Curious what James' credentials are. Has he actually studied statistics at a college or graduate level? His "metrics" are crude throw it against the wall and see if it sticks indices any high school student could cook up. If you throw enough, by chance a few will seem relevant. Their acceptance seems mythical, like sports talk show hosts endlessly babbling about "regression to the mean" without having a clue how or why that's calculated or when it is or isn't applicable. Or GM's who want "analytics" guys, but suffer from the same math phobias as the rest of the population. So they're dazzled by anyone who can plug numbers into a spread sheet.
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One would think that Bill James, who has written so thoughtfully about the game over the years, would have chosen his words a bit more carefully this time.
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Writing is not a strong point for him.
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The Oakland A’s had the 4th best record in baseball this season, despite a decimated starting rotation & one of the smallest payrolls. You can’t replace an entire team in one fell swoop, but you can replace pieces when needed.
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Note to players: sometimes the truth hurts.
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Advanced analytics is just the latest desperate attempt to point the finger at what ails baseball. Eight teams losing at least 95 games, lower attendance, lower tv ratings, and absolute no interest in the All-Star game. Let's blame advanced analytics. Give me a break!!!
If the players are the game, then what is little league, high school and college baseball, and the sport played in Caribbean?
Baseball is game played with a ball, a bat and a base. My 10 year old grandson plays little league baseball His team came in second in their championship series. They finished their seasons the same as the Dodgers.
It is hubris for anyone to think that they are the game.
When I stood in the Hall of Fame surrounded by all those plaques I could remember sitting next to my father watching the Brooklyn version of this year’s runners up. I can tell you the name of everyone of the Dodgers I saw, and not the name of any playing today.
This spring, as sure as there will be rain in April, boys will gather to play His game with a ball and a bat and a base. They all know that this season is the one where they will finish first. Some of them might major leaguers and be in the hall of fame.
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Much as I enjoy reading Bill James's books allow me to say that no one goes to a baseball game to see Hank Steinbrenner, The Wilpons, or Ted Ricketts. They don't go to see Theo or Brian Cashman. They go to watch the players play the game.
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@Bubbamike
As Seinfeld said, we root for the jersey
I enjoy listening to Bill James and his thoughts/opinions. I do think analytics is taking much more from the game than it is giving, especially in strategy. I suspect Dave Roberts would have loved to have had a free rein vs Boston rather than having his line-ups set by analytics. In this day and age, IMHO, we need more human input, not less.
I also think the players are missing the point when bringing up replacement players.
Well, I know one thing: high-priced consultants to Major League baseball teams can very easily be replaced and absolutely no one will notice or care.
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I am 60 years old, played organized baseball through high-school and have been watching it since I was a young child. When Bill James came on the scene 25 years ago, I enjoyed reading his books because they provided a new way to look at the game and players. However, now I have to say that advanced analytics are destroying baseball as a spectator sport. Good luck trying to explain bizarre formulas like WAR, OPS+ (whatever that is) and the like to regular fans like myself who understand ERA and batting averages. This hokum has resulted in negative results for baseball like extreme defensive shifts, the belief that only home runs matter (and that strikeouts don't) the disappearance of small-ball tactics like bunting and base stealing and more. Now the games are boring and unwatchable. Enough is enough. After reconsideration, I now say thanks for nothing, Bill James. You and the other "stat-heads" ruined a very good thing.
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We are a society in love with outrage.
James was mostly right. Willie Mays was not easily replaceable; neither are many of the current examples that the outraged players put forward.
But look at Max Muncy, a star on the Dodgers' World Series team. Is he replaceable? He was nobody a year ago and he might be nobody a year from now. I LOVE Max Muncy's story; it's one of the reasons I like baseball. But he's not unique in American history or even baseball history. Dodgers fans would root for their team with or without him.
We are all replaceable. We can be offended by that or not. I happen to think the players should earn as much money as they can, because all employees should but these guys have organized a union smart enough to reward their rare (but not irreplaceable) skills. If only we all had such an effective union.
Bill James, though, is what he said the players are not: irreplaceable. I enjoy reading Keith Law and Rob Neyer and Kevin Goldstein and many smart baseball analysts, but none of them do exactly what James does. Unfortunately the mass market does not reward what James does as much as we reward what Alex Cobb and Lance Lynn do. But James is the irreplaceable treasure, not them.
Next outrage!
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I haven't followed any sports in over 20 years, but I do read articles about quirky subjects like this. I recently read about a basketball player who couldn't make it in the NBA, so he went to Europe and played for a dismal Luxembourg team and another in Europe (I think it was Europe). Then this year he managed to get a tryout with the Golden State Warriors, and is on their roster; and is apparently making significant contributions. Well, he could just as well have wound up playing overseas for his whole career, and never gotten the break he needed to get to the NBA. Multiply that story by hundreds, and you can see that top-level players can be replaced. OK, maybe there's no Stephen Curry waiting in the wings, but if he wasn't there any longer, the NBA and the Warriors would go on.
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Mr. James, of course, is completely right. Players are replaceable, much like the interchangeable parts in a machine tool or car. Players, like machine parts, are designed and manufactured to a common form, fit and function.
His arguments could use a little fine-tuning, though. Under anti-trust law they are not players at all; they are performance artists, and so are identical to ballerinas or film actors. Players, like ballerinas, can easily be replaced, although the audience may think that the show wasn't nearly as grand.
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Mr James is correct. Take a look at the Red Sox roster from 2013 when they won the championship and look at the roster from this years championship. How many are on the both rosters? One Xander plus Dustin You can win with different people
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The problem with the free agent system is that those with the best history of achievement and production generally have nowhere to go but down, taking huge amounts of ill-spent money with them. That money is almost always better spent discovering and developing new talent which I agree is always waiting in the wings (both political parties should heed this advice and rid themselves of their dinosaurs rather than creating geriatric presidencies). As for Bill James' comments, they are just a big shrug. He is a genius who has revolutionized the game, so I will leave it at that.
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Setting aside all the hoopla and focusing on what James actually said, does he really think that the level of play would fully recover after only three years? I’ll grant him that the minor leagues could restock MLB with solid replacements and that there might even be some improvement in forcing teams to give up on past their prime veterans for younger players. But much of the pleasure of watching baseball comes from watching the best of the best do their thing. Would three years really be enough time to find a replacement Mookie Betts or Mike Trout or Max Scherzer or Clayton Kershaw?
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Major League Baseball only exists because fans watch it. They are baseball. The fans and people who play the game merely for pleasure.
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Bill James is being disingenuous by always pointing to "view of marketplace" as the end-all, be-all conclusion to quash any opposing argument. He neglects to mention how younger players are almost always severely underpaid and exploited to give an unfairly huge advantage and benefits to the owners given how rules are structured (i.e. # of years service before becoming a FA, the international free agency pool, etc.). If true free market exists, and you allow free market force to operate, players as a whole will, and should be entitled to earn more. It's now almost impossible to disguise Bill James and many of the Ivy League management type's plantation mentality and uses the arguments of analytics to attain that, while neglecting the problem of the system as a whole in the first place.
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