The Bill James Baseball Abstract 1983 – Bill James, 1983 ★★★

A Banquet of Numbers

Is it possible to be so steeped in knowledge that you lose all sense of proportion explaining something? Are there factoids so trivial you risk getting buried by them when you take them too seriously?

I mean, how exercised can one get about stolen bases?

If you are Bill James, and the year is 1983, when stolen bases were all the rage and no one noticed their lack of value when it came to winning or losing ballgames, you took a stand and chanced the consequences.

Hear him out before you scoff:

How many 2-run innings do you have to lose before the stolen base becomes a bad gamble? Damn few…It’s an invisible loss; you don’t really see the runs you don’t get, whereas you do see it when it pays off. But I’ve noticed something about those big innings that win ball games. You hardly ever see anybody caught stealing in the middle of a three-run rally.

When Hal McRae, the designated hitter of James' favorite team the Kansas City Royals, said he felt he hit pitchers better when he faced them a second time, James ran the numbers for 1982 and found McRae was exactly right. The same pitchers he hit .245 against the first time, he hit .396 against the next time. Image from https://www.zimbio.com/photos/Hal+Mcrae.

Reading James cut against the grain of conventional wisdom is a joy that doesn’t fade even after the hills he fought over blend into the horizon. His 1983 Baseball Abstract captures him at his most dynamic, ornery and brilliant; in many ways more fun to read now as us baseball fans with long memories have the ability to see what he got right (and wrong) and more fully appreciate the wit and wisdom that lay beyond the number-crunching that made his name.

Also adding to the pleasure is when he has a good baseball season to analyze, as he did here with 1982, a year which saw a rise in smaller-market teams like the Milwaukee Brewers, California Angels, and Atlanta Braves; the game-changing dynamics of free agency and artificial turf; electrifying young stars like Cal Ripken Jr. and Fernando Valenzuela; and the rise of analytically-minded managers like Whitey Herzog of the champion St. Louis Cardinals.

Not every important ballplayer in 1982 was a big star. Rick Mahler was a starting pitcher for the Atlanta Braves who led the team to wins in each of his first four starts with a 1.96 ERA, kicking off a 13-game winning streak. The Braves weren't known for pitching, but James shows how Mahler and the other hurlers made the difference while their hitting lagged. Image from https://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Mahler-Atlanta-Official-Trading/dp/B07JLG7MHH.

James had it good in 1982 and he knew it. He even found nice things to say about that notorious atrocity of organized sports, the Astrodome:

The Astrodome is a negative image of Fenway [Park], an exactly opposite park in almost every way one can imagine. Beautiful, ugly. Quaint, modern. Vibrant, sterile. Cozy, spacious. Hitter’s heaven, hitter’s nightmare. And for what were the Astro players of the fine teams of 1978 to 1981 known? Their openness with the press, their closeness and almost family-like atmosphere. Odd, isn’t it? As the park knocks 20 points off every player’s average, it humbles hitters and controls egos.

But he could pick fights, too. Gene Mauch’s fame as a manager who couldn’t reach the World Series won sympathetic murmurs from other baseball commentators; James harrumphs instead “that he has taken over too many challenges and not enough ball clubs.”

One baseball great James had it in for in 1982 was Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, seen here with Tigers pitcher Jack Morris. "I've reached the point at which everything the man does irritates me," James writes. "I'm not a negative person. But you've got a ball club here that's playing 15 games a year below their ability." Anderson and the Tigers went on to win the 1984 World Series. Image from http://www.sdshof.com/inductees/sparky-anderson/.

Cleveland Indians’ third-baseman Toby Harrah surprised some when he made the American League All-Star team in 1982. “Would you be happy if we scheduled an All-Mediocrities-Who-Had-Good-First-Halves Game?” James scoffed.

And then there are the 1982 New York Mets, about which the less James says, the better: “The Mets’ best player in ‘82 [center-fielder Mookie Wilson] doesn’t get on base enough to be a very good lead-off man, but who on the Mets is really good at anything?”

The fun of James is partially in his being so snarky, but mostly getting to look over his shoulder as he explains this and that concept, drawing you in with low-key eloquence and clarity.

