Watching Ball With Bill James
Posted: August 31st, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 50 Comments »
Got a “The Machine” DVD extra coming up for you tonight (I hope), still planning on writing a bit about Snuggies and, of course, I’m spending the majority of my day checking the amazing online numbers. (As of this writing, The Machine is 490 on Amazon and 180 on Barnes & Noble. I have no idea what this actually means but it’s kind of fun to check. I’ve never owned any stocks … but I imagine this must be what it’s like).
In the meantime, I did write a piece for SI.com about watching a game with Bill James. The section that probably fits here is the second one — about how professionalism can kill a baseball team. I think this is another way of talking about what I brought up yesterday: That the Kansas City Royals (or a number of other teams) cannot hope to compete consistently by using the same strategies as other teams. I think we all know that the Pittsburgh Pirates have not had a winning record since 1993, which I believe is a big league record. But what I didn’t know is that the Pirates are just one of several teams in the midst of a long, long, long losing period.
Pittsburgh: Seventeen consecutive losing seasons.
Baltimore: Twelve consecutive losing seasons. (Thanks to BR DJ for reminding me … I forgot to include the Orioles in the original which is funny because Baltimore was the team that really got me thinking that there are several teams that have not won for a LONG time).
Kansas City: On pace for fifth 100-loss season in eight years — losing seasons 14 of last 15 years.
Cincinnati: Nine consecutive losing seasons, and people in Cincinnati tell me this is the worst one yet.
Milwaukee: Made the playoffs last year which was a nice story. And were 83-79 the year before that. But they had 14-consecutive seasons before that where they were .500 or worse (they were .500 once) and they have a losing record at the moment.
Washington Nationals: On pace for back-to-back 100 loss seasons, and 11 seasons leading up to where they did not win more than 83 in a season.
The feeling Bill has is that organizations can be bullied into a second class state because they want to be viewed as “professional.” They can’t win playing the game the same way as teams with more resources — repeat: They CANNOT win that way and they ARE NOT winning that way — but they cannot help but succumb to the pressures of professionalism. They don’t want to look unprofessional. That scares them more than the losing.
This was one of the beauties of Moneyball. Billy Beane did not give a rat about professionalism. Not only that he CHERISHED being thought of unprofessional. Seems to me that’s a beautiful trait for a small-market GM. True, the A’s have struggled the last three years — and people have gleefully jumped on board saying this PROVES that Moneyball doesn’t work. I don’t think so. The principles of Moneyball work just fine. It’s just that other teams have embraced many of the principles. And Billy Beane and the A’s are trying hard to find the new Moneyball.
Will they find it? I don’t know. But if I was an A’s fan I’d be really happy to know that Billy Beane is looking.
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So, Dayton Moore?
I agree with you. It seems like Dayton Moore has fallen into this trap and it led to him signing Guillen, Olivo, and Jacobs. An overemphasis on power.
What proves that Moneyball works is that the Red Sox adopted it’s principles and put money behind it.
When Moore first came over I thought he would be more Billy Beane than Brian Cashman, but now I’m thinking I was wrong.
As in, extended through 2014??
http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1416151.html
The Royals should try to get three starting pitchers whose ERA+ over a three year period hovers between 125 and 164. Right now they have only one. That’s not enough. They need THREE. And they each have to throw 200 innings per season, preferably more. Maybe one of them can throw, say, 186 innings one year, but that’s it. Every other time it’s 200+ innings.
They can have 3-4 good seasons with these pitchers, after which they can trade them all away, and suck thereafter.
Joe great article. I know you really like Bill James. I just think he’s a stats geek who turned his skills towards his passion. He also seems to have that skill that many celebrated men, and good scientists have of not accepting conventional wisdom, needing to see the proof. There’s no disputing his contributions to baseball analysis, he was very lucky to be doing what he did when he did it. However, let’s just remember it’s a small step from “not suffering fools” to being an arrogant douchebag. After all nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes. There are many people quoting statistics now, most certain of their infallibility.
It’s actually 16 straight losing seasons for the Pirates (1993 – 2008), with a 17th on the way, which would break the North American sports record of consecutive losing seasons (16) that the Pirates now share with the 1933-1948 Phillies.
So many things in my life have changed since 1992, but my favorite baseball team has been unflinchingly terrible. The streak probably won’t end until Tim Wakefield (the last active member of the last winning Pirates team) retires.
If I had to guess I would say that Dayton Moore IS trying to go extremely unconventional/unprofessional by signing bad players to large contracts. Not even Beane is that far out of the box. No wonder they just hired him for four more years.
I emailed this to you already Joe but it seems relevant here too.
