Interview with Bill James

[WiffleWOOD]

Alex Belth at Bronx Banter has a nice interview with Bill James...

http://www.all-baseball.com/bronxban...es/012646.html

[RIyankee]

A brilliant man who forever changed the way we look at the game of baseball.

[Rich]

James is the most seminal thinker in the history of baseball. I wish the Yankees would hire one of his disciples.

[CAYanksfan]

Originally posted by Rich
James is the most seminal thinker in the history of baseball. I wish the Yankees would hire one of his disciples.

What would or could that disciple accomplish in the Yankee organization?

[Dave in MD]

Gene Michael applied alot of James principles while assembling our dynasty.

[Rich]

Originally posted by CAYanksfan


What would or could that disciple accomplish in the Yankee organization?

The same thing James accomplishes for Boston: using true Sabermetric principles to evaluate players, for example, determining the economic worth of a player, which amateurs players to draft, etc. Not that such an analysis would be the final word, but it should inform every baseball decision.

[markp]

I would have asked him why he introduced subjectivity in two seperate places in his new formula.
I would have asked why he drew lines at arbitrary places in that formlua when his peak vs. career distinction was obviously a much better way of looking at it.
In fact, I'd ask him why he came up with the cockamamie winshares formula anyway, when it's so inferior to his own formula in the original Abstract.
Lastly, I'd ask him how he can portray himself as an objective observer when he's been completely biased against the Yankees from his first publication to the present. An example of this bias is what he wrote about the Kelly for O'Niell trade: "Typical Yankee blunder." This is just one example among many. In one of his early abstracts, he spends about 3,000 words explaingin why the 76-78 Royals were superior to the Yankees of the same years.
He (along with Pete Palmer, Rod Thorn, and several others) did change how we thought about baseball. But, unlike most of them, he got arrogant and self-serving. Get out the first abstract and read his commentary about the other people's formulas. He gets pretty nasty talking about their formulas, and it really wasn't needed. The Palmer-Thorn books of that era are as instructive as James, they just don't have the sly mockery of the Omar Moreno's of the baseball world, and are therefore less entertaining.

[hugelongtermdeal]

Originally posted by markp
Lastly, I'd ask him how he can portray himself as an objective observer when he's been completely biased against the Yankees from his first publication to the present.

Now that is funny. Isn't what Bill James does, by definition, unbiased? Are you trying to say that, from the beginning, he has set up his formulas to purposely devalue yankee players? Does he do this only for their stars, or for their entire 25 man roster? How about the minor leagues? Does he have to change his statistical assumptions when the yankees make a trade?

Please, aside from the Paul O'Neil reference provide us with some evidence of Bill James' yankee bias.

[markp]

If you did, I wonder how you could have missed it. Other people I know that did read them and aren't even Yankee fans have commented on it.

If you didn't read them (which is much more likely), your remarks are ignorant.

[hugelongtermdeal]

Originally posted by markp
If you did, I wonder how you could have missed it. Other people I know that did read them and aren't even Yankee fans have commented on it.

If you didn't read them (which is much more likely), your remarks are ignorant.

I was referring to his statistical analysis .. not his commentary.

[markp]

did you read them?

[Soriambi]

Originally posted by markp
did you read them?

I'm reading his New Historical Baseball Abstract right now, and I haven't really noticed any Yankee bias.

[markp]

Originally posted by Soriambi


I'm reading his New Historical Baseball Abstract right now, and I haven't really noticed any Yankee bias.

1. I wasn't addressing you. The person I was addressing implied pretty strongly that I was making something up.

2. If you haven't read what I was referring to, why do you feel the need to interject?

[WiffleWOOD]

mark and others,

i don't think hugelongtermdeal was attacking you markp, i think he was rightly asking for more of evidence of an anti-Yankee bias beyond the O'Neil anecdote. you have much more info on the topic than most of us, having read the abstracts, and so you have the final say on what a lot of it means. because of this, it's only fair that someone question you to ask for more specific information.

please don't turn this into a he said/she said type thing. there is no need for people to start taking things personally. let's keep this discussion on the numbers and not on feelings.


dan

[Soriambi]

Originally posted by markp



1. I wasn't addressing you. The person I was addressing implied pretty strongly that I was making something up.

2. If you haven't read what I was referring to, why do you feel the need to interject?

Mark,

You stated that he has been biased against the Yankees from his first publication to the present one. I'm reading one that came in between, and I haven't noticed anything, so I said so. I have no way of knowing if he was biased in the early things that he wrote, and I didn't claim to, and I assume if you're saying it it's most likely right, as I don't have any reason to assume it's not. I simply stated that in THAT book, I did not notice anything that was blatantly Anti-Yankee. I was just making a general observation, I'm sorry if it upset you.

[markp]

So the question remains: having read one book out of 20 feel you had something to add to the discussion? The first poster to find fault hadn't read any and you read one. How does that qualify you to try to correct someone who has read all of them?

"I was just making a general observation, I'm sorry if it upset you." Nice little dig at the end. Also untrue. You weren't making a general observation. A general observation would certainly require a bit more research than one book out of many. And you didn't upset me, and you certainly wouldn't be sorry about it if you had. Someone that puts something contradictory on a thread without anything to base it on isn't looking for conversation.

[Soriambi]

Originally posted by markp
So the question remains: having read one book out of 20 feel you had something to add to the discussion? The first poster to find fault hadn't read any and you read one. How does that qualify you to try to correct someone who has read all of them?

"I was just making a general observation, I'm sorry if it upset you." Nice little dig at the end. Also untrue. You weren't making a general observation. A general observation would certainly require a bit more research than one book out of many. And you didn't upset me, and you certainly wouldn't be sorry about it if you had. Someone that puts something contradictory on a thread without anything to base it on isn't looking for conversation.

Yes, I felt I had something to add to the discussion. As I said in my previous post, "I have no way of knowing if he was biased in the early things that he wrote, and I didn't claim to, and I assume if you're saying it it's most likely right, as I don't have any reason to assume it's not. " I said that I didn't read the other ones (I've read bits and pieces), and that since you had read them I assumed that what you were saying was correct. I don't see how that's trying to correct you. I was just pointing out that in that SPECIFIC book, I didn't notice the bias. I was making an observation about the one book that I had read. I really didn't mean for it to be a big deal. I'm glad I didn't upset you, and I would have been sorry if I had, despite what you think.

[WiffleWOOD]

i asked you all to play nice. instead, it has turned into pettiness.


mark this down in history. the first saber thread to be closed.