THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

When I click on the link, all that happens is I get returned to the same review.

No title?  No link to Amazon?  What gives?

Studes has a review of the book and website at THT today:  http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/be-jolly/.

All of our blog entries are like that (the title is the page itself).

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Studes:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/be-jolly/

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MGL: regarding the Rivera thing.  That article is actually on his online site.  I did the same thing in The Book.  And, I used something called “The Tank”.  And his equation for The Tank is virtually the same as mine.  (What bugs me is that he’s read The Book!)

I did it for all relievers, 1999-2002.  See The Book, p.231-234.

I don’t think it’s going to cut it, if Bill James is not going to be keeping up with the sabermetric community, now that he’s online.

I see by BTF comments what kevin means about “no title”, as in, MGL didn’t put the title of James’ new book.

For most regular readers of this blog, if they see:
Bill James’ New Book, “Gold Mine”

they won’t see a distinction with
New Book, “Bill James Gold Mine”

At this blog, we’re not going to conform to the APA Formatting and Style Guide:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

If that means that some people get annoyed, so be it.

Anyway, let’s get back to the merits of the book…

MGL, I swear I didn’t read your comment about the reliever study before posting my article.  Great minds and all…

I think this observation by Studes raises an important point: 

“It’s kind of ironic that the person who perhaps best helped baseball fans understand that context can overrun statistics (in fact, I think that contextual adjustment is the most important aspect of sabermetrics) has subtly reintroduced context into his writing and thinking. I get the feeling this is something James has actively thought about, and it’s something that his readers should keep in mind too.”

A lot of James’ work in recent years seems focused on de-de-contextualizing player performance.  I see it in his modifying RC to include performance with runners on, in “Underestimating the Fog,” in his Blyleven pitching-to-the-score article, in last year’s look at the DBacks’ pythag overperformance, and in his current interest in clutch hitting.  I wish James would spell out why he is taking his analysis in this direction (assuming it’s a conscious choice).

I don’t expect James to first demonstrate that unusual splits in team/player performance reflect true talent differences, before he writes about them (as I imagine MGL would like).  But at a minimum, he owes it to his readers to tell us how they compare to relevant benchmarks.  For example, he recently wrote (as Slate) that Biggio had a knack for exploiting bad pitchers while doing poorly against good ones, and provided some dramatic splits.  But he doesn’t tell us—or even seem to know—how Biggio’s splits compares to other players’.  That’s just not up to what I would hope are James’ standards.

His Closer Fatigue article:

I developed a “Closer Workload Fatigue Store”, which is as follows:
5 times the number of batters faced yesterday,
Plus 4 times the number of batters faced the day before,
Plus 3 times the number of batters faced the day before that,
Plus 2 times the number of batters faced the day before that,
Plus the number of batters faced the day before that.

Mine in The Book:

We will define another toy, which we’ll call The Tank. Take the
number of batters faced yesterday,
plus 75% of the batters faced two days earlier,
50% of the batters three days earlier,
and 25% of the batters four days earlier.
This will give you the effective number of batters that the pitcher faced.

If you take James’ “Store” numbers and divide by 5, you get: 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%.  Basically, his “Store” numbers and my “Tank” numbers are virtually the same thing. He decided to go back five days, and I went back four.

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If he gets to say that the stats he’s going to introduce will be end up being copied on various online sites in the coming months, what do we get to say back to him here?

Bill James:

I thought it was interesting enough that I decided to add the daily “closer workload fatigue score” to the statistics section of the on line.

I’m annoyed.

I liked the book.  I didn’t think there was any finished work in the book as I read through it.  I don’t know if James will finish it and do more studies or if he’s going to let others, but I thought the book was just some interesting stats, most of which probably don’t have much of any significance.  I thought the book was more of a beginning that didn’t include the central parts we’re used to and definitely didn’t include the ending.  It will be interesting to see what James does with this stuff. 

If you got the book, or are thinking about getting it, and expecting it to be similar to THT or BP or this site, you’ll be disappointed.