Gladwell’s piece from the New Yorker about how underdogs can win.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell
I’m confused…One day the book is #99 on Barnes & Noble and then the next it’s at #180?
And why the huge difference in rank from Amazon #480 to Barnes and Noble?
No, this is not much like watching the stock market. This sounds like inconceivable garbage just being spewed out by the varying corporations. (Well, okay, that does remind me of today’s stock market.)
Jsut read the SI piecs, and I know it isn’t really the point of your story, but reading it reminded me of something.
If I remember correctly, I think I read something about the Royals about two years ago about how they were getting rid of all of their radar guns in Low A ball or something like that.
Anybody else remember this, or did I just conjure that up in a fever dream??
Barack identifies strained Glass.
I agree with you that the A’s losing doesn’t prove that Moneyball doesn’t work. But I wonder if your faith in Beane may be undermined by a principle Bill James wrote about regarding managers–that they sometimes make themselves unnecessary by fixing the problem they were hired to fix. At which point some other problem becomes important, and that’s one they’re not good at fixing.
You are one smart cookie Joe
Mark @ 4– Are you referring to Mulder, Zito, and Hudson in 2001-2003?
*Checks BRef., Sees WHIP marks and sees Mulder’s 186 ip in 03*
Yes, you definitely are… Are you saying Beane’s genius is really just a matter of getting three dominant pitchers, and that the rest of the Moneyball philosophy is just giving credit to the wrong people? Beane has a lot of unconventional ideas, and these ideas took the credit away from his pitchers, who were the true key to the success of the A’s. Is that what you’re saying?
People who are scared of math will always find a reason to say that math doesn’t work. Generally true principle.
I like the idea of thinking out of the box (who doesn’t?), but what’s next? It seems to me that the statistical revolution is more of a once-in-a-generation shift that brought along a once-in-a-generation opportunity for small market clubs to compete for players. Isn’t it possible that other advantages (like, um, only signing 85mph and lower pitchers) will be too slim to overcome the financial disparities?
Bryan@15 – The problem isn’t necessarily the math. Remember all those geniuses hired by the investment banks who came up with the models for debt securities, credit default swaps and so forth. Their math wasn’t necessarily wrong, they just failed to include a complete set of possible inputs. Math can help you make a decision, its being smart enough to know when you have and haven’t accounted for all the possible factors.
Re: If “Moneyball” works or not
I think Lady Luck is a larger factor when attempting to win with the farm system and creative thinking than with signing the best free agents and trading for the higher-paid player.
It seems to be very hard to draft and develop a core group of players that will all succeed at the same time in the relatively small window that you have the rights to them. And this is regardless of your strategy. It might take -years- for luck to favor your team. You (Pirates for example) are not going to be drafting a Barry Bonds-type player (or even half of a Barry Bonds) every few years.
It unfortunately appears to be the case now that when drafting and developing players does not work for a period of time, some teams no longer have the financial resources to fill in their holes with quality free agents. So they wait.
It also does not help that several of the teams that Joe mentioned above have had INCOMPETENT management in place for a long period of time. I doubt any of those guys could have succeeded even in a Diamond Mind baseball league.
And to think, I believed you were onto a completely original thought when you suggested the Royals create an all defensive team… should have known it was stolen from Bill James.
Don’t you think fans would be quick to embrace a team that did things unconventionally? I really believe they would.
Think about how much of a story it is any time someone bats a pitcher 8th. And that’s barely unconventional.
I agree and that’s why i don’t get all the heat the Pirates are taking for trading all their legitimate major league position players. Why not? Isn’t trading slightly above average big league players for prospects a better strategy when you weren’t winning anyway.
I read the story on SI.com. The part about the murderers’ eyes reminded me of a great song — “Westfall” by Okkervil River (especially the last verse). Lyrics here: http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Westfall-lyrics-Okkervil-River/6D4BC1B48E702EB7482570C20006FC20 . I don’t really have a point, just made me think of it, and I know Joe loves music.
Joe,
I’d be interested to see a retrospective analysis of Beane’s Moneyball strategy now that it at least SEEMS that throughout the 1990’s and early 2000’s the Athletics clubhouse was rancid with PEDs – maybe as far back as McGwire’s rookie season in 1987? Has anyone tried to test via stats what portion of the A’s success was really prowess at identifying, analyzing and nurturing talent versus players coming into a culture of drug abuse?
I don’t know whether to be happy that the Orioles weren’t included on the list of long losing franchises, or sad that they are just being forgotten…
I should amend that, because Joe had the courtesy to include us in the Sports Illustrated story.
And no, I honestly don’t think I’m being sarcastic.
