Bill James - Solid Fool’s Gold: Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom

SOLID
FOOLS
GOLD

SOLID
FOOLS
GOLD DETOURS ON THE WAY
TO CONVENTIONAL WISDOM by Bill James

SOLID FOOLS GOLD

Detours on the Way to Conventional Wisdom

by Bill James

Edited by Gregory F. Augustine Pierce

Cover design by Tom A. Wright

Text design and typesetting by Patricia Lynch

Copyright 2011 by Bill James

Published by ACTA Sports, a division of ACTA Publications,
4848 N. Clark Street, Chicago, IL 60077 (800) 397-2282
www.actasports.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information and retrieval system, including the Internet, without permission from the publisher. Permission is hereby given to use short excerpts (under 500 words) with proper citation in reviews and marketing copy, online blogs, and scholarly papers and class handouts.

Library of Congress Number: 2011923351

ISBN: 978-0-87946-459-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-87946-608-4

Printed in the United States of America by McNaughton & Gunn, Inc.

Year: 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

Printing: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First

C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION

Hi; this is Bill James. Throughout the course of every year I write a lot of articles which are published on Bill James Online ( Billjamesonline.com ). These articles are not read by very many people, because, frankly, mostly theyre not worth reading. No, seriously; I dont know whether theyre worth reading or not; thats the readers decision, not the writers. The reason they are not read by very many people is that we charge $3 a month for access to the online, and were not all that good at marketing the site, sonot an awful lot of people read them.

A few of these articles, however, may be worth publishing on actual chopped-up-and-bleached trees. I said may be; again, this is not my decision. That would be a publishers decision.

Greg Pierce is a publisher; specifically, hes the head of ACTA Publications in Chicago. Evanston? Not sure; I know you can walk to Wrigley from there. Must be Chicago.

Anyway, Greg and I have worked together for several years. Greg, for reasons known only to himself and possibly his priest, chooses to read all of that stuff that I publish online, with the idea of finding any parts of it that might be worth publishing in a form such as that you hold in your hand. This, then, is a collection of articles that have been previously publishedbarely. Published, but not widely read. The only article in here that has been widely read is an article that is being re-published from the 1983 Baseball Abstract; that was widely read in its time, but we thought perhaps you might enjoy seeing it again, in the same way that you might enjoy seeing Terms of Endearment again, or Risky Business, or Gorky Park, or War Games, or Stray Dogs. Those were all movies that came out in 1983. So was Yentl; but absolutely nobody wants to see Yentl again. Its been 28 years; I have almost completely forgiven my wife for making me see it the first time. Where was I?

Oh, yesGreg Pierce reads through the hundreds of pages of stuff that I publish annually on Bill James Online, and finds articles that might deserve to be enshrined in paper. Some of these articles could be considered serious baseball research, to the extent that research about baseball can be considered a serious undertaking. Some of them are not. Some of them have nothing to do with baseball. Some of them have to do with tipping your pizza delivery guy, or with Olympic NASCAR racing. You will not forget, while reading this book, that I am essentially a baseball writer, but perhaps you will occasionally allow me to stray off the subject.

I will not do anything here to help you win your fantasy league because, frankly, I dont care whether you win your fantasy league or not; its not my problem.

We hope you enjoy our book; we have tried to find articles that are fun to read and stimulating to think about, and we have tried not to waste your time with stuff that is only useful to you if you are wondering whether you should draft Kevin Kouzmanoff in the fifth round or wait to the sixth. We hope you like the book, and if you do we will publish some additional collections a little bit like it, but if you dont and the Cubs meet the Red Sox in the World Series, we will consider it a good year anyway. Thanks for reading.

P REDICTING RBI

A couple of years ago, I went looking for a formula that would predict RBI based on a players other hitting stats, and I found a really good one. Its Total Bases divided by four, plus Home Runs. Thats all you have to do; divide a players Total Bases by four, add his Home Runs; thats about how many runs he will drive in.

Reviewing the 2010 season for this datathe following hitters matched or almost matched their expected RBI:

Of the 427 major league hitters who drove in ten or more runs in 2010, 166 came within three RBI of matching their expectation. On the other hand, the following players drove in significantly more runs than expected:

While the following wazarongs drove in less:

Research has shown that, when a player drives in more runs than expected, this is on average about 50% because he had a higher-than-expected number of RBI opportunities, and about 50% because he hit well with runners on base and with runners in scoring position. Alex Emmanuel Rodriguez, for example, had a .774 OPS with the bases empty, but .924 with men on base. This creates more than an expected number of RBI, and his number of chances was also a little high. Delmon Young hit .355 with runners in scoring position, and was also fourth in the league in at bats with runners in scoring position.

A ND IN A R ELATED S TORY

On January 11, 2010, Mark McGwire acknowledged in multiple venues that he had, in fact, used steroids and Human Growth Hormone. McGwire issued a statement, gave an interview to Bob Costas, answered questions from reporters in a phone conference, and made numerous other personal phone calls to apologize and accept responsibility for misleading people about the issue. Reaction to his apology was almost universally negative.

And in a related story, former New York Yankee outfielder Roger Maris has apologized in a televised interview, broadcast early Wednesday morning on HVEN TV, for using eight extra games and expansion pitching to break the single-season home run record of previous record holder Babe Ruth. Maris was interviewed by the sainted sportscaster Curt Gowdy in a studio just two miles inside the pearly gates late Tuesday afternoon.