James’ career has been an interesting and successful one, but like many people who take on a dominant culture or paradigm and change it, James has had trouble adapting. The same ability to question conventional wisdom and authority that made him a great security-guard-turned-baseball-analyst seem misplaced as a well placed senior advisor to one of baseball’s richest teams. Similarly, his aggressive approach to debunking the baseball establishment is less valuable now that what baseball research most needs is a way to combine quantitative and qualitative research

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Sums it up concisely and well.

Do we really need a third thread on this?

The same ability to question conventional wisdom and authority that made him a great security-guard-turned-baseball-analyst seem misplaced as a well placed senior advisor to one of baseball’s richest teams.

Sums it up concisely and well.

Count the Ringzzz, bee-otch

Do we have to bring Craig Biggio into this?

Whether you agree with his conclusion, he made some good points about Biggio, and it was an example that made me people think about the variety of factors that a player contributes to winning games.

This is a more serious mistake for James than arguing, as he did in 2003, that Craig Biggio had been the best player of the 1990s,

Did he actually do this? I recall him arguing (correctly IMO), that Biggio was better than Griffey in 1997, and (incorrectly) that Biggio was the 35th best player in history. But unless he was momentarily seriously off his meds, there's no way he would argue that Biggio was better than Bonds in the 90's.

Do we have to bring Craig Biggio into this?

Seriously. Apparently now, Craig Biggio has been linked to the Jerry Sandusky affair.

Count the Ringzzz, bee-otch

QFT. James' tenure with the Red Sox has coincided with their run as one of the most successful teams in baseball, and aside from one well-deserved request to shut up about Paterno, I have seen zero indication that the Red Sox are unhappy with his performance. Lincoln Mitchell may think James is "misplaced," but John Henry doesn't seem to think so.

There's already a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that the man mostly responsible for the Red Sox' success is gone now, though

There's already a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that the man mostly responsible for the Red Sox' success is gone now, though

Manny Ramirez? :)

Manny Ramirez? :)

I was thinking Dan Duquette.

This guy lost me when he said Bill's misplaced (or whatever) as analyst with Red Sox.

Does he know something the rest of us don't?

Eh. That "misplaced" comment is stupid, but rather immaterial to the reason James has shown up in four threads in five days here.

EDIT: Although, Rob, discounting and doubting Mitchell for that incredibly incorrect statement is what people are now doing all over here for the incredibly stupid things James has been saying about Paterno, so.....

I really dislike this "Bill james was never a good baseball analyst!" backlash. It's really dishonest.

@ 13

Yeah. I think it's fine if people say, "I think he's kinda creepy and is being really dumb about this" but the Paterno stuff doesn't mean the Abstracts suck or the managers book sucks or that James is not doing good work in Boston. Two different things.

Yeah. I think it's fine if people say, "I think he's kinda creepy and is being really dumb about this" but the Paterno stuff doesn't mean the Abstracts suck or the managers book sucks or that James is not doing good work in Boston. Two different things.

I'm incredibly disappointed James is choosing to lawyer up Paterno's behavior, but that essay he did on Biggio vs Griffey was/is a great read and the Abstracts are brilliant (not that they need my freakin seal of approval). He changed the way I think about the game and I'm not going to pretend it's not true now.

Agreed re #15. We can't let a single, hazy event overshadow the great things Bill James did.

Sure we can. Ask Ray-Ray. It's easy.

Did he actually do this? I recall him arguing (correctly IMO), that Biggio was better than Griffey in 1997, and (incorrectly) that Biggio was the 35th best player in history. But unless he was momentarily seriously off his meds, there's no way he would argue that Biggio was better than Bonds in the 90's.

I distinctly recall him positing Biggio as the best player of the '90s. I can't recall when he said it, though; 2003 seems a bit late.

similarly, it's seems that the site's collective feelings on poz pre-paterno are now lower than they were.
(mind you, this is undoubtedly, in part, a who's posting effect)

This is a more serious mistake for James than arguing, as he did in 2003, that Craig Biggio had been the best player of the 1990s, but the origins of the two arguments are very similar.

