15 Things That Bill James Knows ...

[GotowarMissAgnes]

Like I said before .. he wasn't doing anything ground breaking, and he certainly wasn't the first.
This alter you all have put the man on would have Branch Rickey rolling over in his grave.

Its sad.
I should run a word count to see how many times we have said "groundbreaking" in one thread ..
..

Wr, I can't believe you wasted your time on that pointless, ignorant post. Oh well

yeah
I was about two scothces in before I realized how huge it had become. But I had to finish ...

...

sorry that I peed in your all's church.

That's laughable. No one is saying that every single thing James did was the first it had ever happened or groundbreaking. But the facts are for all of Rickey's work or Earnshaw Cook's work, NONE of it took real hold in baseball. Rickey was regarded as a nutcase by almost all of baseball establishment. Cook's work generated no interest in baseball.

James is responsible (not solely, but certainly ANY objective observer would say fundamentally) for picking up that prior work, extending it, deepening it, adding new insights, testing it with newer and better data, and clearly demonstrating fundamental flaws in conventional wisdom. When he started no one was doing this type of analysis in baseball.

To call it a church is about as misguided a criticism as can be written, because James has always been the first one to argue that nothing should be taken on faith, and that every claim should be subject to analysis.

Furthermore, James is critically responsible for popularizing this, taking it to an ever larger audience. Where he succeeded and Rickey failed is in making people pay attention to his work, see that it was very useful, and then see it become regularly used.

He may not have been groundbreaking or first.

But, he's the way that changed the way millions look at baseball and the way baseball looks at itself....and for the better.

[Red Stripe]

Nice read. Bill James always has some interesting stuff to read.

[The Loveable Losers]

wrveres... The only reason you KNOW all this stuff and take it for granted as common knoiwledge is because of the work that Bill James did. This was ground-breaking insight in the 1980s. What are you, 15?

Bob

I'd be surprised if wrs was 15 when this was published.

I was 13 when it was published but I've still read it.

[reiser]

1. Minor league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous major league statistics.

amazing that this was ever in doubt.

6. The chance of getting a good player with a high draft pick is substantial enough that it is clearly a disastrous strategy to give up a first round draft choice to sign a mediocre free agent. (see note #1)

kind of inconsistent with

14. When a team improves sharply one season they will almost always decline in the next.

10. A great deal of what is perceived as being pitching is in fact defense.

still significantly disputed imho

15. The platoon differential is real and virtually universal

what does this mean? split differential?