Bill James Interview

http://deadspin.com/bill-james-calls-for-revolutionary-changes-to-the-ameri-1595361407

limiting the infinite rewarding of CEOs is a more hopeless reform than outlawing the DH

There's a disclaimer underneath that the data is based on regular-season play, but some of James's rotating sidebars sure look funny right now. The two hottest teams are the Nationals (108°) and the Dodgers (107°), and the hottest hitter is Justin Turner (103°). He should probably consider taking those down once the season ends.

James piece by Posnanski on the NBC site:

http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/bill-james-statistical-revolution/

Sometimes James gets ridiculed here as guy whose own creation has long since passed him by. Anyone who feels that way will have their feelings confirmed by Posnanski's piece. I feel the exact opposite, not surprisingly. He continues to question everything.

“But because that is true, I ASSUMED that these were complex, nuanced, sophisticated systems. I never really looked; I just assumed that the details were out of my depth. But sometime in the last year I was doing some research that relied on these WAR systems, so I took a look at them, and … they’re not very impressive. They’re not well thought through; they haven’t made a convincing effort to address many of the inherent difficulties that the undertaking presents. They tend to get so far into the data, throw up their arms and make a wild guess. I don’t know if I’m going to get the time to do better of it, or if it will be left to others, but...we’re not at anything like an end point here. I assumed that these systems were a lot better than they actually are.”

his brain's been rendered obsolete but yeah i'm with him on WAR lately, just knowing the small amount of stuff i know about certain factors, mainly the rudimentary position and park adjustment numbers. the sheer difference in fielding figures pre- and post-2002 is enough to make it hard for me to compare modern players to old ones.

i wish people out there would try developing some new megastats using different methodologies and practices. just irritating that WAR's achieved a certain stature and everyone seems to have given up on coming up with other angles. even a replacement that uses SIERA instead of FIP/ERA or considers handedness in park adjustments. don't have to wait for statcast figures to come out when we already have plenty of choices.

I probably shouldn't ask, but why do you think he's obsolete?

The one area where I think he's lost something stems from being inside the game now, instead of on the outside; he's a lot more inclined to defend GMs, managers, commissioners, umpires, players--everyone--than he used to be. Part of that is a natural softening that comes with age--with most people--but it's mostly, I think, a function of his changing relationship to MLB.

for reasons he himself was talking about, how massive amounts of people with actual math backrounds took everything much further. i don't really get the sense that he pays all that much attention to them either.

I always found him pretty strong on math, but that's fair. Given a choice between a better understanding of math or a better understanding of the game, I'd take the game, but obviously you want both.

In a Hey Bill e-mail today, someone found this in The New Historical Abstract, which came out in 2001 (he's talking about Palmeiro's Gold Glove): "If the United States were to use a system like this to elect the President, the absolutely certain result would be that, within a few elections, someone like David Duke, Donald Trump, or Warren Beatty would be elected President...an unconstrained plurality vote gives an opening to someone or something who has a strong appeal to a limited number of people."

be careful what you extemporize theoretically on.

Some research on another venerable bit of old-school wisdom/myth (take your pick): the "stopper.:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/stoppers/

Haven't read this yet, but there's a piece by Rob Neyer up on James's site: "Should Sportswriters Write About Politics?" I take it from the intro that Neyer was let go by whoever was housing his blog (I've forgotten already).

http://www.billjamesonline.com/should_sportswriters_write_about_politics/

i could google but wasn't it fox? i follow neyer on twitter and he seems relatively liberal, so that could make sense

A lot of stuff on the election and polling:

http://buffalonews.com/2016/11/09/bill-james-fears-civil-war-says-time-overhaul-polling-methods/

Yeah, it's the polling that's the problem. (Admit to willfully misreading the headline.)

The two ideas are joined together in the URL, not in the piece. He's talking about why he thinks the polling was so off from a data-guy's viewpoint--not that it had anything to do with the result. I don't know anything about polling models, but I found his remedy interesting (also fits with the way he approaches baseball stats, which is basically not to decide x and y are irrelevant and discard them):

Pollsters say there is a right method, but there is not. Pollsters say you call people on the phone so you know who you're talking to. You know whether they're likely to vote or not. You know whether they voted last time. You know whether they're registered Republican or Democrat because you have the voter list.

Junk it. It doesn't work. Deal with people you don't know. Use 25 different models. Go to a shopping mall and set up a booth where you hand out candy bars to anybody who'll fill out a poll for you. Walk down the street and stop every seventh person you see and ask. Put up buckets with pictures of Trump and Hillary and ask random people to drop a quarter in one or the other and count them up. Do it a hundred different ways and see if you can figure out 900 more. Then you get a broader understanding rather than a narrow understanding.