Is it really? Of what consequence is Bill James' opinion on Joe Paterno? He's wrong about this but so what? I really can't believe it's worth this degree of excoriation and the use of personal attacks as a first resort.

And "creepy"? Really, are we just going to smear anyone who deviates from a position of extreme moral outrage as a closeted pedophile? That is a whole hell of a lot creepier to me. I still get the sense that everyone is competing to be more outraged than the next person, and to me that's much uglier than anything Bill James could say.

And "creepy"? Really, are we just going to smear anyone who deviates from a position of extreme moral outrage as a closeted pedophile?

Didn't say or imply that James is a "closeted pedophile." That's all you.

My own take is that James blew it badly and should take some crap for it, but I wouldn't take it beyond that. If other people find it a little creepy, (and of course, creepy does not = pedophile) though, well, that is something that is going to happen when you wade into a topic like this in this manner. Probably shouldn't, but as James himself once wrote, "Public life is rougher than you think it is."

Didn't say or imply that James is a "closeted pedophile." That's all you.

Well if a qualified defense of Joe Paterno is "creepy", then what is the implication? Because the case deals with pedophilia, I can infer that it must be James' attitude about pedophilia that is being construed as creepy. What else is there to this? You have to tell me. I like the "all you" bit, though... hey, maybe I'm a pedophile too! After all, I don't seem too pissed off about this Bill James business do I? Awfully suspicious I'd say... creepy even.

All pedophiles are creepy. It does not follow that all creepy people are pedophiles.

Also, Bill James shouldn't have written those books while naked in Kansas.

I distinctly recall him positing Biggio as the best player of the '90s.

I remember him saying in the NHBA that the distance from Bonds to whoever you pick as the second-best player of the '90s was greater than the difference between #2 and #10. I think he did say that Biggio was the best player in baseball at the time of publication for the NHBA, which looks totally incorrect in retrospect.

It does not follow that all creepy people are pedophiles.

Yeah, but again, then what is it specifically about James' defense of Paterno that warrants calling him "creepy"?

In retrospect, I used the wrong word there: I should have said "weird" as opposed to "creepy." I certainly do not think James is a pedophile or pedophile apologist or whatever. I do think, though, that it is pretty strange that he decided to get into this topic in the way that he did. I suspect that it was motivated by many things, most already noted, as well as by his consuming interest in famous true crime stories. This one, however, is a little too current for the James treatment and might be such even if he were right about it.

All pedophiles are creepy. It does not follow that all creepy people are pedophiles.

basis for an SAT question.

Also, Bill James shouldn't have written those books while naked in Kansas.

Yeah, thanks. Really didn't need that image in my head.

Yeah, but again, then what is it specifically about James' defense of Paterno that warrants calling him "creepy"?

His reflexive defense of somebody because they happen to be in a position of power.

His reflexive defense of somebody because they happen to be in a position of power.

Yep, authoritarianism is creepy, but I don't get the sense that that's why he's defending Paterno; he's never shown much deference to powerful people before. As many others have said, I think it's his ingrained contrarianism that's led him to make this losing stand on Paterno - in his own way, he's being as petty and reactionary as the "mob". I still have immense respect for the man, even if his instincts have led him astray here. Even recently; I really enjoyed his popular crime book, which is often fun and fascinating even if you don't buy all of his reasoning: I think we talked about his JFK theory here before, but his detective work on the Cleveland Torso Murders is really compelling and I hope someone solves the JonBenet Ramsey case someday because that one really leaves an itch. James calls it the most bizarre crime scene in American history and I have to think he's right - it's no wonder the investigators couldn't make heads or tails of any of it. The ransom letter, which he doesn't really touch on, is itself one of the most bizarre pieces of evidence you'll ever come across.

Yep, authoritarianism is creepy, but I don't get the sense that that's why he's defending Paterno; he's never shown much deference to powerful people before.

Has he written a 6000 word blog post defending Mike McQueary?

Lincoln Mitchell, the king of the "meta-mucil" argument. A pantywaist piling on a situation that is, at bottom, irrelevant to any balanced assessment of Bill James...aside from his overzealous desire to stick up for his good buddy Joe Pos and look for a way to mitigate the collateral damage that Pos' misplaced allegiance to the other Joe P. had managed to inflict.

His poor judgment in how to achieve that in no way reflects on his once, future and present skills as a baseball analyst.

James adapted to the so-called "mainstreaming of sabermetics" extremely well, actually. He simply remained aloof, figuring that any additional "paradigm-shifting" ideas would either stem from his own work or be brought to his attention via those he trusted. The fact that he created a web site to interact with people not only refutes Mitchell's thesis, it shatters it. While he was still often curmudgeonly, it's abundantly clear that many of his recent forays into new formulations stem from his interaction with those who subscribe to his site.

He'd always been someone who wrote off-topic comments, as have we all--in large part because he pioneered it in the Abstracts.

But the father of sabermetrics was also the father of baseball snark, and those two lightning rods were finally blown together as a result of a remote windstorm, crossed, and arced (1000+-post thread with a high preponderance of activity from BTF's legal brain trust).

As for "combining qualitative and quantitative research," such a phrase is simultaneously reductive and pretentious, presuming that such would be beneficial even if it were actually possible. We've seen no real evidence thus far for that. What baseball might really benefit from is a series of semi-controlled ad hoc experiments in its playing rules to open up ideas that might never materialize under any other circumstances, as opposed to the continuing pursuit of theories that have already demonstrated potential for further calcifying the game in the direction that it has gone in recent years--which is in no small measure a result of the infusion of an entrepreneurial strain of sabermetrics.

James' contributions to baseball have not been affected one iota by this firestorm over the two Joe P's. But the desire to tear down idols at a time when the field is in serious flux seems to be seizing on this irrelevant side-issue as an opportunity for a level of finger-pointing that is, even by BTF standards, exceptionally prodigious.

But the desire to tear down idols at a time when the field is in serious flux seems to be seizing on this irrelevant side-issue as an opportunity for a level of finger-pointing that is, even by BTF standards, exceptionally prodigious.

My, that's a bit condescending, isn't it? And I only followed the big Paterno thread for the first 400ish posts, but what I saw was people saying that Bill James is making himself look terrible, and that the same qualities that made him a pioneering baseball analyst and father of sabermetrics are the same ones that have led him to vociferously and stridently defend someone who covered up child molestation for over a decade. Not that the Abstracts were crap.

I won't even get into the whole lack of reverence for an idol thing, except to say that a lesson from the whole Joe Paterno scandal is that we shouldn't idolize people.

(as for Joe Posnanski, I less get the sense that he's vilified than that he's in a tough spot due to his natural inclination to search for and portray the best parts of people, his disinclination to tear someone down, and the closeness he built with Paterno and family over the years he was researching the book while at the same time not excusing him for any failings that comes from being in that tough spot. I can't speak for everyone but I'm waiting for the Paterno book to come out before I even come close to tossing him out with the bathwater.)

I'm not sure how this is difficult.

Bill James' public baseball analysis stands on its own merits.

Bill James' private work for the Red Sox is between Bill James and his employer.

Bill James' defense Joe Paterno is indefensible.

I distinctly recall him positing Biggio as the best player of the '90s.

I distinctly recall him not doing this, but instead advocating for Biggio as one of several greats of the 1990s who fell well behind Barry Bonds on any ordinal list of great players of the decade. The case he made for Biggio over Griffey in the New Historical Abstract was not without flaws, but it did a good job of explaining how Biggio could be so good at getting on base, hitting doubles, stealing bases, and so on that he deserved to be listed alongside or ahead of Ken Griffey Jr.

How you evaluate defense matters a lot in comparing Biggio to Griffey, Bagwell, Martinez, Alomar, Thomas, and Larkin, but Biggio is a deserving member of that group of sub-Bonds 1990s greats.

This guy lost me when he said Bill's misplaced (or whatever) as analyst with Red Sox.

Does he know something the rest of us don't?

Maybe it's in a secret copy Posnanski's new book that Mitchell can access.

According to this guy, James argued that Biggio was the second best player in the NL after Bonds. That was still a controversial claim, but certainly wasn't absurd. Sure, in any given year someone else may have been better, but by WAR Biggio was the fourth best player of the 90s, behind only Bonds, Griffey and Bagwell and basically tied with Larkin and Thomas.