Thanks go to James for his observation on that eyes non sequitur.
Not that it’s come up often, but it niggled that I couldn’t for the life of me “see it in his eyes”. I thought maybe I had a mild affliction, like a minor form of colour-blindness or being hard of hearing.
If someone of equal standing could drive a stake through the “they wanted it more” syndrome he would make my day.
Joe in Jersey: the thing is, Bill James is not particularly a stats geek; the real sabermetric stats geeks are somewhat dismissive of his skills. And as he said many years ago when he stopped writing the Baseball Abstract, he is aware of his contribution to the irrelevant stats-everywhere world. His intellectual honesty is one of his greatest assets as an analyst, drawing conclusions based on evidence.
The Orioles are in the midst of their 12th straight losing season (just five losses away from that going official). That makes my beloved O’s the AL leader in consecutive losing seasons, even ahead of the Royals. Though, admittedly, there is a glimmer of hope for the first time in a decade.
And the O’s still can’t get mentioned as a terrible franchise. We can’t win for losing.
As one of the remaining long-suffering Royals fans, I have to wonder if it makes sense for the Royals to shop Greinke around this offseason. His value will never be greater (possible Cy Young, entering his prime, just signed a sweetheart deal and is locked up for another 3 years), and it is difficult to believe that the Royals could be in any greater disarray. I think it’s highly unlikely that the Royals will field a competitive team in the remaining period of Greinke’s contract, and history would leave one to handicap the Royals chances of signing Greinke to another contract at the conclusion of the current one as very slim. Teams like the Marlins have moved their best parts in ways that have allowed them to win World Championships and stay relevant (albeit through the most turbulent periods of terrible to great baseball one can imagine). Of course, it’d be hard for any observer (casual or otherwise) to assume that Dayton Moore could pull off the type of haul that would be required to make any Royals fan feel anything less than rage for trading our star. However, in terms of ‘not playing it safe’, it seems like this is the biggest chip the Royals have to play. I’d love to hear a debate about this between you and Bill J.
Another way to look for teams who are in the middle of an historically poor run is to look at just how long it’s been since they sent more than one person to the All Star Game. It’s not a perfect metric, but, when you see the list, it tends to give you some good results.
The Royals, for example, are in an 18 out of 20 years streak of having only one All-Star while the Pirates are 14 for 16.
I made a list of these teams a while back here.
What could be better than a Posnanski article about his conversations with Bill James? That Gladwell article on underdogs. Thank you very much, manyfaces. I found the article very riveting.
I also humbly submit my own article
“Economists, Parsifal, and the search for the Holy Grail” at
http://cyrilmorong.com/Parsifal.doc
Good knights are told not to ask too many questions or challenge the conventional wisdom
I’ve always seen Bill James as more of an ace logician than a mathematician – as a life-long financial analyst, his half-page in the Historical Abstract about (I think) “the purpose of statistics” is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever read.
That said, (and I will have to read #30s link – thank you), I find professional baseball to be incredibly conservative. Batting the pitcher 8th or a 4 man rotation or using the closer in the 6th are considered wild, semi-irrational acts. Which they hardly are. Some, like Mr James, might consider them reasonable, rational acts. Whether they are or aren’t is beside the point – “The Book” is so sacred that there are 10,000,000 people who could do the on-field managing and no-one would notice the difference.
Most illuminating to me was BP’s study on managerial effectiveness, where you inevitably ended up where Tony LaRussa = Bobby Cox. Or any manager, if he manages long enough, becomes equally effective. Yes, I know, managing is more than that, but it’s just awfully telling that it’s very hard to tell the difference.
I think there is room for a Billy Beane to still be effective – illogic doesn’t seem to disappear, ever. I realize it was probably a joke, but who knows – maybe a staff of pitchers under 5′6″ who can’t throw more than 85mph is a masterstroke. I’m carrying on, but Mike Marshall and his baseball camp – where he claims zero wear and tear on pitcher’s arms with great control and velocity – far as I know, not a single MLB player has ever been there. Why? Seems to me that a player who’s owed $50 million or something but can’t pitch, they’d be willing to try anything. But nope.
Bill James would have more street cred with me if he didn’t work for the Red Sox. Go work for one of those losing teams and help turn it around.
James seems to ascribe the general failure to think independently to a fear of being perceived a certain way, but I think it has more to do with a simple desire to keep getting paid. As has been discussed here previously, failing conventionally is often economically rewarding.
People who have true economic security tend not to worry about appearances very much. What if you took a bright young GM and gave him a 10-year guaranteed contract? Not just guaranteed money, but guaranteed that he would stay in the job? Would that GM still fear appearing unconventional or would he be emboldened to take more risks and follow his own intuition? I think the latter is much more likely.
