Bill James Question and Answer Session on Freakonomics

[DrungoHazewood]

Having read and loved Freakonomics, and about 500,000 words Bill James has written, this seemed like a perfect match. James answered a whole bunch of reader-submitted questions on the Freakonomics blog and they just posted his answers. It's a pretty good read, especially for folks who believe James is just a stathead who thinks he has everything figured out.

One of the better bit is:

Q: Has sabermetrics pretty much squeezed the last drop of new insights out of traditional counting statistics? If so, what data ought to be collected to improve our understanding of the game? If not, where can the boundaries be pushed?

A: We haven’t figured out anything yet. A hundred years from now, we won’t have begun to have the game figured out.

Here's a stumper: I submitted one of the questions, and Bill James answered it (yes, I'm giddy as a schoolgirl!). Any guesses as to which one?

[TGO]

Four man rotation?

[Frobby]

Slightly off-topic, but I thought the 60 Minutes piece on Bill James this weekend was terrible. It gave him too much credit for some things (like recognizing that OBP was an important statistic) and overall was far too superficial. I know the piece was geared towards 60 Minutes viewers, not die-hard baseball fans, but I still thought it was very disappointing.

[GeorgiaBird]

Slightly off-topic, but I thought the 60 Minutes piece on Bill James this weekend was terrible. It gave him too much credit for some things (like recognizing that OBP was an important statistic) and overall was far too superficial. I know the piece was geared towards 60 Minutes viewers, not die-hard baseball fans, but I still thought it was very disappointing.

I had the same thought watching it. I felt I had been tricked into actually watching 60 Minutes, and for what?

[Mackus]

Here's a stumper: I submitted one of the questions, and Bill James answered it (yes, I'm giddy as a schoolgirl!). Any guesses as to which one?

My guess:

Q: Are there any baseball rules either in the game itself or for the leagues that you think ought to be changed, removed, or added to increase the entertainment value of the sport?

*reserve the right to change this guess as I read through the article

[DrungoHazewood]

Slightly off-topic, but I thought the 60 Minutes piece on Bill James this weekend was terrible. It gave him too much credit for some things (like recognizing that OBP was an important statistic) and overall was far too superficial. I know the piece was geared towards 60 Minutes viewers, not die-hard baseball fans, but I still thought it was very disappointing.

I didn't see it, but saw some quotes and commentary about it. The way I look at it, it's always good to have people like James get airtime, even if they don't get the details right.

You have to keep in mind 60 Minutes' demographic - mostly senior citizens, the ones that care about baseball are mostly casual fans who've never heard of OPS much less some of the stuff James pioneered, and they've definitely never heard of WARP or DIPS.

And I'm fairly sure that Old#5Fan is Andy Rooney.

[DrungoHazewood]

Four man rotation?

Nope, I've previously read stuff from James indicating that he thought a 4-man rotation was a good idea.

[DrungoHazewood]

My guess:

Q: Are there any baseball rules either in the game itself or for the leagues that you think ought to be changed, removed, or added to increase the entertainment value of the sport?

*reserve the right to change this guess as I read through the article

No, that's not it. Although my question is sorta, kinda related to that.

[mefogus]

"I believe you’ve said (and I’m paraphrasing) that a sport that never changes quickly becomes boring and irrelevant."

This sounds like a Drungo to me. You probably pulled out the exact Abstract that he said this in too didn't you?

-m

[olehippi]

Slightly off-topic, but I thought the 60 Minutes piece on Bill James this weekend was terrible. It gave him too much credit for some things (like recognizing that OBP was an important statistic) and overall was far too superficial. I know the piece was geared towards 60 Minutes viewers, not die-hard baseball fans, but I still thought it was very disappointing.

FWIW, The Science Channel has been showing an hour long piece on James this week. I don't know how long ago it was filmed, but for a non-Sabermetrics person, like myself, it was quite informative.

