Bill James Makes Bizarre Argument that Bill James of 1985 Would Have Shredded

Bill James talked to Seattle Times reporter Geoff Baker yesterday and curiously inserted himself into a nonexistent debate regarding the 2009 AL Cy Young. James proffered a strange argument in favor of Felix Hernandez:

↵↵“the Mariners were 25-9 when Felix started last year. The Royals were 17-16 when Greinke started. And it was only a difference of 24 runs scored. The Mariners scored 149 runs in Felix’s starts and went 25-9. The Royals scored 117 for Greinke and went 17-16. There’s a difference in the bullpens of course. But then, the Mariner bullpen was struggling for some of the year and the Royals have (Joakim) Soria, so that’s not the whole thing either. […] I think they were on the same level, or that Felix was an inch ahead.”

↵↵Are we sure Bill James said this? Perhaps it was somehow generated by the mysterious “Bill James” Projection System, which James sold his name to and nobody in the baseball world seems to know anything about. Predictably, Kansas City fans are not pleased. First of all, looking at a team’s record during a starting pitcher’s starts, the premise of James’s argument, is awful. Teams are not the same, and even in the sports world of heroic individualism, the other 24 dudes in the dugout can and do affect the game. Zack Greinke’s team was horrible last season: bad lineup, weak bullpen. But hey, there were only 29 teams separating the Mariners and Royals defensively.

↵Secondly, what kind of evidence is he giving here? The runs scored figures he cites are bizarre, because 24 runs is not an irrelevant number. I think Zack Greinke would like to have those 24 runs of support. If anything, it is more data saying Greinke was less supported. This is followed up by some utterly lazy analysis of the bullpens. James is vague and imprecise, saying the Mariner bullpen “struggled” for “some” of the year, while the Royals had Joakim Soria… which is somehow supposed to mean “the Royals had a similar bullpen”. Actually, the Mariner bullpen supported Felix much better in 2009, blew fewer of his games and allowed fewer runs in the starts in question.

↵Nobody would care if one of the hundred generic baseball writers in North America made an argument like this. Bill James, however, was a name that once stood for a certain kind of data-driven approach to the game. This argument, however, signals the empty iconoclasm that has been a part of his increased irrelevance as a legitimate baseball mind.