Baker - James Interview | Seattle Sports Insider

As far as I know, Baker's interview was the first and only time that Bill James has commented extensively on the Seattle Mariners specifically. In the modest little world of baseball saber, it was a historic event, for us here in Seattle.

Just real quick: a couple of people groused that "sabermetrics have passed James by; he's no longer relevant." Baker, amused, replied that Bill James has two World Series rings and is participating in decisions with the Boston Red Sox.

Typing up theories on the internet, Baker quipped, that some day might even be used by a major league team, that is fine. (Remember what a big deal it was, that Felix read a paper by USSM, or that the P-I stole a D-O-V article for its page A-1?)

Blogs might hope that they say something that is seen or considered by their local team every now and then. James is getting his ideas used by an ML team on a daily basis. THAT is RELEVANCY.

..........

That'll do for us too, except note that James is still going strong with Epstein and Co. after eight (8) seasons. Those 'net rats who have been tried out by ML orgs, if they have live voices at the committee table, have tended to shelf lives of around 1.72 days.

=== Da Bakery ===

If you haven't been listening to Geoff Baker Live!, we can heartily recommend.

Geoffy has sort of a self-deprecated, cool breeze, non-ego'ed out veneer that leaves people a little short on realizing how acute he is.

We enjoy all the radio shows, TV spots, blogs etc., but as a public speaker, one thing I look for is calorie density. The typical live show will get a guest like Bill James or Rick Adair on, and 50% of the time will be devoted to bonding, chuckling, leisurely anecdotes...

Baker, time after time, puts 4x the information into the same amount of minutes. He's on a point, he resolves it, and boom time for your next beverage. If you've never had a chance to address large audiences live, this requires immense confidence in one's material, and a firm determination to be effective rather than comfortable.

Baker also responds to unexpected information in a very agile and intelligent fashion. His back-and-forth with Bill James had a light touch to it, but what I notice is Baker scrambling up-and-down the information hill like a billy goat - always sure of himself, never blindsided.

.............

As it applies to Bill James, we had a couple of amigos go, Wow, now I get it on James, what a learner he is, and what intelligence.

One quick example: "What do you think of the Figgins / Lopez swap?"

"Oh, I hadn't heard. Well, I'll tell you this. In my first 4 years with the Red Sox, Chone Figgins hit about .450, it seemed - and gave every single run back on defense.

The Angels got a couple of good years out of him now, and that's great...

"If the Mariners are going to try Figgins at 2B, that's fine, but I'd let him settle in. I wouldn't move him around. It could be okay if they don't ask too much of him."

Now, agree or disagree, James completely reversed the "Figgins-is-Beltre" paradigm, turning it 180 degrees around, and did it:

Combining stats and saber
With a specific view to Figgins, rather than generic views to 3B-2B swaps
In one second, smoothly, with gusto
As it applies to a team James doesn't follow, 3,000 miles from him

And I happen to think this is a critical add. Figgins is not a natural fielder, is prone to concentration lapses (or at least was when he was 27), and despite what his last year or two's stats might show, you want to be careful about him. (Inside Pitch told us that Figgins nearly lost his job a couple of times with Scioscia because he wouldn't bear down on the field.)

The Angels managed to get a couple of good years of defense out of him "by letting him settle in." But don't push it... whatever UZR said the last year or two, don't confuse Figgins with Scott Rolen out there...

The recommendation is, if you're going to play Figgy at 2B, okay, but don't Mark McLemore him. Then you really are asking for conversion issues.

............

Any saberdude can hand-pick a topic he specializes in, spend the weekend, and come up with a paper. In live debate, it's a different thing. Try radio sometime! Especially when people bring up arguments you haven't heard before? That's the acid test. A weird argument that has never occurred to you.

James' mind processes so quickly, on everything, that any time he gets into live debate, it will be 5-10 minutes before everybody else in the room is silent, and he's the only one saying anything remotely venturesome. You just don't want to look like an idiot going up against him.