It’s easy to be unconventional when you have no money, and it’s easy to be unconventional when you have F-you money. What’s hard is to be unconventional when you make enough money to be comfortable, but you know you could easily be shown the exit at any time. And so conventional wisdom dominates not just sports but politics, academia, and corporate America.
http://thesnuggiesutra.com/
here’s your snuggie update!
three quick points:
(1)What Bill James does is determine the best way to win baseball games. This, in turn, becomes what the market covets most, which in turn means that achieving those ends is not possible without the same means.
(2) The point of Moneyball was both that there was an undervalued skill set and (in that particular case) the undervalued skillset was the ability to get on base/not make outs. In as much as people now understand that not making outs is important Juan Pierre is on the bench a lot; in as much as people don’t understand that not making outs is important they think Teixeira > Mauer.
(3) As has been pointed out many many times before if a team wins, they become stars, fans come to the stadium, they enjoy the accolades of the BBRAA and they are perceived as professional. But I’ll say this. I enjoy that 1/2 the teams out there are mismanaged. It makes runs like the Rays, Diamondbacks and Athletics all the more enjoyable; while often tempered by the White Sox, Cardinals and anything that Ed Wade or a Bavasi do.
Mikey@33 the danger with doing what you suggest is that you can always make a mistake in who you give F-U money to. Once you have F-U money, many (if not most) people would say, why bust my ass and deal with any crap, my job and pay are guaranteed, I’ll just do the minimum required. Many might cut corners on their research of young players, or other aspects of their jobs. Seriously once you are set for life, the only real motivation to work hard are because you love your job, pride, and the respect of others. How do you know you’ve got the right guy? The person who already has F-U money and total job security is the owner. It really is on him too put the pieces in play for unconventional thinking.
George Steinbrenner for example loved winning, and wanted it as much as anyone. But he had one bullet in his gun, purchase the best free agents every off-season. It worked at first and quickly. Then the Yankees became an expensive joke until he was banned from the game. The reset helped the Yankees as they added the bullet of building up the farm to adding free agents. Some may say that the Yankees fell back into that trap when Boss George came back, but now that he’s no longer in charge, it seems there is more of a balance again.
KSmith: When Bill James got there in 2003, the Red Sox hadn’t won in 84 years.
Since then, they’ve won twice.
Yeah, I’ve been keepin’ track of this myself, ever since I realized that the Royals actually have a WORSE win-loss record than the Pirates over the course of Pittsburgh’s major league record 17 straight losing seasons. So I started making a chart comparing wins over this period among a few of the losingest teams (altho at least 3 of them have actually been to the World Series during this period…so it’s pretty surprising how successful some losing teams can be)
Shlomo I think most people understand that.
The difference is even back then the Red Sox had tons of resources compared to most teams. It’s a lot easier to exploit market weaknesses when you have the money to sign FA’s, sign IFA’s, go over slot in the draft, etc.
Look at Moneyball, Beane was forced to go bargain bin shopping for 3-4 players who could make up “parts” of what Giambi/Damon brought to the table.
Quite frankly the only way to build a winner out of a small market team is build from within and try to get your young players locked up early on.
The exploitation of the markets aren’t all that feasible right now, with stats becoming more main stream everyone at least has an idea of what stats make a good player. Look at the main stats OPS, OPS+, VORP, WAR, WPA etc. Notice a trend? The majority of the players at the top in each stat are the same, just jumbled up in different orders. These new stats aren’t really exploiting any inefficiencies they are just re-wrapping the same info in a different package.
The only under valued players right now are guys who have been wrote off because of supposed flaws in their games.
Mark@4
The A’s success of the early 00’s can absolutely attributed to the big 3. But dealing away Mulder and Hudson, and then letting Zito sign elsewhere isn’t the reason for the current suckitude. The A’s went to the ‘06 ALCS post Hudson/Mulder and if Oakland still had those three guys, do you think the A’s would be doing any better right now?
Bill James is looked down upon by some stat geeks, but none of them would be where they are without him. He opened up the door for all of them.
I was intrigued by the stats (I still use a bastardized form of runs created/27) but what I REALLY enjoyed was the writing. Much of that writing was just asking unconventional questions- and then, unlike most who do that, trying like the dickens to answer them.
I agree that the Royals are afraid to go out on any limbs. They just handed an extension to a man who assembled nearly all the bad parts of a bad team, and is saved only by his predecessor’s players from being historically bad. Although the farm system was depleted (Due to Glass), Baird’s Royals would kick the snot out of Dayton’s. The unconventional players, other than Aviles being brought up out of necessity last year, (Disco Hayes, Kila) will be left to languish in the minors while we pay people 10 times as much to do worse.