I’ll go ahead and show my age here (I’m in my mid-twenties) and say that I find it really hard to connect with what James is doing here; I understand that he did a lot of important things for sabermetrics and that I owe him a huge debt of gratitude, but I don’t have the fond memories of the Abstracts that I think a lot of you do.

It just seems to me that James is coasting toward irrelevance - his work seems to go to great pains to not engage with what the rest of the community is doing, and while that’s his perrogative, I don’t think it’s the best thing.

If I were to buy the Gold Mine, it’d be for the Dewan +/- stuff, I think.

The Baseball Abstracts are sabermetric gold, both in the pursuit of knowledge, and James’ superb writing style.  It really doesn’t get any better than that.  And, I would recommend that you go to your local library and get them.  At my library, and through county interlibrary loan, I’d have access to all of then since 1983 (’course I already own them).  You do yourself a disservice in not getting at least one of them.  The later ones are the best ones.

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James’ long-held policy to not engage his audience doesn’t make much professional sense, nor business sense.  (And even though he allows comments on his articles and asks for comments, he rarely responds.) It makes alot of sense time-wise.  That’s the choice he’s making.  And when it comes to time, no one should impose on someone else.

But, he shouldn’t start pre-accusing people of putting up his stats online, when he has no idea what’s already out there.  The path he follows precludes certain opinions, or at least, makes those opinions subject to the scorn they deserve.

I have one around the house somewhere, can’t recall which off the top of my head. I’ll confess I feel like my attention span went completely away when my little girl was born, so I probably don’t spend as much time with books as I should. (It’s also harder to type; she thinks I’m doing it all wrong and that she can improve upon my methods.)

But my point was more about how a thing affects someone in its moment, as opposed to when its moment is passed. I’ve seen Citizen Kane multiple times, and think its a splendid movie. But it’s never going to affect me the way it affected audiences when it was first released; I grew up watching the children of Citizen Kane, and so what was so fresh and new about it (at least technically - cameras, lighting, effects work, etc.) is very commonplace.

I enjoy reading James quite a bit, but I don’t think he’ll ever touch me half as profoundly as he’s touched you; a lot of what made him so great is now so (relatively) common. It goes to show just how great an influence he’s really had.

The Star Wars analogy.  I can buy it.

I have not read nearly as much of James’ stuff as many here, but I don’t think his writing ability is relatively common nowadays. Combine that with baseball and stats like he does, and you have one of the best, imo.

Somewhere in the book (I can’t find it right now) he says something like, “I am sure there is some similar work out there, but I don’t know how to find it.” (That is a paraphrase from memory.)

That is a copout.

And to add to Studes good review, I thought that the consistency article was garbage.  He made his “formula” so unnecessarily complicated, I doubt that 10% of the readers will muddle through it.

One thing I’d like to see on the web site, is an ability to list some of the stats without having to click on an individual’s name (so that I can cut and paste and do research on the data).  For example, pitcher pitch types.  Or am I missing something?

I’m too young to have read James’ abstracts when they came out, but this is the way I feel, based on the comments by people here: If I want to read great baseball analysis, I’ll read Tango, MGL, Gassko, etc., but if I want to read great writing I’ll read Hemingway, Conroy, and that crowd. One of these days I’ll find a copy, and maybe then I’ll change my mind regarding James.

I don’t intend to belittle his accomplishments, it’s just that it seems he’s past his prime. As Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Note: I edited the title of this thread to reflect the full title of the book.

I’m happy to see Bill writing an annual again. I think for Sabermetric types my age, those Abstracts in the 80s inform so much about the way we approach the game. Owing him a debt of gratitude understates the case by a massive margin.

I also can sympathize with him from a “what the hell else do you people want from me” point of view. He’s doing this because he enjoys it, and if what he’s currently doing isn’t packing the same kind of punch as the stuff that made him famous, well then he’s in excellent company. Sting hasn’t done anything useful musically in 30 years and he’s still kicking around. Greatness by definition is rare.

I think Sting listens to other music doesn’t he?

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I don’t agree with the “what the hell else” standpoint.  I think it’s insulting isn’t it?  It’s like when we tolerate our grandfather’s stories because he’s senile.

Bill James is a great writer no question.  What we expect is for him not to reinvent something that’s already been invented.  His “store” thing is a case in point.