I've seen it happen time and again - big names dive in with gusto, maybe on their pet grievances, and James opens his mouth to oppose, and they volley back once, and BOOM - James is in complete control the rest of the roundtable. Happen every time.

One thing I'd buy tickets to, a live radio show incorporating James and two or three of his detractors :- )

Epstein of course perceives this: that real mastery isn't gauged by a thoroughly-rehearsed presentation on weaving in Bulgaria. The Sox have James in the room, because he's the smartest man in baseball, and because since they hired him, they've won championships.

...............

Baker also brings an element of this unrehearsed high-speed info processing. I respect the stuffing out of the guy.

My $0.02,

Jeff

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Well James last comment on

Well James last comment on the Ms was that Morrow was a great prospect and we wouldn't regret drafting him.

Hes a great analyst, but I doubt you'll find anything better than what we get locally here. We are extremely spoiled in Seattle. There a ton of great analysts whose main focus is the Seattle Mariners.

And the jury isn't out on Morrow

Toronto just traded a very special reliever, plus, to get him.

True, but I don't hes going

True, but I don't hes going to pan out. We'll see with Morrow.

James is a great analyst, but he just isn't going to have obsessed over the Mariners as us local fans have.

The James Sour Grapes

James is a technically very limited analyst. His grasp of statistics and mathematics is weak compared to the 'competition'. What James possesses is historical insight, a gift for legible prose, and a razor sharp mind.

Remember Einstein was not a technically gifted theoretical physicists, but his physical insight was unparalleled. I would say James is the Einstein of baseball analysts.

Hes the guy that made all of

Hes the guy that made all of the original discoveries and anytime you hear an interview or read an article he has a tendency of pointing out something that you hadn't heard of before.

Of course hes also very capable of being wrong.

The tone of Doc's article suggests that when James' says something its near fact, but James himself has admitted that good local analysts will be more knowledgable about their team's player than he is.

There is just a limit to how much you can cover.

I admire James a great deal.

Bill James was one of the most important reasons I started getting interested in statistical analysis period...let alone statistical analysis of baseball LET ALONE baseball history in general.

But Doc has a Jobu-like statue rimmed with expensive sacramental wines and ornate jewels draped over its head in tribute to James. Doc wants to have James' metaphorical children and name them Kane and Able. Doc would like nothing better than to spend his entire time budgeted to baseball thought sitting prostrate before James and listening to the man read the phone book.

Nope

The pendulum against James swung too far, and I push back in the other direction. He's fallible.

[truncated ex post facto]

Um...I was going for funny?

I apologize if that offended...I was trying to be hyperbolically humorous...not seriously criticizing.

(walks off confused)

Ready fire aim

Matt you know as well as I do that Doc's Christian faith is central to his life. So jesting about worshipping false idols is wading into deep waters in such an open and public forum.

I know you meant no harm. From my vantage point, meaning no harm is a good starting point, but by no means sufficient.

OK...that thought didn't even occur to me.

I am in the process of my own (very seriously undertaken) return to Catholicism...but worshiping Jobu was a "Major League" joke (seriously...I love that movie)...it never even entered my mind that someone would take offense to it on religious grounds. After Jobu, I was just kind of running with the whole "bow down to the master" angle...hence the selection of Kane and Able and the like...

If Doc was offended on religious grounds, that was DEFINITELY not what I was thinking...and if so, I hope he accepts my apology.

Surely, I could be wrong

I don't know if that was it either, but... Anyhow, I like to err on the side of discretion, but to each his own.

Thanks for the clarification

Was aware that the Jobu reference was ironic, but read the rest of it as caustic.

Appreciate your clarifying. As you know, I speak respectfully to you, even tongue-in-cheek. I value your analysis very highly, so am glad we're continuing in that vein.

- Jeff

James refutred Jazayerli's PAP on a technical level

He hasn't had as much math as, say Lichtmann, but James' feel for experimental design and control is much, much better than almost all of his competition's.