1990-1999 is basically the perfect period for Biggio to excel, he was active and healthy for that whole time period, and batting mostly leadoff/2nd so he maximized his plate appearances. Still, looking at that full list it's hard for me to come up with any other position player who belongs in the conversation other than Bonds, Bagwell, and Larkin. If you moved the years around a little bit, maybe Piazza, who was a rookie in 1993 but put up comparable value to Biggio if you look at the decade from 1993-2002.

I'd have to re-read that chapter to see if James ever implied that Biggio was the best player of the 1990's. I do remember thinking it was strange that he focused on Griffey, who would not have been my choice for player of the decade whatever the result of his comparison to Biggio.

He definitely says that Bonds was the player of the 1990s. I think that he claims Biggio is the best active player, but he might have claimed that he was 2nd behind Bonds.

I'd have to re-read that chapter to see if James ever implied that Biggio was the best player of the 1990's. I do remember thinking it was strange that he focused on Griffey, who would not have been my choice for player of the decade whatever the result of his comparison to Biggio.

My recollection is it was just a straight comparison of Griffey and Biggio in one particular year and had nothing to do with best of the decade or anything. James was just trying to illustrate all the little things a player can do to add value to his team. I don't have the book handy, though. He could have written the same article about Chase Utley and Ryan Howard a few of years ago.

I have the NBJHBA handy, and it says on p.362: "Craig Biggio is the best player in major league baseball today" – "today" apparently being after the 1999 season, because the book (publication date 2001) has stats through 1999. On the rest of p.362, as Shooty remembers, James compares Biggio to Griffey, but it's not just in one year; James says "If you compare Craig Biggio very carefully to Ken Griffey Jr. in almost any season, you will find that Biggio has contributed more to his team than Griffey has" (362). He goes through each year in the 1990s, and with the exception of 1993, finds that Biggio was always better than Griffey.

The comment suffered from bad timing, it seems to me. Here's the short leaderboard in WAR, 1995-99:



Barry Bonds, unsurprisingly, was the best player in baseball 1995-99, no matter how you look at it; but he had an off-year (injured) in '99, the year he turned 35, while Biggio hit 56 doubles that year, scored 123 runs, and generally looked like he still had more left than Bonds (being two years younger). And he's so close to Griffey and Bagwell that the argument could surely be made that he was their superior in the late 90s: not a conclusive argument, but plausible.

After 1999, Biggio was a decent-fading-to-poor player for the next eight years, and we know what Bonds came back to do. Here's the same short list for the five years centered on 1999 (1997-2001):



Biggio was 18th in the majors for those five years, with 25.0.

So the statement James made is less equivocal than many remember (Biggio was "the best," not excluding Bonds); but it's also somewhat explicable. It's just a little too much based on a hunch about who was fixing to go in what direction. I doubt if Biggio was ever the best player in baseball at any given point in time. (WAR would put him close to being the best position player in 1997, but otherwise he doesn't even make an ML WAR leaderboard).

Win Shares liked Biggio better, it looks like, and who knows, it may be right. EDIT: But calling Biggio the best player in the majors in 1999 seems crazy, in pure hindsight.

Great post, Bob. Thanks for the info.

Also on page 654, James says "Biggio passed Bonds as the best player in baseball in 1997."

Just to add to Bob Dernier Cri's WAR info, here is Win Shares data for 1995-99 from The Baseball Gauge.

Barry Bonds......164.6
Craig Biggio.....157.1
Jeff Bagwell.....153.5
Mike Piazza......153.2
Mark McGwire.....147.6

And for 1997-2001

Barry Bonds......177.5
Sammy Sosa.......150.9
Alex Rodriguez...146.1
Chipper Jones....145.4
Mike Piazza......144.9

I think the absence of Griffey from the first list would, if one was a commentator in James' position, seem quite significant when comparing Biggio with Griffey as to which was 'the best player in baseball'.

Also on page 654, James says "Biggio passed Bonds as the best player in baseball in 1997."

That may be what I'm remembering. Unfortunately, my library has been in even more hopeless disarray than usual for months now, & if I went looking for any particular volume, even one as huge as the 2nd historical abstract, I probably wouldn't be seen for days.