And alot of his stuff is like others are saying… just data without explaining the context.  If this wasn’t Bill James, we’d tear him apart.  As far as I’m concerned, we’re being as respectful as possible.

I don’t think it serves anything to make excuses for him.  He’s not getting close to being putting out to pasture, so no reason to treat him as that.

Ditto what Voros says about James attitude.  We do these things because we want/like to.  Some may do it partially or wholly for money and others may not.  Doesn’t matter.

We owe nutin’ to nobody!

That does not make anyone immune to critique and criticism, though.

Two things:  1) If you don’t like what I (not me - anyone) write, don’t read it.  2) If you put anything out there for the public to read, expect criticism, good or bad, founded or unfounded, and live with it or stop publishing.

MGL/19

Very true-- if he didn’t want people to read his stuff and learn from him then he wouldn’t have devoted his time to making the site and the book. If he’s saying “what the hell do you want from me?” then he shouldn’t be publishing and creating a new site to spread his work.

Never having read Bill James’ abstracts, I never fell in love with his work from 30 or so years ago. Reading only some of his more recent work, it’s tough for me to even mention him when talking about the best current analysts (not that I ever talk about that with anyone anyway).

Here’s a link to a Q&A on Time.com where James discusses the book.

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1720044,00.html

Here’s an exchange that I can’t believe I actually read:

Q:  You use some colorful language in the book, making the reams of statistical information much more reader-friendly. At one point, you basically compare teams that use the shift against Boston Red Sox star David Ortiz to “Polocks hunting landmines.” You say they’re “dumb.” Though you are quick to point out that there are only “three Polish guys” who are “offended by Polock jokes.” Why push the envelope?

A:  Everybody who is my age, or everybody who is over 30, knows that joke. I mean, I’m not sure I get the point of the over-shift against David Ortiz. It helps you if he hits a ground ball, but if the bomb goes off, you can put those infielders anywhere you want to, it doesn’t really do you any good. The damage that David does comes when he hits the ball 380 feet. It really does not matter much where you put your infielders when that happens.

So, don’t bother positioning your infielders where Ortiz will hit his grounders, because that won’t stop the long fly balls.  Maybe we can do without a first baseman altogether, then?  Or outfielders, do we still need them?  They can’t stop homers any better than infielders can (aside from a few acrobats in parks with low fences).

Sheesh!

21: Maybe he’s trying to say that they should position the infielders on the warning track ; )

In all seriousness, that is quite a strange answer.

I gave that Time interview its own thread, though feel free to continue the discussion here.

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I’m 39 and I don’t get that joke.  My wife is Polish, and I’m quite certain she’ll be offended if I show it to her.  Most Polish people I know would take offense to that.

In the first year (first episode I think) of “The Simple Life”, one of the guys asked Nicole Ritchie (man, she is funny) if she wants to drive a Polish pickup.  She said “yeah, I love driving”.  He gives her a wheelbarrow.  My wife was pissed.  When they did a rerun of that episode, incredibly, they actually bleeped out the “Polish pickup” words.  Clearly, some Polish group got to Fox and told them they were offended too.

The only Polish joke my wife laughed about was about how Polish people were going to picket All In The Family, but they ended up picketing the wrong network.

Otherwise, a country like America that treats Poland like a second-class European country (need Visa, unlike the Western European countries; and of course managed to get Poland to fight in Iraq without Poland feeling they got something back in exchange) should not make derogatory statements against them.  You look like a bully.

I’m Polish, and it might bother me if it had an iota of truth in it, but it doesn’t.  For just one example, the Polish cracked the German Enigma code machine prior to World War II (smart), and passed it along to the British (selfless).  This was a huge factor in the ultimate defeat of the Nazis…

I won’t criticize anyone for being offended, but I have to agree that a joke like that tells you more about the teller than the target of the joke, and thus I don’t have any trouble shrugging it off.

Besides, given a choice of who’s dumb, a) the people who analyze hits and put the fielders where the balls go most often, or b) the guys who don’t bother, who’s being dumb?

Yeah, it’s weird that James would say that, in light of your article.  I wonder if he even read it, considering his own article was in that same book.