James doesn't load his studies with R^2 values, but James' studies -- and he has done hundreds of studies that would have received A's on masters' dissertations -- isolate variables correctly. James, not his competition, logically deduces which moving parts have not been captured within a given system. Which is why he's always ahead of where the BP and Fangraphs folks are.

.................

Agree that James, like Einstein, is a relatively self-taught genius with gaps in his education. Great point. I wish this didn't cause people to assume that he's ignorant of experimental design and control.

wicked sharp intuition

I think James does seat of the pants analysis. I agree he intelligently mines the data, but he uses intuition, not advanced statistical analysis, to make his mark. It's a limitation. We all have limitations and gifts.

Not disagreeing Kelly

But have you read his refutation of PAP? It's anything but seat-of-the-pants.

I've worked with James on several little studies, and seat-of-the-pants is hardly how I'd characterize his approach. He designs studies and sims to solve problems, often inventing the approaches as he goes it's true, but when he is done, the variable is isolated and the proof rock-solid.

One thing we can assert as fact: James isn't limited to educated guesses. He has written dozens, or hundreds, of well-controlled studies.

...................

But, again, I'm not saying James is the last word. The truth is the last word. :- )

A segment of the 'sour grapes' crowd views James as an inferior analyst, and I'm merely responding to that. They're welcome to debate him, if they can get onto his radar, and they'll be quickly disabused of their condescension.

:daps:

Maybe I undersell him...

...but I don't really follow his assessment of defensive run shares, as an example. For what it is worth, I think Tom Tango and Bill James are head and shoulders above the rest of us.

The defensive run shares

Definitely go into that basket of creative approaches, fuzzy logic, which garners about half his work these days.

A quick read of his refutation of PAP would help a lot, I believe, (real) Doc Gaffney.

Yeah, it doesn't get any better than Tango. He's great.

PI Article

Hey Jeff,

Got a link to the P-I article and/or your original? I've heard about this before, but I never had time to go compare... you know, see the burning building with my own eyes.

Kinda nuts that professionals would do something like that... but I guess that's just part of the real world at work.

Back atcha shortly amigo

n/m

Also interested.

Also interested.

As y'know,

we live to serve :- )

Gracias. That's interesting.

Did I miss the link?

I feel so blonde. As in Legally. :P

He has a whole post on it.

3rd from top.

Ahh...

...just not caught up on my RSS reader yet. That makes sense.

Thanks - both of you!

Humility

The one thing that struck me from that James interview was his humility. He seems hyper-aware of his own (human) limitations, especially when it comes to his perspective on various issues.

It's a striking contrast to the NextGen SABR folks, who tend to present their theories and formulas as absolute truths not to be questioned.

Very refreshing.

I would pay money to see James and Zduriencik go head to head in a Texas Hold Em tourney - one of those ones where we can see all the cards.

James pretty much invented

James pretty much invented Sabermetric arrogance (or in James' case maybe frustration). If you've read some of his work, hes very confident in his findings (like anyone else who has been historically significant).

I can remember James making the argument that Biggio was a much better player than Griffey and he was pretty definitive about it. Something along the lines of "Biggio is a better player than Griffey, and I don't care that people don't know what they're talking about."

Hes like that about a lot of player in his books.

What seperates James from many analysts in my mind is that hes willing to learn anytime he makes a mistake or is proven wrong. Even with the Biggio vs Griffey argument, he has been more open to the idea that he might have been wrong recently (partly due to the fact that Biggio couldn't hit good pitching at all).

By his own admission

He can be argumentative and over-eager to fight, and a couple of times has been unduly impolite to me.

But in general, he's a considerably more likable saberdweeb than average :- ) IMHO, and much of the pugnaciousness comes from the fact that he was the one who personally absorbed practically all of baseball's anti-saber condescension for about 15 years.

Long before ANYbody knew who sabermetrician #2 was, MLB manager Sparky Anderson once referred to James as "that short, fat little *****" ... consider how a guy like, say, Jason Churchill would react if Hall of Fame managers 8 inches shorter than him were making fun of his height :- )