The Red Sox' Stat Man And The Numbers Game

Bill James Tells 60 Minutes Mets' David Wright Would Be A Top Pick On His Dream Team

(CBS)  "Of course in any given day any professional baseball player can defy all the numbers in his record," Safer remarks.

"Yep," Francona agrees. "And the only reason they're ever gonna be any good is if they believe in that. I would never wanna say, 'Hey, you're 0-for-20 against this guy. You can't play.' We don't share that with the players a lot. We want 'em to feel indestructible."

"He's made some what sound like pretty dogmatic statements like, 'There's no such thing as a clutch hitter,'" Safer points out.

"I've heard him say that. But then I would want him to be introduced to David Ortiz…You get my point? We feel pretty good when David Ortiz is hittin' in the clutch," Francona says.

James is rethinking that one. But the players, like Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell, say theories are for the front office-not the playing field.

"I don't think we come into spring training and say, 'Man, hopefully we have a .960 fielding percentage.' I don't think it gets that detailed," Lowell says. "But I think more teams are realizing that when you use these numbers you’re gonna win more games."

"In the final analysis, it's one guy with a piece of wood, hitting a ball that's moving at 90 miles an hour," Safer remarks.

"Absolutely. You can't put a number on that," Lowell says,

But one number, the number two, as in two World Series, still resonates.

"Whatever effect that Bill James has in the Red Sox, he’s certainly been a good luck charm. I mean, in four years, they’ve won two World Series after an 86-year drought," Safer tells Bob Costas.

"You certainly can't say that Bill James has had a negative effect on the Red Sox fortunes. And, that's bought a tremendous amount of good will, as well in Boston. I mean, 2004 changed everything," Costas says.

One thing 2004 did not change is the hatred for the New York Yankees, who are now playing the numbers game as well.

"Are you concerned that the 'evil empire,' I think, as he - otherwise known as the New York Yankees, are doing the same thing?" Safer asks Larry Luccino.

"Yes," he replies. "They are, but, there are several teams in baseball that are doing it. But, the Yankees always tend to spend a little more money at whatever it is they're doing."

James says he’s always looking for new numbers to help the Red Sox. But even he admits the numbers will never say it all.

"There's something in baseball that you really can't quantify. And that is, the mix of guys at a given moment, there's some magic or whatever, that goes on. That all the James-ian theory in the world will never find the answer to," Safer says.

"It's mostly intangible," James says. "I mean, I don't understand most of it. I don't think that anybody in the Red Sox would tell you that we have that magic stuff figured out. But there are people here who understand that part of the equation a lot better than I do."

[owlcroft]

"[Bill James's] ideas were finally put into practice in 1997, when Billy Beane of the hapless Oakland A's used sabermetrics to fill his roster with young, underrated, cheaper players. It made the A's competitive."

Speaking as the man who taught Billy Beane what is now called "Moneyball", I am quite disconcerted by this portrayal of James as the inventor of modern baseball analysis (a description I am sure James himself would quickly correct). The earliest serious attempt at analysis was (as so many brilliant things in baseball were) the brainchild of Branch Rickey, and was the cover story of a 1950 "Life" magazine issue. Much deeper and fuller analyses came from the disgracefully under-appreciated Earnshaw Cook, whose remarkable books--"Percentage Baseball" and the later "Percentage Baseball and the Computer"--were my own entry into analysis.

I am also disconcerted by the seemingly obligatory obeisance to the "there are deeper mysteries that analysis cannot reach" baloney [euphemism alert]. Science may not yet know what dark matter and dark energy are, but that does not remove them to the world of the occult; nor, by analogy, are those aspects of baseball not yet fully sounded by analytic methods either removed to the world of crystal-ball gazers or team managers. As more than one person has asked over the years, why does no one ever discuss the wonderful "chemistry" on losing teams? Or, as Leo Durocher famously put it, "All nice guys. They'll finish last." Chemistry is Na+Cl=table salt, not a method to design winning ball clubs.

[JWhittingtonAR]

I have seen this entire news segment before. Since I am 60 years old and retired 5 years ago I am going out on a limb and say it was broadcast in the last 10 years. I have lived in St. Louis, MO; Springfield, MO; Martinsburg,WV; and Fayetteville, AR.
I watched this on 60 minutes and knew from the very beginning that I had seen this report before.

Please let me know when it was originally aired.

thanks

John

[gaddy42]

Great story, Excellent report. Thanks

[joncfrank]

i could not believe that safer did not broach the subject of steroids and how it will or will not affect the evaluation of statistics. i love bill james. used to buy his abstract every year. and nobody would have a more legit reason to comment on the steroid scandal. that is why i watched the program. instead, safer talks about the limitations of stats and the "magic" of baseball. what a load of ***. really, it was one of the most disappointing journalism performances i have ever witnessed. congratulations safer. you can now take your position next to mike wallace as 60 minutes journalists who were backed down by powerful economic interests at the moment of truth.

don''t question how smart he is... did you pioneer a field of statistics? maybe you''d appreciate the knowledge if you didn''t have so much money to throw around.

[hatchersj]

During the 60-Minute segment, the word "sabermetrics" was used, but without an acknowledgement of the organization from which it is derived from: The Society of American Baseball Research(SABR). This organization was founded in 1971 and is made up of researchers just like Bill James, the man who coined the word in honor of SABR.

[bnorton24]

vrquick, if Manny had been claimed, the sox would not have sat on the money. What they replaced him with might have been more productive. Obviously, at the time, no other team thought there was value in that contract either or he would have been claimed.

[vrquick]

How smart would James have been if any team would have claimed Manny on waivers. The Red Sox are Manny and Ortiz performing in the clutch. How''s that for anyaylsis and it took me a few seconds and cost the team nothing