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I agree that a joke like that is more embarrassing for the teller than the receiver.  I’m not Polish, so I’m not directly offended.  Reminds me of that great movie (Dragon: Bruce Lee story), where he’s watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and everyone is laughing at the Chinese portrayal with the buck teeth, until his girlfriend sees the look on his face.  Again, it’s all about the bully, the guy in power, asserting himself over those with less.

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As for WWII, Poland got the shaft, as US, Britain and Russia had a deal in place regarding Poland, without the knowledge of the Polish leader in exile in Britain.  When he confronted Churchill, Churchill knew he sold him down the river, but they had reasoned they needed Russia.  And the price was Poland.

I agree with MGL/19: we don’t owe our free time to anyone.  What we owe is our paid time.  And if someone buys The Book, a Mets ticket, or a subscription to BJOL, that person has a right to criticize what he just bought.

Bill James has alot of currency built up with me, so, he gets plenty of slack from me.  Imagine how tough I’d be on him if he had no currency with me.

I forgot that Tango did the same thing that James did with Rivera for ALL relievers.  What Tango came up with was that relievers performed just as well after a heavy workload as after a not-so-heavy one.

It would have been REALLY nice if James had bothered to look at MORE than ONE reliever in his “study!”

He says, “We would need to study different pitchers before we definitively reach a conclusion that a tired closer reduces the winning percentage of his team by 50 or 60 points.”

Really?  Looking at ONE pitcher is not enough of a sample?

And 50 or 60 points in wp?  Does he really think that looking at ANY number of pitchers is going to lead us to the conclusion that a “tired closer reduces the wp of a team by 50 or 60 points?”

Does he have any idea how bad a closer would have to pitch to reduce his team’s wp by 50 or 60 points?  (I guess not.)

I’ll actually answer that. Given an average LI of 2.0, a pitcher would have to pitch 2 runs worse per 9 innings for one inning in order to reduce his team’s wp by 50 points.  That ain’t going to happen. Not even close.  Even James found that Rivera’s ERA was decreased by like .8 runs when tired, and not 2.0 (that’s why I said that difference in wp was not commensurate with the difference in ERA, and probably due to noise).

In fact, James is comparing like 150 games to 300 games (high to low fatigue).  ONE SD of the difference in wp between a 150 and 300 game set is 50 points of wp!  His difference (in team wp) is barely significant at the 1 SD level!

If it weren’t THE Bill James doing some of this “research” he would be lambasted on sites like this and BTF.  Of course he is being lambasted on this site.

But, he is what he is.  I have always said that he is a brilliant thinker and innovator, and a very good writer to whom I owe a large debt of gratitude.  He is just not up to the task of doing hard core research.  And rather than doing poor research as he often does, he should realize his weakness and farm it out to people who ARE up to the task.

And yes, his (purported) statement about Ortiz and the shift is ridiculous.  I don’t know whether a “shift” is right or not for any given batter, but the answer sure has nothing to do with how often they hit home runs or anything but ground balls.

For the few people who said they were too young to read the original Abstracts…

I’m also too young to have been a part of the early Bill James fanbase and enjoy the Abstracts during the 80s (I’m only 22, in fact).

But jeez, haven’t you guys read the Bill James Historical Abstract? It’s got to be one of the best baseball books ever written. If you’d like to get a taste of what makes James so great (and also learn alot about the history of the game from the 19th Century up until the 1990s), I strongly recommend you buy yourself one.

Also (again for the younger guys), if you are eager to get the full gist of the annual Abstracts, try to dig up (on eBay or half.com) a copy of “This Time Let’s Not Eat the Bones.” It’s all the great writing from the entire collection of Abstracts, except with NO STATISTICS at all. Just a huge book of James at his best. It’s a rarity nowadays and somebody picked it up for me for Christmas a couple years ago for upwards of $50 but it’s worth it if you are really interested.