The undervalued skill today is fielding. Walks are still undervalued monetarily, as is smart base running. (Give me a guy who moves an extra base nearly every time he can and can JUDGE when he can over a fast overpaid guy who steals 30-and gets caught 15 to 20 times.) Instead of taking advantage when he can, nobody in Baseball undervalues these skills like Dayton Moore. The extension, unless his drafts become great, is another nail in the Royal’s coffin.
My 2nd favorite blogger/columnist (Gregg Easterbrooke) on the web has been making the same point about NFL teams for years. They always punt on 4th down, even on 4th and 1 or 2. They don’t on-side kick unless they “need” to. They are so worried about not appearing to be stupid, that they don’t try anything new. Now, in the NFL, there isn’t the same economica disparity as in MLB.
So, it is even more important for a MLB team to be unconventional than it is for an NFL team.
Barack Obama @14, yes I was referring to Zito, Mulder, Hudson. I just always thought those guys didn’t get enough credit (even though they got lots of credit) for the A’s success. Those three seasons they had are simply remarkable – 3 years in a row where the lowest ERA+ of any of them was 125, and the lowest innings pitched total was 186 (and it was the only time any of them went below 200 IP). I don’t know how rare it is to have 3 great pitchers like that, all healthy, with their best three seasons all at the same time. I mean, look at the Braves with Glavine, Smoltz and Maddux, they had a tremendous amount of success for many years.
I was being facetious in saying that Moneyball was nothing more than 3 great pitchers, but I think those 3 great pitchers played a huge role in the A’s success.
So….
Just an introduction to something that can kill a day or two…
http://www.sporcle.com/games/bigred_machine.php
There’s so many baseball quizzes on there (MVP’s, CY Youngs, RoY, 500 HR club)… I’ve just lost 3 hours of my day.
In response to the idea that maybe the Royals should trade all their fastball guys in the minors and get good at gauging slower pitchers, I was in an email conversation about knuckleball pitchers that could be pertinent. With the recent acquisition of Jon Garland, I *assume* that Charlie Haeger, the National League’s only knuckler, will be sent back down to the minors.
Now he has pitched decently, not great. Three starts, 1-1 record could easily have been as good as 3-0 or as bad as 1-2. But in the day after those starts, the Dodgers gave up 3, 3, and 2 runs. One was an extra inning victory. I’m (lazy) assuming all the runs were earned. So the team ERA the next day is well under 3, a fine thing, especially since one of those games came against the Cardinals. And the bullpen ERA of the relievers who came in AFTER Haeger left the game was 0, in 10 2/3 innings. So in the three games Haeger started, and the three games following those three games, the Dodgers gave up 3, 3, 2, 3, 0, and 4 runs. Given the extra inning, that’s a team ERA under 2.5, and six games is starting to creep towards a decent sample size.
I remember a LOT of games following knucklers. The Dodgers started Hough for a while, and faced the Niekros. And I also recall Vin Scully talking about the difficulty many hitters have the day after a knuckle ball outing.
If somebody with better access into old box scores (I guess even Wakefield might do, don’t have to be that old) were to look it up, that would be great. But I’m also thinking that if this effect is more than anecdotal, if it’s real, then the Royals should grab Haeger. Even if Haeger is only mediocre, he could really help the team the next day. And it’s certain that knucklers are an undervalued commodity in the big leagues.
Joe,
Your article makes a point about “professionalism,” but you don’t explain what Bill James meant in using that term, or why it prevents teams from winning.
[...] think the Cubs have been carrying a difficult go at things, it can regularly be worse elswehere. Check out multiform alternative teams that have had losing years for a prolonged time. And what Bill James has to contend about because that [...]
[...] you think the Cubs are having a tough go at things, it can always be worse elswehere. Check out several other teams that have had losing years for a long time. And what Bill James has to say about why that [...]
People who have true economic security tend not to worry about appearances very much. What if you took a bright young GM and gave him a 10-year guaranteed contract? Not just guaranteed money, but guaranteed that he would stay in the job? Would that GM still fear appearing unconventional or would he be emboldened to take more risks and follow his own intuition? I think the latter is much more likely.
[...] Here’s a good example of how Pos approaches a given baseball problem: [T]he Kansas City Royals (or a number of other teams) cannot hope to compete consistently by using the same strategies as other teams. I think we all know that the Pittsburgh Pirates have not had a winning record since 1993, which I believe is a big league record. But what I didn’t know is that the Pirates are just one of several teams in the midst of a long, long, long losing period. [...]