Paul, I wouldn't try to put words in Bill's mouth--certainly not at this particular moment in time!!--but I think he has always had a block against corner outfielders having sufficient defensive value to feel comfortable ranking them with the extreme left side of the defensive spectrum. It's kind of "baked in," if you know what I mean. Of course, it becomes impossible to ignore when someone has seasons like Bonds 2001-04...

the same qualities that made him a pioneering baseball analyst and father of sabermetrics are the same ones that have led him to vociferously and stridently defend someone who covered up child molestation for over a decade

Actually, I think this is the condescending statement, much more so than anything I said. It presupposes that we have sufficient knowledge of Bill's overall character traits to decide that contrarianism is the major (and possibly only) impulse at work here. James and Poz are good friends, and what comes across in their writings (despite the often vast distance between their tones of voice) is a kind of cloistral sense of friendship that goes beyond the Internet variation of "hail fellow well met" or "blistering irony" or all the shadings in between. This argument may well have been concocted as a way to mitigate (and justify) an action by a good friend that was widely seen (not just here) as a questionable one. Poz' career has taken a number of twists and turns of late, and it's possible that Bill's concern as a friend has colored his efforts--just as his well-known love for undersized second basemen might well have caused him to overstate the case for Biggio.

just as his well-known love for undersized second basemen

In context, .... ewwwww

Allen Barra with a bit of news...

But someone connected with Paterno isn't putting out the correct information. Desdspin's John Kolbin reported that "sources at the magazine [SI] who read Paterno in galleys say the biography is short on fresh details about the Jerry Sanduskey scandal. And Posnanski apparently didn't wring much out of Paterno that wasn't already on the record, our sources say."

Kolbin also wrote that "The biography was in galleys before the Freeh report had dropped ... our SI sources say they got a copy in early June."

I have a pretty good relationship with Simon & Schuster as far as getting advance copies of books. In May I was told "Paterno is an embargoed book, so we won't have copies until the end of August." I found the term "embargoed book" intriguing, but inquired no further. When I saw the Deadspin article, I inquired again and was told "There are no galleys for this book despite reports."

Somebody is not telling the truth here, or at least not the full story. I'm not pointing any fingers, but Simon & Schuster has always been square with me.

It would seem obvious to me that S&S would send a galley to SI in order to try to sell an excerpt there, but not produce any for the general commentating and reviewing public.

I have a galley for Pete Palmer's 1985 "Hidden Game of Baseball" book.

is that worth anything?

It would seem obvious to me that S&S would send a galley to SI in order to try to sell an excerpt there, but not produce any for the general commentating and reviewing public.

So why wouldn't this seem obvious to Allen Barra, who works in the business and has had previous dealings with S & S?

Looking at Barra's penultimate paragraph, the sentence, "I have a pretty good relationship with Simon & Schuster as far as getting advance copies of books," does not suggest that the question was either "Do galleys exist?" (of course they do; how else would the book be proofed?) or "Did one of these make its way to SI and then GQ," but "Can I haz one?"

James and Poz are good friends

Unless you have personal knowledge to contradict the statements of other people on this website, no they are not. I'm not speaking from personal experience in any way, but my understanding is that they were cordial but not close. James himself certainly hasn't couched his defense of someone who covered up child-rape as defending a well meaning but too close to the situation friend. Further, there's a number of situations raised on the original thread citing James's contrarian habits in other circumstances.

Lastly, my comment was attempting to explain where I felt the general tenor of the conversation on BTF was. If it still feels condescending, and you feel that yours is not, I ask that you check your sanctimony gauge.

James and Poz are good friends...

Unless you have personal knowledge to contradict the statements of other people on this website, no they are not.

During the All-Star break Neyer went out and had dinner with James and Poz. Said everything went fine...save the fact they were toury-trapped at Arthur Bryant's. So there's that.

Now I want to re-read the NBJHA because it's probably been 6 years since I cracked it open, but I also don't want to because James is currently being such a donk. What to do, what to do...

Bill James was very enthusiastic about Biggio's skill to get hit by pitch.