Funny, that “Bones” book was actually a poorly packaged Bill James, perhaps the worst way to package him.  The initial idea was good.  But, reading it, as an Abstract reader, it had almost no oomph.  Now, a couple of stuff in there I had never read, and those were good.  So, perhaps it is strictly in terms of my already being an Abstract reader that the “Bones” book was no good.  I’ll defer to the non-Abstract readers as to whether the Bones book is a good book for newbie James readers.

I recommend the “Politics of Glory” as the best introduction book to James.  It is fairly light on the numbers, and only uses the numbers to try to sift through the heart of the issue (Hall of Fame).

The genius of Bill James is his writing style and ability to focus on the issue, without being bogged down by the numbers.  It’s when he is bogged down with the numbers (like his Win Shares book) that he goes from BILL JAMES to bill james.

The second book I’d recommend is the original Historical Abstract (from he 80s, not the newer one from 5 years ago).  A fantastic book.  Then, go to your library and read all the Abstracts.

His Guide to Managers was so-so, fairly hit and miss, a double here, a strikeout there.  No homeruns.

The original Abstracts were most stunning to me, and most famous for, challenging some fundamental fan assumptions about baseball in a very accessible way: things we now think of as utterly obvious came as revelations to most of us in those early abstracts: how SLG and OBP are better for valuing hitters than BA, the importance of park factor adjustment, the importance of caught stealing numbers as offsetting the value of stolen bases, how much more important range in the field is than fielding percentage in modern baseball, the dramatic difference in the future prospects of a 21-year-old Rookie of the Year vs. a 24-year-old Rookie of the Year, etc., etc..  Even if Bill was not literally the first inventor of some of these ideas, his accessible manner of describing them and defending them were transformational. 

But beyond that, he has always had a remarkasble ability to grab and articulate the little items that make individual players, teams or events in baseball unique, interesting or revealing.  The Abstracts (both the original annuals and the historical ones) were extraordinary fun when a palyer or team would provoke a quick insight or study—rarely systematic but often revealing nevertheless that make you think a little bit differently.  For a good flavor of this, go to the new online site and check out Bill’s article titled Hall of Famers Among Us, one of the most Abstract-like pieces currently on the site.  Bill goes through the various top players in the game today and gives his guess as to their likelhiood of eventually making the HOF.  It is defintiely not a systematic study, and really just provides an excuse for Bill to make pithy comments and observations and super-quick little studies provoked by each individual player. Many of the comments are illuminating or funny or clever or just help you think slightly differently about the player than you did before.  In the Carlos Delgado comment for example, James mentions that players like Delgado do sometimes mount late career comebacks, and points to McCovey 1977, Stargell 1979 and Frank Thomas 2006.  Now this is just a passing observation, and definitely not a systematic study but all of sudden I’m thinking about Delgado in a historical context and looking back at these precedents on B-R and thinking about other possible precedents and just generally thinking about Delgado (and aging first basemen generally) in a fuller and more rounded way than I was before and maybe even conceptualizing a more systematic study.  And that’s just one quick sentence in a long list of players in the article.  The Abstracts were packed with this kind of stuff, which is why reading them was a highly entertaining experience.  “The Book” is great for what it is—a very careful and systematic study of some issues of baseball strategy, but it like much careful sabermetric work is a bit cold-blooded, it doesn’t necessarily capture the flavor of the individual personalities of the players and teams and managers and others that Bill uses both words and numbers to bring to the forefront.

I think Baseball Abstract and The Book each have served their audience with their intended purposes.  I don’t think there’s any dispute there.

And when James writes and talks about most things, it is usually entertaining and informative.

It’s in the number crunching (and worse, number crunching already done by others intentionally oblivious to James), that it’s troublesome.  That this is true doesn’t mean we get to dismiss it because everything else we like about James is also true.

MGL can be a prickly sort to some people, and I can be arrogant to others.  If those attitudes get in the way of making an accurate or fair presentation, then we get to be called out on it.  We don’t get to have it set aside because of our other contributions.

His “Polish” comments were way out of line, as were his comments in the interview regarding those comments.  I lost a lot of respect for him.  He said something similar in one of his writings a year or two ago about orientals (or was that Rob Neyer - sorry Rob if that was not you), did he not?

Honestly, how does someone end up making ethnic comments in bad taste (at least) in a baseball book?