[Frobby]

I didn't see it, but saw some quotes and commentary about it. The way I look at it, it's always good to have people like James get airtime, even if they don't get the details right.

You have to keep in mind 60 Minutes' demographic - mostly senior citizens, the ones that care about baseball are mostly casual fans who've never heard of OPS much less some of the stuff James pioneered, and they've definitely never heard of WARP or DIPS.

And I'm fairly sure that Old#5Fan is Andy Rooney.

I guess you are right, it just irked me the way they portrayed James as the only person in the world who had ever thought of certain things, and credited him for just about every signiifcant sabermetric advance as though there was nobody else out there doing this.

In 1978 or '79, when I was in college, I did a paper in a class called Econometrics where I ran regression analyses to determine how team wins related to team BA, OBP, and SLG. It clearly showed that OBP and SLG were far more important than BA. I can promise you I had never heard of Bill James at the time. My professor told me that there were several different people doing studies that were far more sophisitcated than what I had done (which was hardly a surprise). Thus, the statement on 60 minutes that Bill James invented the idea that OBP was important rankles me.

Second, they credited James with coming up with the idea that win/loss record for a pitcher is not a good measure of how good the pitcher is. But while he may have popularized that idea, any baseball fan with any sense always has known that W/L is partially a function of luck and the offensive prowess of the team for which the pitcher plays. I'm sure I would have told you that when I was 10-12 years old. (Though I still say that to totally disregard W/L as meaningless is oversating the case.)

They also credited James with the idea that pitching was dependent on strikeouts, walks and HRs and that the rest was mostly luck. James may have adopted that idea, but he sure did not come up with it.

He is no doubt the most important figure in the history of sabermetrics, but he is not the fountain of all knowledge.

[Lt Melmo]

Q: Most major professional sports have a history of experimenting with changes of rules and technology in an effort to find some type of optimum of both entertainment and competitive balance. I’d argue baseball has largely resisted this trend, certain historical influences (the dead ball, steroids, etc.) notwithstanding.

Guessing this was you, Drungo?

[Lucky Jim]

Guessing this was you, Drungo?

My guess, too. Me too!

[DrungoHazewood]

"I believe you’ve said (and I’m paraphrasing) that a sport that never changes quickly becomes boring and irrelevant."

This sounds like a Drungo to me. You probably pulled out the exact Abstract that he said this in too didn't you?

-m

That's it!

[DrungoHazewood]

I guess you are right, it just irked me the way they portrayed James as the only person in the world who had ever thought of certain things, and credited him for just about every signiifcant sabermetric advance as though there was nobody else out there doing this.

In 1978 or '79, when I was in college, I did a paper in a class called Econometrics where I ran regression analyses to determine how team wins related to team BA, OBP, and SLG. It clearly showed that OBP and SLG were far more important than BA. I can promise you I had never heard of Bill James at the time. My professor told me that there were several different people doing studies that were far more sophisitcated than what I had done (which was hardly a surprise). Thus, the statement on 60 minutes that Bill James invented the idea that OBP was important rankles me.

Second, they credited James with coming up with the idea that win/loss record for a pitcher is not a good measure of how good the pitcher is. But while he may have popularized that idea, any baseball fan with any sense always has known that W/L is partially a function of luck and the offensive prowess of the team for which the pitcher plays. I'm sure I would have told you that when I was 10-12 years old. (Though I still say that to totally disregard W/L as meaningless is oversating the case.)

They also credited James with the idea that pitching was dependent on strikeouts, walks and HRs and that the rest was mostly luck. James may have adopted that idea, but he sure did not come up with it.

He is no doubt the most important figure in the history of sabermetrics, but he is not the fountain of all knowledge.

Like I said, I didn't see the show, but that sounds like they really didn't do their homework. Either that or they edited the piece to the point where it didn't connect very well to reality. Bill James mentioned in the Freakonomics piece that almost everything he thought he invented had already been discovered by 22 other people.