. Didn't get very far into it. The explanation of the methodology was pretty heavy going, but the bigger problem was that my copy, which was supposed to be "very good," had pages ready to fall out.

Jay Jaffe:

I think one also has to remember that James has been in baseball management for a decade and a half. He’s certainly starting to sound like somebody ready to go to war with the MLBPA, and I think Tony Clark (whose overall job performance is still pretty lousy) was right to issue his rebuke.

He was stepping lightly for a day, anyway. He has a Twitter poll up today:

Most Worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Babe Ruth
Elvis Presley
Orin Hatch
Antonin Scalia

"Maybe twitter is...an even poorer medium for him than it is for everyone else."

Bill James is still probably my fave baseball writer by peak value. Like my fave rapper, KRS-One, he passed his prime at least 25 years ago, now says dumb stuff, and i have no reason to believe i'd find the current work of either compelling.

bill james is a HOF lock by JAWS but needs to retire so he can gain eligibility

bill james is pete rose if he kept going until 1989

bill james productions, statistical minded

The Modern Game committee voted Harold Baines and Lee Smith into the HOF this weekend. Is it possible the Russians hacked THIS election, too?
Asked by: ajmilner

Answered: 12/11/2018
The Russians were exhausted from getting Vladimir elected last year.

Not bad...

Referring to statements earlier today suggesting Football analysis is limited. . .Cris Collinsworth just said that "Hurries" in football predict sacks better than sacks do. Somebody's doing some pretty good analysis.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) December 17, 2018

bill james being a cris collinsworth fan says a lot

"Somehow we have developed this large contingent of know-it-all baseball fans who bay like wounded coyotes at any mention of wins, losses, RBI or batting average. I never know whether I should blame myself for this or not."

i only bay like a wounded coyote with wins and losses. i zone out at a mention of RBI, and batting average is fine

but yes he should actually blame himself for that, at least partly

I waddle like a penguin whenever Ron Cey is mentioned.

or Burgess Meredith

This made me laugh.

James has been going over all the Cy Young winners and comparing the results to the B-Ref winner (by WAR), the Fangraphs winner, and his own winner by something called D-WAR (I think that's his winner--I can't locate the original explanation). Anyway, looking at the 2013 AL winner, he wrote this the other day: "Hisashi Iwakuma, really? Where is that one coming from? Can you find anyone who agrees with you about this?" ("You" meaning one of the other systems that arrived at Iwakuma.)

In the comments, a reader responded: "Well, win shares:

Iwakuma, 20.5
Scherzer, 19.9

Sort of the advanced metric of record on this site."

Haven't listened, but an hour-long interview with James from a year-and-a-half ago.

http://www.econtalk.org/bill-james-on-baseball-facts-and-the-rules-of-the-game/

Does anyone besides me pay the $3/month for his site? It's his, so he gets to do what he wants, but he's spent the last three or four or thirty-nine months doing these political polls, and he's now ending them because he's decided people are flooding the results for certain candidates. They seemed like a waste of time right from the start. Meanwhile, his HOF polls continue, and some of those are interesting--the groupings are competitive maybe, I don't know, a quarter of the time--but way too many are like this one: Steve Garvey, Orel Hershiser, Clayton Kershaw, Maury Wills. Do you really need to poll that?

I wish he'd just go back to answering reader questions and posting the occasional baseball piece.

maury wills 100%, he's up there with harold baines

i do, however, really appreciate maury wills as an example of what billy hamilton would be if he could hit a little bit

Wills could get by with his OBP in an offense-depressed era

He had a dryly sarcastic tweet up last night aimed at the Red Sox starters. Gone today.

Via his website, Bill James announced his departure from the Red Sox after 17 seasons on “the best possible terms.”

— Pete Abraham (@PeteAbe) October 24, 2019

now he can get down to his true passion: the 2020 election

Wow

Obviously it's not any one thing that triggered this, but I'm sure his tweet the other night--the one that mildly mocked Boston's starters and was removed within a day--didn't help. Just in general, he never should have started on Twitter.

This is what he tweeted, by the way (still comes up in a Google search): "Yankees gave up three in the first. Hey; I thought we had a patent on that strategy."

Zing!

I haven't cared about his opinion on anything in... decades? ... but is he a Trumpist or an anti-lefty grouser?

