Bill James Handbook 2007

by cheech99 on Jan 2, 2007 1:01 AM EST Comment 4 comments

Anyone else have this yet? Some really interesting stuff in here. For example:

BASERUNNING

James and the guys at Baseball Info Solutions come up with a plus/minus "bases" system which go a long way to determine who are the best and worst baserunners.

1st to 3rd on a single; 1st to home on a double

2nd to home on single (Grady the best % guy in the majors)

Bases taken on wild pitch, passed ball, balk, sac flies

Baserunning outs and other factors

Conclusions? The best baserunner by this method was Chone Figgins at +28. Sizemore was twelfth at +19. Jason Michaels of all people was 17th at +15.

The other thing I found interesting was Travis Hafner was 7th worst at -21 and Victor was 9th worst at -20. If you project Garko's -7 out to a full season, you begin to wonder if there's another (admittedly small) reason the brass isn't as high on Garko (perhaps they think that these 3 hitting 3, 4, 5 may not be the best lineup construction).

MANAGERIAL USE

All kinds of stuff like # of times a manager used a reliever on consecutive days (Wedge did this 48 times, the fewest in all of baseball). He also used the fewest relievers in all of baseball (377, while Dusty set an all time high with 542 relievers used.

You also have a ton of stuff like the usual 2007 James player projections, a panel of 10 experts ranking the fielders at each position, the win shares, James does a study on manufacturing runs.

All heady stuff. And to end with a completely unrelated note, what an unbelievable sequence of plays by Boise State to win that Fiesta Bowl.

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Re: Bill James Handbook 2007

I just read both of these chapters yesterday. Interesting stuff. No surprise on Hafer and Victor here. Also, funny stuff seeing as how early this book was printed that he guesstimates that the 2006 AL MVP race has come down to Ortiz and Jeter and Jeter most likely won it.

And the first projections of the year!

by nickjs21 on Jan 2, 2007 12:29 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Re: Bill James Handbook 2007

Not too surprising about Wedge, either, since he led the leage in mid-game naps.

by JulioBernazard on Jan 2, 2007 1:49 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Re: Bill James Handbook 2007

i wonder to what extent Grady's and J-Mike's ratings are artificially inflated by the guys hitting behind them. by this i mean: how many of Victor's and Pronk's deep singles would be doubles for other hitters? i don't know if it would be enough to make a statistical difference, but it's the first thing that springs to my mind.

by nctribefan on Jan 2, 2007 3:37 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Re: Bill James Handbook 2007

A great point, and James makes a concession by saying things like "a player who bats in front of Carlos Delgado is going to do better than a player who bats in front of John McDonald".

His summation, "You can't ignore stats just because they're context driven, or you'll wind up ignoring everything".

by cheech99 on Jan 2, 2007 4:20 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs