Baseball, By The Numbers

Baseball, By The Numbers

BENCHPRESS

Billy Altman

by

OK, all you so-called baseball experts out there! Did you know that, when the New York Mets Dave Kingman led the National League in home runs last season with 37 while (you should pardon the the expression) compiling a batting average of 204, it represented the lowest BA of any HR king in history, easily eclipsing Gavvy Cravaths mark of 232 set in 1918? And, speaking of averages, are you aware that, in 1982, ballplayers who were in the lineup on their birthdays in June collectively hit a whopping 419? How about the fact that the chances of the White Soxs Tom Paciorek swatting all 11 of his 82 round trippers on the road were, randomly speaking, an almost unfathomable 1 in 2000? And, lastly, depending on when youre reading this article, how did you, or how are you going to, celebrate the August 20th anniversary of Kansas City slugger Willie Mays Aikens firstever big league triple, which came against Chicago last year just in time to get Aikens off the non-three bagger schneid after a mere 1,300 plus at-bats?

Yes, fans, all of the potentially useless but nonetheless fascinating information delineated above is yours for the osmoting simply by perusing just some of the five pages (or, if you will, 2.1% of the total package) devoted to first basemen and their statistical exploits in the 1983 edition of the Baseball Abstract, the seventh annual collection of facts, figures, charts, graphs, formulas, logarithms, sez-yous, and oh yeahs to spring forth from the decidedly left field mind of sabremetrician Bill James. And just what is a sabremetrician, you ask? Why, a practitioner of sabremetrics, of course; that being sabr" for the Society for American Baseball Research, metrics" for measurement (and e" for emphasis on both, 1 guess), with the word on the whole being defined as the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records."

If that all sounds a bit out there, well, youd better smile when you say it, fella. The tall, stocky, bearded and bespectacled James may openly admit that hes an oddball (the opening line of his introduction to this years Abstract is a hearty, Hi. My name is Bill James, and Im an eccentric"), anel that he spends almost all of his waking hours counting all kinds of stuff that lots of people are sort of interested in, but nobody in their right mind would actually bother to, count." But, at the moment, hes one of the hottest properties around on both the sportswriting and statistical information circuits, as magazines, teams and even players have availed themselves of James services, and on subjects ranging from the projected increase in hits per season of a player going from say, the poor visibility conditions at Shea Stadium (doubles reduced 8% here; triples 25%), to the friendly hitathoh pastures of Wrigley Field (40 % more homers at Cubland), to the probability of Atlantas Ted Turner being transformed in-! to a Charley Finley/George Steinbrenner buddinsky owner should those Braves ever start to lose that Nokahoma touch. In short, Bill James is now making a living, doing essentially what he began doing in 1977 out of sheer love and determination—love of baseball and its never-ending stream of stats, and determination to make a go of it on his own terms.

I love numbers," said James as we spoke over a few beers and a nice selection of mixed nuts (coming from one of those less than 25 % peanuts" cans, I quickly calculated) in the bar of the midtown hotel where James was staying during a visit to New York in April. I always did. When I was in college,

I used to sit in the lobby of the dorm where I lived and I didnt study very hard, but people would walk by and call out, ˜183 divided by 6071 and Id say, ˜ 3015 before they could walk on through. It was mainly just a parlor trick, really, being able to divide in my head. I mean, I didnt major in math. But, like I said, I love numbers, and I think that, when I started doing the Abstract, I turned to the numbers more or less from a lack of confidence."

The Bill James Baseball Abstract had its humble beginnings in 1977 as a result of James frustrations in trying to become a baseball writer. When I started writing, I read in the Writers Market that you should write about what you know about," James recalled, and I knew about baseball. The first article I ever wrote was for Baseball Digest and, after writing a few articles for them, you become aware of the limitations of the publication. I began to think, Im not doing this as well as I can do this, because this publication will not let me." I had three options, I realized: I could find another place to write where I could do what I wanted, I could try to change the Baseball Digest, or I could simply do it myself. It wasnt that difficult a choice to make. I just tried to establish my own forum for my own work."

To establish that forum, James created his Baseball Abstract, publishing the book on his own and selling it himself through the mail. I took out a few small ads in the Sporting News, " said James, which produced a few orders, and when I did any articles for magazines, theyd run a line about my book and that would help build up the market a bit." James first Abstract sold roughly 70 copies—None to either family or friends," he joked proudly—and over the next few years, circulation started to climb rather rapidly as, mainly by word of mouth, more and more people began to hear about this baseball nut off in the middle of Kansas who was devising all kinds of bizarre statistical evaluations and breakdowns of pitching, hitting, defense, etc. Id written an awful lot of term papers in college, and was vaguely aware that I wrote better than your average class person," James remembered, but I felt that when I was charging money for something that I had to have cold, hard facts to defend what I wrote, in order to do that, I had to go over hundreds of box scores— thousands really—to find stacks of those facts."

By 1981, James and his work had become the subjects of several articles themselves, and last year Ballantine Books took over the publishing end of the Abstract, which meant that now thousands of people would be learning all about the great Runs Created" formula, the rousing Defensive Range Factor," and the fabulous Value Approximation Method," to name but a few James originals. And, though the latest Abstract features more just-plain-ole baseball talk than ever, James made it clear that its still just the facts, maam, on which he ultimately rests his various cases. Over the last few years," he said, I have found that the facts certainly play a very important role in what I do. Although Im basically not charging for them anymore—Im basically selling a book like anybody else for which the selling point is not the numbers—they still play a very important role in my work."

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Since he admits that almost all of his time is taken up with research, I asked James what a typical day was like for him.I spend most of the day in my pajamas," he confessed. I get up, go downstairs to the office in my house in Winchester, and just start figuring stuff. Sometimes what Im doing turns into play and Im just creating mythical careers, but other times it turns into work and Im figuring out answers to questions Ive always been curious about. And when the day is done or my wife threatens to kill me if I dont come to bed or whatever, then I stop.

I dont leave the house very much," James admitted, but I usually get out and walk around a little bit almost every day. I mean, once in awhile you do have to go down to the store and buy more Diet Pepsi or something." Yeah. And I bet that Bill James knows his price per ounce of soda pop better than any other guy on the block, too.