My vague sense is mostly the latter, but with enough grouse for everyone.

I liked the recent piece on Norm Cash.

I mean, the guy is a genius, come on. He hasn't had anything interesting to say about baseball in decades?

I didn't say that. I said I don't care. He was pretty fascinating to me from '87 thru maybe late '90s. Others built on his work.

He still posts good stuff on baseball, although he sometimes seems oblivious to the fact that he's rehashing old research. (Which, if you invented the field, you're entitled to do, but he'll throw in a minor tweak and treat something like it's brand new.)

My biggest complaint against him the past two or three years is summed up by a tweet from a couple of days ago:

As long as I have been writing, people have been telling me to stick to baseball. On Twitter I just automatically block anybody who says that, but the people who wrote me letters to tell me that 40 years ago, I always wonder if they are still reading or not.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) October 23, 2019

"I just automatically block anybody..."

I understand that endless arguments are wearing. But his skin gets thinner and thinner all the time. I don't follow Twitter, so I don't know what people have been tweeting at him, but I know I was exasperated by his political polls too, especially as someone who was paying for his site. So I'm guessing that some of those people who were blocked weren't saying don't write about non-baseball things (which the Abstracts were full of--if you're a James fan, that was one of the great things about the Abstracts), they were saying just stop writing about this one particular thing. And if you block everybody who's not telling you how great you are, you're left with nothing but people telling you how great you are.

pure clemenza bait

Yeah. . .to be honest, I don't really get why people think The French Connection is a great movie. Can somebody explain that to me in Twitter-Space?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) January 30, 2020

That he's often terrible on movies is one thing you can get me to agree with (he went on some rant about Boyhood a few years ago that I found ridiculous, or at least that he was applying certain complaints to that particular film), but in this case, I'm pretty much on the same page; not a film I've ever been big on.

love a false binary

Do you agree that it is SO unfair that JT Realmuto has to play this season for just $10 million?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) February 21, 2020

is bill james' all-time favorite pro baseball player dick pole

I've been off James's site for weeks, but this made me laugh just now: "I realized that I was stumbling into a Twitter argument, which is the modern equivalent of interrupting elephants during mating, so I exited the situation as gracefully as I could..."

by that measure, elephant bill has tried to sleep with half the savanna

I'm not on Twitter, but I figured as much. He often complains about rudeness, too, seemingly oblivious to his own (and acronyms, ditto). I still like the line.

Novel twist on the-game-was-better-when-we-played: nostalgia for pandemic names.

I still say "Covid-19" is a crappy name for a plague. I mean, Bubonic Plague, Black Death, Red Death, Polio, Consumption, Tyhpoid, Yellow Fever,. . . these are NAMES. Covid-19 sounds like you died of an entry on a tax form.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) April 3, 2020

otm. see also names for military operations

He is decidedly not my favourite film critic.

If one person told me that Citizen Kane was the greatest movie ever, 200 did...it's not that good of a movie. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a MUCH better movie. Cool Hand Luke is a better movie.

I have a project I have worked on off and on for at least seven years called "My 501 Favorite Movies", which might be subtitled a "a biography through film." It’s about my favorite movies, but also about why I liked them, why this movie worked for me, where I was in my life at the time that I saw this movie, etc. I don’t know whether I am ever going to finish that project and get it published, but in any case, because of the discussion going on in "Hey, Bill", I decided to take my comments about a couple of movies and make a little Bill James Online article out of them. I had ranked "The Magnificent Ambersons" as my 212th favorite movie ever, and "The Third Man" as my 4th favorite ever. Just for the hell of it I will throw in my comments about the 1970s movie "I Walk the Line." Thanks for reading.

I don't know if the proposed title is an allusion to Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies. (I asked him about Kael in a "Hey Bill" once; he didn't seem to know who she was, but maybe he looked into her.) You can put Butch Cassidy and Cool Hand Luke on the list too. And 496 more.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OhMH53G

It's an obvious reference to frequent On Cinema guest Gregg Turkington's heroic Guinness World Record feat to watch 501 movies in 501 days
https://i.imgur.com/OhMH53G.png

Buried in a long post today on players who had more WAR than their league's MVP:

"WAR just ignores that, and thus implicitly assumes that the Giants are a better team than the Reds. My opinion is that this is Dumb, but then, nobody asked me. But when you apply it to individuals, Mays winds up with more WAR (8.7 to 7.7), while Robinson winds up with more Win Shares, 41 to 38. I feel strongly that my conclusion is right, Win Shares is right, and theirs is wrong. And I still expect to win the argument eventually, in history, simply because I am right and they are wrong."

No timeline on eventually.

I was looking for a different thread where I could post this...some thread on "intangibles" or "leadership" or "old baseball players/writers never die." I think there's one like that somewhere, but I can't remember the title.

Anyway, James on the famous 1979 NL MVP race, which he thinks should have gone to Schmidt or Winfield. However:

But also, let's acknowledge OUR blindness. Willie Stargell had real leadership value. Dave Parker told this story...I'm sure he has probably told this story a thousand times, but I happened to hear it directly from him, so it made an impact on me. The Pirates flew in to Montreal for a critical late-season series (almost certainly 9-16-1979). Montreal was technically in first place, 87-57, .604, the Pirates at 88-58, .603. It was Sunday night; they got into Montreal pretty late. The bus driver who picked them up at the airport "got lost" and drove them all over Montreal for 2 hours before he took them to their hotel, and the guys on the bus were angry about it, shouting stuff at the bus driver. Finally Pops (Stargell) stood up and said, "Guys, don't worry about it. You just remember this when we take the field tomorrow." They beat the Expos two in a row.

Leadership is a real thing. You win games because of it. David Ortiz and Willie Stargell have a lot of things in common, a lot of things. David just has a natural leadership. He knows how to stand up and say something, when to stand up and say something. We won a lot of games because of it. It's hard to put it on a balance sheet, but it's there.

totally told this story before, but

in march of 1977, when i was 5.5 years old, we went to visit my grandmother in florida. (iirc she lived in boca raton, which was well away from bradenton, so maybe my dad was all like fuck that, we're going to bradenton!)

anyway we went to a pirates spring training game, which was a bit less formal 45 years ago, and i was encouraged to go down to the railing to get autographs, which i did, until willie stargell looked at me and said . . . now what do you say? and like a year later i blurted out 'thank you?'

anyway willie stargell by no means deserved the 1979 NL MVP but he was my hero (and i suspect david ortiz may have had a similar impact, which is why i have no qualms whatsoever supporting him for the HoF)

I had never seen his post-2016 thing and wow

This is just... aggressively ahistorical.

If you want a catalogue of your failures along this line perhaps we will do that another time. (Prohibition, Lyndon Johnson’s great society, Bill Clinton’s trade policies, the Warren Court’s willy-nilly extension of legal rights, triggering a massive increase in crime, Obama’s health care initiative.)

Morbius and I argued about the concept of mystique once--I thought it was a fair thing to apply to certain players, he thought it was an empty abstraction.

Stargell was one of those players I'd apply it to in the context of when I started to watch baseball, right at the beginning of the '70s. The 48 HR he hit in '71 was the most by anybody between Killebrew in '69 and Foster in '77--i.e., for me, the benchmark for hitting home runs. And his 40/40 season in '73, 40 doubles and 40 HR, that felt like science-fiction.

I think my single biggest regret as a baseball fan might be (as I posted on another thread) tuning out in '79 and missing the whole We-Are-Family mania and Stargell's swan song.

Meant to say, that's a great story, mookie.

Had to laugh at this--his arbitrariness when it comes to reader e-mail is often staggering.

What broadcast teams do you like to listen to past or present while watching a baseball game? (If any)
Asked by: chauncynnts

Answered: 3/7/2021
I'm not in the opinion business, you know?

Sorry, this is becoming an obsession: James's arbitrary rudeness.

Reader e-mail yesterday:

A friend and I were discussing the relative values of SP across eras
Asked by: willibphx

Answered: 4/24/2021
Sign Posts? Signal Patrols? Starter's Pistols? Sunday Prayers? Sausage Patties? Snappy Patter? Singing Performance? Street Parking? Sorry...I don't speak acronyms.

James cut the e-mail off there; I'm quite sure "SP" was very clear in the context of the whole question. So the same guy wrote back today:

My apologies, I mistakenly assumed that SP was common vernacular for this audience. To try again, how would you compare the value of two starting pitchers in different eras...

And the question went on there. This time, James answered.

