Bill James Dept.

By jemanji on 1/14/09 3:36am
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Little anecdote on Red Sox VP Bill James ...

In 1992, Dave Fleming had a "splash" rookie year for the M’s, going 17-10, 3.39.  The reason that Fleming has always stuck in my mind was because of the memorable instinctiveness of a Bill James "ruling" on Fleming.

The Seattle cyber-sphere did a retro on Fleming recently, and looked about the landscape for a root cause of The Fleming Flameout,.  Mostly, it blamed Bill Plummer (and other coaches) for what, presumably, should have been a good career.  Possible.

Did Fleming pull a Mark Fydrich?  A terrific rookie season, in which he was overused, followed by a flameout?  How could we have looked at the situation, at the time, in such a way as to really understand it -- and to apply the logic to the Clay Buchholzes of our own day?

===== FOUNDING FATHER OF SABERMETRICS Dept. =====

Bill James had a completely different take.  He took one glance at Fleming’s rookie year -- at the time -- and said this (IIRC):

"The big thing for Fleming is his K rate.  If it goes up over the next 2-3 years, as is the case with most young pitchers, he will win 100-150 games and have a long career.

If his K rate does not go up, he will wash out of the majors in a year or two."

James said this in 1993, recall.  Long before Baseball Prospectus existed, long before jemanji or almost anybody else had a clue what sabermetrics were.  And the awesome accuracy of his judgment illustrates how the 1993 James was a better analyst than we ordinary sabermetricians are, in 2009.

What James recognized in 1993 — believe this — was that

  1. The 17-10, 3.39 Fleming had a questionable 4.5 strikeout rate (or so),
  2. There is nothing wrong with soft-tossing lefties provided their stuff has at least a little bite to it,
  3. That if Fleming’s stuff was good enough to adjust/readjust/etc, that it would show in his K rate,
  4. That if Fleming were tricking batters, it would show in a lack of strikeouts the next year.

James was prophetic:  Fleming was tricking batters from the start, using smoke-and-mirrors, and the league pointed that out to him.  Starting the very next year.

.

===== DEEP BLUE Dept. =====

James’ assessments are interesting from a chessmaster’s point of view because he emphasizes historical precedent and intuition.

A chess grandmaster doesn’t look at a position and then apply 15 criteria and mathematics.  Instead, he asks, "where have I seen this position before?" … and then he tweaks this position for differences, and gets his bearings.

Bill James, in 1993, recognized that he’d seen Dave Fleming many times before — and instantly put his finger on the key.  Is Fleming’s "stuff" inadequate (like John Halama’s)?  Or does his "stuff" have just enough bite for an 88-mph lefty (like Jimmy Key’s)?

Like a thousand other "splash" rookie pitchers, fate just never had it for the amigo to star in the bigs.  In Bill James’ (and D-O-V’s) world, Fleming was sunk without a bubble, even before 1992.  Yeah, I saw the dude pitch.  He just never had major league stuff.

Cheers,

jemanji