Sabermetric Nostalgia
I was cleaning out some stuff in storage when I came across the 1985 and 1988 Bill James Baseball Abstracts. I thought these were gone forever and I’ve been spending a fair part of the last week wallowing in the 1980’s mind of Bill James. (He just stopped blogging, so this an apt time to look back as well.) I wish I still had the earlier ones, which were inspirational to me in both my love for baseball and my career as a statistical expert in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t there at the time.
In the 1985 Abstract, James has a long piece on what streaks of good play (or, implicitly, bad play) tell you about a team. It was a discussion on the 1984 Tigers and when people should have realized they were good. Those Tigers started 35-5, and by then everyone knew they were good. But James’ point was that when they were 18-2 after 20 games we ought to have already known that they were very, very good. Of course, being very, very good doesn’t mean you’ll win the World Series, as the Tigers did, but it does mean you need to update your prior convictions about the quality of the team.
But this essay contains an important line for the current (and 2021) Braves. It was so important to James he put it in italics: Signature significance exists only in extreme data. It’s a point I’ve been banging on about for about three years now. While an 18-2 record tells you a team’s got a reasonable chance of winning 95 games, a 9-11 record tells you almost nothing. Both terrible teams and great teams have 9-11 stretches. The 1984 Tigers, winners of 104 games, had a 6-12 stretch in July and August.
So I was criticized last week with the following comment:
You all have been saying “it’s a really long season” for two months now, and the Braves just keep getting worse.
But as AAR pointed out, what you have is two months of just under 0.500 ball. But we have great teams that play two months of 0.500 ball, bad teams that play two months of 0.500 ball and mediocre teams that play two months of 0.500 ball. That tells you that two months of 0.500 ball has little informational content. Winning streaks tell you something, if they’re long enough. So do losing streaks. Two months of 0.500 ball tells you nothing.
Gone Fishing
Second of four against Miami, Nobody knows who they are. But last night’s game should have convinced you that nobodies can play somebodies dead even for long stretches of a game. This is just another version of the Crapshoot/Signature Significance Exists Only In Extreme Data truth. It’s just at the innings level of aggregation, not the game level.
That said, you gotta play the game. And hopefully entertain those of us watching.
Shabbos
Spencer Schwellenbach takes the mound for what would have been the fourth Friday in a row had not last Friday’s game been rained out. So his next start was moved to the doubleheader on Saturday. In the early 1940’s the White Sox had a pitcher, Ted Lyons, who was famous for starting every Sunday and compiling an excellent record. He got the sobriquet Sunday Special. I have no idea if Schwellenbach will continue to pitch only on Friday and Saturday, but I’m going to (at least temporarily) name him Shabbos Schwellenbach. Shabbos is opposed by Valente Bellozo, who I believe had a small part in The Godfather Part III. He is making his third career start. He was good against the Royals on June 26th, then got roughed up by the Red Sox on July 2.
I cannot overstate the impact Bill James and his 1980’s annual Abstracts had on my understanding of baseball. I’ve certainly never thought about baseball the same since I first encountered James. And nothing I’ve read about baseball before or since has given me as much pleasure as reading those annual abstracts when they first came out each spring. (JF–glad you found those–I still have the 1982-84 versions.)
Thanks Jonathan. I still have the 1982 Abstract in my office. I must have thrown the others out.
I shake my head that after 40+ years knowledgeable people still form their opinions over a hitter’s last 100 at-bats and ignore the last 1000. If one understands the aging curve, minor league equivalencies, and that more data is better than less data, the only variable really left is health. I owe most all of the fun I’ve ever had in fantasy baseball to what I learned from Bill James.
That’s honestly why I was wondering whether Olson was fully healthy.
Agreed Alex, and he may not have been healthy. There is so much info that is known only in the dugout.
And to go a bit further on the subject, the other side of that is treating hot and cold streaks as totally random variability. Measuring human performance is a lot different than, say, monitoring the variability of inner diameter in a PVC pipe manufacturing process.
The Bally Sports announcers have spent the last three days proclaiming Schwellenbach as the second coming of Nolan Ryan, so that was as predictable as the sunrise.
Watch us get totally shut down by this rando
I will watch no such goings-on.
Somebody forgot to tell the Marlins they were supposed to lie down this weekend
The umpiring is not very good. Terrible strike calls,
We swing through a lot of middle-middle pitches
Great piece of hitting by Soler…and Riley…and Ozuna….and Arcia.
What a gutsy 3-2 pitch by Jimenez
2 games for Soler and 2 wins. A good start.
You hope this isn’t Joe’s once-every-four-weeks-or-so off-night.
(Seconds later …)
It wasn’t.
On Bill James’ discussion on signature play in that 1985 Abstract — I recall him discussing Roger Clemons and how a 13 strikeout/no walk game was a portent of greatness far more than a 15 or 16 strikeout game with several walks. I have long been in awe of that insight. Which brings us to PDQ going 11/0 and 10/0 in his last 2 games (28/0 in his last 3). Health willing, we got a horse here!
Yep. It’s in that same section I quoted from. It’s kinda cheating in blogging by just typing stuff Bill James wrote 40 years ago, but it would certainly improve my analysis!
Recapped https://bravesjournal.com/2024/08/02/reeling-one-in-after-a-good-fight-braves-5-marlins-3/