Honest to god--getting the guy to write twice because James wanted to make a point, even though anyone reading would have fully understood him the first time. I remember James, 35 years ago, writing something to the effect that the reason he started self-publishing was because he wanted to be able to mention Babe Ruth without stopping to explain who Babe Ruth was; now he makes an issue of making people explain that SP means starting pitcher.

are these questions are from people who pay him money for the privilege of asking? either way, adler otm

Definitely, and I did think about it--the questioners (as I am) are paying. It's a nominal amount, but still. Another one from a couple of days ago:

Re: Maris/Killebrew...Off the top of my head I can think of three reasons why MVP voters might have looked more favorably on Maris than Killebrew:
Asked by: howard38

Answered: 4/21/2021
Good for you. Let's find something more interesting to talk about.

Followed by:

As you wish. Sorry I cut across your lawn.
Asked by: howard38

Answered: 4/23/2021
There is a difference between cutting across one's lawn and repeatedly insisting that I answer a stupid question.

If he just simply ignored questions he doesn't like, I'd say fine. But he edits them, insults the reader, and publishes them.

(And, just to clarify, the "Ask Bill" section is a small part of what you're paying for, although I tend to read that far more regularly than the rest of the site, only some of which is written by James. I sometimes link here to Dave Fleming's stuff--I like him.)

Perfect example of James's blind double-standard in the "Hey Bill" section.

Yesterday, responding to a questioner: "Well, that's partly true and partly nonsense."

Today, responding to someone else who used the word "bizarre" in connection to something James wrote: "I'm sorry; did you want to remain on the site? This is a discussion among friends and gentlemen..."

"friends and gentlemen", pffffffft

World's Best Hitter List from the Bill James Handbook 2022, Page 8: 1. Mike Trout, 2. Juan Soto, 3. Bryce Harper, 4. George Springer, 5. Mookie Betts, 6. Ronald Acuna Jr., 7. Fernando Tatis Jr., 8. Freddie Freeman, 9. Paul Goldschmidt, 10. Trea Turner.

Springer 4th? I assume Vlad's omission is based on three years' worth of data.

Springer is a surprise. we sure he's not taking fielding into account?!

Going by the title, I'd say no...The thing is, if this is based on the last three seasons--which would accommodate Acuna, Soto, and Tatis's inclusion, and explain Vlad's absence--then Springer had a career year in 2019, a pretty good COVID year, and a good but shortened 2021. If you don't ding him for time missed this year, I'd agree with Top 10, but not fourth.

Freeman/Goldschmidt side-by-side, of course.

world's best hitler list

Really interesting piece, not behind the paywall.

https://www.billjamesonline.com/seasons_in_the_shadows/

this was good

he’s just doing a thought exercise and trying to shed light on less-recognized greatness — and this in no way invalidates that effort — but this

Three of those four categories, however, discriminate against catchers, since catchers do not normally get enough playing time to lead the league in Win Shares or WAR or to have a total which is among the Top 20 in the decade. To address that issue, I awarded one additional point to any catcher who had 29 or more Win Shares in a season.

seems amusingly arbitrary in a field that’s already not short of such. (tbf he also discusses how there is no meaningful difference between players separated by tenths of WAR.)

It felt like a breakthrough of sorts to see him even use WAR for all of this (two years ago, he would sometimes dismiss reader e-mails for simply using the WAR acronym)--he has generally stuck to Win Shares for past studies. I think he's on something like the 5th stage of grief when it comes to Win Shares.

Three of my e-mails concerning a billing question have gone unanswered. I'll vent here.

Reader e-mail the other day: "Where do you rank Scherzer-Degrom in the best 1-2 pitching duos conversation?" (He went on a bit from there.)

James: "I must not be following you. In what sense are DeGrom and Scherzer a 'duo'. In what sense are they better than Carlton and Gibson? In what sense are they better than Roberts and Spahn? In what sense are they better than Newhouser and Feller? I am just not following you."

Someone else followed up today: "An earlier writer asked about a Scherzer-deGrom pitching duo. I'm assuming you hadn't yet heard they were teammates. But to ask a specific question: entering 2022, Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom will be teammates. They are currently 1-2 in the Starting Pitcher rankings with scores of 487.1 and 466.1, respectively..."

Those Starting Pitcher rankings are James's own creation.

James: (after a few preliminary paragraphs about great 1-2 duos) "In this case? It'll never work. What creates great team pitching is a combination of ballpark, fielding, usage patterns and great talent. Scherzer is almost 40; deGrom is well past 30 and has broken down more times than a 30-year-old Chevy. It won't work."

He may well be right. The bizarre thing, though, is treating the question like it's silly when Scherzer and deGrom are presently on top of his own leaderboard.

I'm glad you're around to document Bill James slowly losing his marbles. Why is he being so willfully obtuse?

I think he's trying to say that it's silly to compare them to other great duos when they haven't played together yet. He could explain himself like any reasonable person would, why does he treat his paying customers this way?

I'm going to send in an application to ghost answer his reader e-mail: "Theoretically great, yes--they presently sit 1-2 on our Starting Pitcher rankings--but let's see if they're healthy." Is that so hard?

(There's unmistakable sarcasm in the follow-up e-mail; I notice readers are starting to push back a bit.)

Interesting James response to Tom Tango today:

"There are critical problems with WAR that you have never acknowledged and the public is completely unaware of, but this is probably not the optimum place to try to discuss them. I'd like, if we can find the time, for the two of us to have an extended discussion of the issues, perhaps to be published as a short book."

"...and the public is completely unaware of" made me laugh--it's like the Kennedy assassination, the truth is being held back--but I would read that book.

"No, I definitely do not think that Trout takes too many walks. Mickey Mantle walked a lot more than Trout does, and as I recall the Yankees did win a championship or two despite this handicap"--that's how you handle an awkward question. (I'm going to refrain from calling it a dumb question, because the guy very carefully explained what he meant.)

"Asking MLB and the players to sit down together and work out a solution to baseball's problems is kind of like asking John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly to sit down face to face and work out a solution to the bank robbery problem."

Try again Bill

I thought that was a pretty good analogy.

James took one of my "Hey Bills" and turned it into a piece he posted today (mentioning me by name). That's it; life can't show me anything more.

https://www.billjamesonline.com/vagabonds_and_homebodies/

whoa!

following on clemenza/bill james' "one team" hall of fame methodology, there was a fun post on a cardinals blog applying the same thing to cardinals players to see how much they were associated with the Cardinals vs other teams:

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2022/1/21/22883532/how-much-of-a-cardinal-were-the-best-cardinals

Bill James recently took a look at the importance of being associated with one team for Hall of Fame candidates. The idea is that players who accrue most of their value for one team, or mostly for one team, have an easier time making the Hall of Fame than players who accrue their value for multiple teams. If you’d like an imperfect example, Gary Sheffield had 62.1 career fWAR, but he had 12 or more for three different teams, and 6 or more for five different teams. By contrast, Willie Stargell had 62.9 fWAR, all with the Pittsburgh Pirates. James’ research compared those two types of players and all others in the gray area. James found that players with mutliple team associations had a much harder time getting into the Hall of Fame. That’s fascinating... and it’s also not what I want to talk about today. In his process, he developed a fun little tool to determine what percentage a player was associated with a specific team. I thought it would be fun to apply that process to various St. Louis Cardinals and determine how “Cardinal-y” they were.

First, here is James’ methodology:

Suppose that a player has 10 Win Shares (or 10 WAR, or 10 games played, or 10 RBI, or 10 homers; it doesn’t much matter.) Suppose he has 10, and all 10 are with one team. Then his “one team percentage” is 100%.

(10 ^ 2) / (10 ^ 2) = 100 / 100 = 1.000

Suppose that he plays for two teams and has five Win Shares for each team; then his “one team percentage” is 50%:

[(5 ^ 2) + (5 ^ 2)] / (10 ^ 2) = (25 + 25) / 100 = 50/100 = .500

Suppose that he plays for three teams, and has four Win Shares for each team; then is “one team percentage” is 33.33%:

[(4 ^ 2) + (4 ^ 2) + (4 ^ 2)] / (12 ^ 2) = (16 + 16 + 16) / 144 = 48/144 = .33333333

then they apply this to various cardinal players. some interesting ones:

Albert Pujols, 99.57% (almost completely associated with the cardinals despite a decade with the angels)
Ozzie Smith, 98.17%
Willie McGee, 92.53%
Jim Edmonds, 82.12%
Matt Holliday, 63.10%
Keith Hernandez, 62.59%
Terry Pendleton, 54.37%
J.D. Drew, 51.99%
Scott Rolen, 43.40%
Joe Torre, 34.55%
Curt Simmons, 26.23%
Mark McGwire, 19.71%
Steve Carlton, 7.26%
Johnny Mize, 65.79%

etc. fun exercise, and it would be fun to see for other players and teams, too

uh, also the author of the post and various commenters are not sure if they used the formula right. lol. sorry. it's a vox run blog, they get paid like $2/article and online mattress promo codes, the standards are low

"Yeah, I borked it. Full disclosure."

welp. if a mod wants to remove the last 3 posts (including this one) that's fine with me.

First thing I noticed was McGwire at 20%; at the very least 50/50 with Oakland, but I suspect he's much more identified with the Cardinals at this point.

bash bros 4ever

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FL6Z7x1WUAIisif.jpg

welp

Obviously Bill "learned" a few things working in management with Boston for 10-plus years.

Answering a "Hey Bill" about Dale Murphy:

"But the problem is that they are very weak MVP seasons. It was just a league in which no one had a season which meets the normal standard of an MVP season. Somebody had to win it, and they picked Murphy, which is fine, but if Mickey Mantle had ever had a season like that, the Yankees would have panicked, or the same with Steve Trout."

Not sure if that's a joke or an old-guy mistake.

Maybe he meant Mike Carp.

In case you were wondering.

I don't know if I have written this, but I categorize Hall of Fame candidates in one of 5 groups.

Group 1 is the inner-circle, automatic-unless-there's-a-scandal Hall of Famer--Willie Mays, Mike Schmidt, Roger Clemens or Mike Trout.

Group 2 is a player who is above the normal standard of a Hall of Fame player--Al Kaline, Roberto Clemente, Harry Heilmann, Charlie Gehringer, Johnny Bench.

Group 3 is a this-type-of-guy-is-normally elected to the Hall of Fame--Duke Snider, Early Wynn, Willie McCovey, Billy Williams, Ferguson Jenkins.

Group 4 is the players-of-this-caliber are not usually Hall of Famers, but sometimes they get lucky group...Catfish Hunter, Luis Tiant, Gil Hodges, Tony Perez, Orlando Cepeda, Jack Clark, Willie Randolph, Harold Baines.

Group 5 is players who clearly should NOT be in the Hall of Fame, even though some have been selected...Travis Jackson, Chick Hafey, Rick Ferrell, Addie Joss, Lee Smith, Matt Kemp, Ernie Lombardi, Vic Wertz, Bill Mazeroski, Doc Cramer, Mark Buehrle, etc.

"The Searchers is not one of the 25 best John Wayne movies, probably not one of the 50 best."

I really wish he'd add an "If you ask me" or an "I know I'm alone on this" to that, something to make it sound less like an assertion of fact. Just not his nature.

lol

you should absolutely demand that he list the first 25 tho

He's also oblivious to the film's history. "It's an almost unwatchable movie much admired by pretentious twits who base their opinions on what the critics tell them." The Searchers would have been totally ignored by whatever pretentious twits walked the earth in 1956--that's not the path it took to its present-day stature.

Not behind the paywall, I don't think.

https://www.billjamesonline.com/the_great_player_of_year_x/

How to save yourself the cost of hiring someone to poll your demographics:

The first player you clearly remember seeing (live or on TV) was a contemporary of:

(If you're too young to remember any, please choose 4th group. Thank you.)

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) January 17, 2023

No votes for Old Hoss Radbourn.

Twitter poll I find funny:

Who do you want to bring back to television?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) April 25, 2023

Tweet the other day: "If the Yankee fans somehow get Munson into the Hall of Fame, then we DEFINITELY should get Varitek in." (Followed later by "I'm signing off Twitter for the day. Those of you who wish to contribute to the barrage of personal insults following the Thurman Munson jokes will have to wait until tomorrow until I can block you.")

He has this weird hate-on for Munson. I looked at the two of them, Munson and Varitek--if he wasn't joking, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't, I don't see the comparison. They had almost the same number of career PA, and it's hard to find anywhere where Munson wasn't clearly superior, even with the shortened career. Admittedly, he was starting to decline the year of the plane crash, so his career rate stats almost certainly would have been less impressive had he played to 39 like Varitek, but what happened happened.

Wonder how he feels about Posey

I know he was running a Twitter poll the other day on Posey vs. Mauer, and he made some comment about them both being great players. There was a lot of commentary about the numerous Posey/Munson similarities when Posey retired, so, to my mind, there's some inconsistency there (i.e., of course agree with him about Posey, but don't see why he doesn't grant the same to Munson).

Thought this bump was going to be about this.

The only thing I will concede about Thurman Munson is that he was probably a better baseball player than he was a pilot.

Note that I said "probably".

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) May 23, 2023

Terrible, I agree. I defend him about lots, and he'll always be one of the key influences on me, but that's indefensible--I think he was really taken to task for it, and, as per his follow-up, got really defensive and snippy--and his inability to see how good a player Munson was is perplexing.

Damn:

https://www.billjamesonline.com/a_sunset_over_the_hill/

I complain lots about the way he conducts himself with readers--he recently shot down a Manoah-related question I sent in (not too pointedly, actually)--but knowing I could send in a question any time and count on most of them being answered, that was great. And I liked his right-hand guy, Dave Fleming, a lot.

If a couple of good books come out of this, that'll at least be something.

I found gyac's home/road thing with the Rays really interesting, so--possibly the last time I'll ever do this--I sent in a "Hey Bill."

Bill -- I will miss this...Someone on a message board today noticed the Rays' extreme home/road split, wondering if that was unusual. So I looked into it: it would seem so for teams this good. All post-war teams that have won 108 games or more, with their home/road winning percentages:

(same data as above)

I guess the question is, is this just a meaningless blip, or does it suggest some flukiness to the Rays that will catch up to them?
Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 6/15/2023
There is not space left in the season that you would PREDICT it would catch up with them. Odds are it will flatten out a little bit.

Not 100% sure, but I take his answer to mean that he also thinks their home/road record will converge a bit as the season goes on.

Posnanski wrote about James pulling the plug the other day--paywall, so I put it on a Google Doc if you're interested.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GrfQNWNZm8OiGb3-iu-lwBL-0N7slYCSuTJyasxTsiM/edit?usp=sharing

You may argue for Lou Whitaker for the Hall of Fame, but you have to admit that Robinson Cano...
Asked by: JackKeefe

Answered: 6/30/2023
I think we're done here.

(... = I'm cutting the rest of what you say)

Will miss "Hey Bill" a lot. I won't miss that.

If Justin Verlander wins 300 games, how long will it be before someone says that no one else will ever do it?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) July 3, 2023

Based on past history, that's funny. But 1) I'd give Verlander about a 1% chance of winning 300, and 2) they'd probably be right this time anyway (barring drastic and unforeseen changes in the game, which, in fairness, is implicit in James's tweet--he's always writing that it's a mistake to assume that what's true now will continue to be true down the road).

Quite likely my last "Hey Bill" (site shuts down next month):

Bill - Thanks for answering my many questions over the years (117 by my count--I went through and saved them). One more before you go.

What I am I missing with Rougned Odor--meaning, how does he keep a job? His batting averages the last five seasons (working backwards) have been .203, .207, .202, .167, .205. In fairness, the first of those seasons he hit 30 HR, and he was in double figures the next three seasons (but probably not this year). He doesn't appear to be an outstanding fielder, he strikes out a lot and doesn't walk much, and he doesn't steal bases anymore. Does he have a reputation as the greatest clubhouse guy in the world?

I may be a little biased here as a Jays fan who remembers his dust-up with Bautista.
Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 8/21/2023
Juan Samuel syndrome. Juan Samuel was kind of a sensation when he first came up, very young, a second baseman, extremely fast. He was perceived as a potential superstar in the building.

He struck out a lot, couldn't actually play second base (or any other position) very well, and he didn't get better. His weaknesses kind of swallowed him up, but it took a long time for the league to come to grips with what had happened to him. He was still a "great athlete," still had star potential. It took a long time for EVERYBODY to accept that this is just what he is. No matter where you put him, there is some reason that it doesn't work.

Assume that was supposed to be "budding," not "building." Anyway, signing off on the Juan Samuel Rule. (Weirdly, I think James once wrote about Juan Samuel in one of the Abstracts in terms of what he called the Walter Matthau Rule--as in, "For everything he brings to a team, what exactly do you do with him?" That was early in Samuel's career, when he was still piling up some impressive bulk numbers.

Juan Samuel was definitely an exciting player, and it's hard to dismiss a young guy who puts up 30+ doubles, mid to high teens in terms of triples, and the same for HRs. Not to mention 40-70 SBs. His rookie year was truly eye-popping, even w/the lack of walks. It was good enough that he actually landed a single first place ROY vote in a year when the runaway winner with all the other top votes was Dwight Gooden. I also recall some favorable comps to NL MVP Ryne Sandberg; i think that mostly boiled down to the impressive fact they tied for the league lead with 19 triples.

After his 1987 season, it looked like he was going to break through into superstar level, but he never improved and only had a couple more full-time seasons. from '84-'87 i would say he was definitely valuable at the plate, but he was vv memorable as a disappointment thereafter.

Great answer from Bill. Jay Bruce also comes to mind. He was good for many years (but not the superstar that everyone thought he would be) but still got chances from several teams even though he declined rapidly in his 30's.

Early Juan Samuel: a potential superstar in the building
After six or seven seasons: Juan Samuel has left the building

I'd like to nominate Angel Hernandez to be the next Speaker of the House. Just anything to get him off the baseball field. . . .

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) October 4, 2023

Bill James, despite his faults, does pop out some all time tweets

Now that his site's closing down, I'll probably have to do something I've never done before, follow somebody on Twitter.

Noooo, it's a trap!

I was thinking that Angel Hernandez must be the most unifying force in baseball.

There’s several Jomboy videos about him, there’s one with Kyle Schwarber absolutely losing it at him and getting (deservedly) tossed, and then the Phillies manager is out there trying to put a diplomatic face on it. Incredible guy.

lol I'd take Ángel Hernández over Jim Jordan or Steve Scalise as Speaker any day

Win-win, as the saying goes.

The site is lingering longer than it was supposed to, but nothing new has been posted for a while. The starting pitcher rankings seem to have been updated, though, right through to the end of the World Series going by Merrill Kelly's placement. Last one ever, then:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/polls_ratings/starting_pitcher_rankings/

1. Gerrit Cole
2. Zack Wheeler
3. Blake Snell
4. Corbin Burnes
5. Merrill Kelly
6. Zac Gallen
7. Spencer Strider
8. Shohei Ohtani
9. Justin Verlander
10. Logan Webb

First I've heard about this:

About a week ago I suffered a stroke. I am more or less OK. I am not in ANY pain. I can walk normally and take care of myself, but my right hand is messed up and interferes with my ability to do things like tweet. Thank you all for your support.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) January 26, 2024

Regarding Bauer, there is loud contingent shouting "There is only ONE acceptable opinion here, you HAVE to agree with us or you're a terrible person." Whenever one side of the argument sounds like that, I take a more careful look at the other side.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) March 26, 2024

here’s our lovable brain damaged legend

Funny, cos I’m sure Bill is more empirical about things like “four separate accusers”, “once harassed a teenage girl by sending her dozens of tweets because she said she didn’t like him” and so on. Honestly beyond me that someone didn’t delete his account for his own good years ago.

Saw this come up again in light of his recent comments:

Was explaining to my wife and our friends about the time I got into a Twitter spat with Bill James that directly led to the MLBPA rebuking him and the Boston Red Sox distancing themselves from him, a real Twitter highlight for me https://t.co/z8H7mPcTEB

— Chris Towers is the Riley Greene Preservation Soc (@CTowersCBS) July 20, 2022

bill has been brain damaged for years now. sad but just is what it is

from his daughter on bluesky:

any time you think "wow i'd like to be a nepotism baby" i encourage you to think about what your dad might post were he in the position to give out said nepotism

lol, sympathy acquired

his latest tweet is praising Joe Lieberman as "the only Democrat who would stand up for Rush Limbaugh's right to speak" (???)

mods, please change the title of this thread to "Bill James RIP".

signed,

OP

Philosophical Q. Suppose your dog has been taught not to do something and usually doesn't, but has a breakdown and does it, and gives you that guilty look. Is that the same as knowing right from wrong, for a human & in a legal sense? Or is knowing right from Wr a broader concept?

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) March 28, 2024

i prefer not to speak.gif

Wait Bill's dogposting now? Refollowed

Is Bill working up to a confession here or