I wonder if he thinks they'd be in the NLCS if Rizzo had handled Strasburg differently.

Sabermetrics, baseball’s version of advanced analytics, pioneered by Bill James 30 years ago

John Thorn and Pete Palmer really get short shrift, don't they?

I read "The Hidden Game of Baseball" long before I heard of Bill James.

I know it's got a bit of post facto reasoning to it, but I've heard more than one person allege that Davey's preference for power hitting has led him to encourage guys to pull the ball, and that it's been a big part of the power surge experienced by Desmond, and that fostering the atmosphere where that's highly valued may have helped lead to the Nats team power numbers this year. Probably there's more to Laroche being completely healthy and at his best and Harper being better than expected this soon to explain the team HR numbers, but Davey may have played a non-trivial role.

My favorite move of his this year has been putting Werth in the leadoff role and Werth changing his mechanics to fit that role better (his strikeout rate dropped like a rock when he was moved there, and he's gotten on base wonderfully). I'm not sure that's a move that every player/manager combo could pull off for a guy that's had Werth's career path and contract. Far too many managers would have just looked for a more conventional leadoff guy and insisted on putting someone fast there.

On leave since when?

I seem to remember that Alan Blinder had to come back to the school because at that time there was a 2 year limit on leaves. Once it beacme obvious that he would not get Greenspan's job as the deadline approached he gave up the vice chairmanship of the Fed. As Anne Marie Slaughter detailed recently in a controversial article on women in the work force, if you are gone for more than two years you lose tenure.

Bernanke went on public service leave in 2002 and when he became head of the Council of Economic Advisors and resigned from the Princeton faculty in July of 2005

I read "The Hidden Game of Baseball" long before I heard of Bill James.

If not for the success of Bill James, "The Hidden Game of Baseball" might never have been published.

I read "The Hidden Game of Baseball" and found it forgettable. No idea what it said. James big advantage is that he was, and seems to still be, an excellent writer. Also doing yearlies kept him visible.

#6 There's a lot of meat in "Hidden Game" but the wring just isn't very good.

John Thorn and Pete Palmer really get short shrift, don't they?


Like John Smoltz mentioning "Peter Palmer" yesterday and getting complete "who's that" emptiness from Cal Ripken Jr. and Ernie Johnson?

"Applying data compassionately" is not something that happens with any great degree of regularity in this little region of the beisbol mundo, n'est-ce pas?? :-!

"John Thorn and Pete Palmer really get short shrift, don't they?

I read "The Hidden Game of Baseball" long before I heard of Bill James."

You got there a little bit late. The "first wave" of sabermetricians was, essentially, Bill James, Pete Palmer, Craig Wright and Dick Cramer. John Thorn was a book packager, I believe, who got in contact with Palmer and has become, as best I can tell, his editor for things like Total Baseball. But he did not start out as a sabermetrician. He was a guy who could write and understood the value of what Pete Palmer was doing. He has progressed considerably since the early days. - Brock Hanke