That is not to say the Abstract is an easy read. At times it gets rather abstract. James has these particular devices he liked to employ, like the Power/Speed Number that determines which player was closest to the Willie Mays ideal, or The Favorite Toy, which measures the future potential of a proven player. These come off as devices designed to make James look clever more than explain some facet of the game.

One graphic from the 1983 Baseball Abstract shows the ages of players on each team, from fresh-faced rookies to prime talent to retirement age. It's not very meaningful (they remind me of obscene finger gestures) but showcase the data-driven approach of the book. 

What motivated James in 1983? He announces at the outset he has a lot to say about the influence of ballparks. “A player who creates a 5.15 runs per game in Fenway Park, where runs are plentiful and therefore less valuable, is not equal to a player who creates 5.15 runs per game in the Oakland Mausoleum, where runs are relatively hard to come by.”

The importance of the catcher was also seen by James as critical, if harder to quantify. He argues that Gary Carter, backstop that year for the Montreal Expos and future Hall-of-Famer, was the best player in the National League, an outstanding hitter who also owned the best defensive won-lost percentage among catchers for the last two years.

Gary Carter taking a swing for the Expos. James notes the 86-76 Expos played only .300 ball whenever Carter was out of the lineup. He also calls Carter one of the six greatest catchers of all time. Image from https://www.cooperstowncred.com/the-expos-in-cooperstown/gary-carter-expos/.

The catcher’s importance was clearly more in James’ mind a product of handling pitchers rather than throwing out baserunners. Just listen to him on the New York Yankees:

In the ledger of bad ideas of historical magnitude, enter now the name of George Steinbrenner, cited for his 1981 argument that the era of the home run was over, and that the Yankees were to become a slashing, speed-based team in tune with the 1980s. The chance that this would work was roughly equal to the chance that Ronald Reagan might elope with Joan Baez.

For one thing, the Yankees didn’t have the ballpark for such strategy. Nor was it sound. In examining the game’s best basestealer, at that moment and of all time, Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics, James calls out how much worse Henderson made batters who came up after him, who had to hold off swinging at optimal first and second pitches so Henderson could swipe a bag and get into scoring position.

James takes up other unpopular causes, like rating Dickie Thon of the Houston Astros a better shortstop than Ozzie Smith of the Cardinals. He notes a popular canard that Smith saved the Cards 100 runs with his stellar defense; while James make short work of the claim, he gets carried away by his point and short-shrifts the great Smith.

Steve Garvey of the Los Angeles Dodgers was a star in 1982, but James rated him only the eleventh-best first baseman that season, calling attention to his league-worst strikeout-to-walk ratio. Still, James notes he has been a reliably terrific hitter every September but one since 1975. Image from https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/8752179/steve-garvey-career-forgotten-espn-magazine

He also predicts the Chicago White Sox will be a powerhouse in their division, while the Baltimore Orioles will wilt after the departure of their fabled manager Earl Weaver: “Even if it were a good team – which it isn’t, without Earl Weaver – the new manager would still find himself at the controls of a machine custom-built for somebody else.”

The Orioles did find a way to win without Earl; they went on to win the World Series in 1983. But they did collapse pretty hard after that, so maybe James had a point, too.

What made for a winning team in 1982? James notes the Expos had more great players on their club than the Cardinals, who won the Expos’ division. Never mind speed and defense; which others cited that year. The Expos were brought down, James says, by a lousy second baseman. He compares them to “a girl with flashing eyes and a turned-up nose and three teeth missing.”

A complete set of Baseball Abstracts, which ran from 1977 to 1988. He has written many books since, but none have the cachet these do. Image from http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2005/02/breakfast_with.php, which also includes an interview with James.

Many times James will just go on about the smallest topic in a way that  amuses and engages. He can call attention the fact there were only 12 1-0 wins in baseball in 1982, and that Larry Gura of the Kansas City Royals happened to win two of them. Mean anything? Not really, but like a crammed scorecard it makes one appreciate the layers of the game.

Just the way James explains himself makes for an entertaining read:

The subject of the book is sabermetrics; SABR for the Society of American Baseball Research, Metrics for measurement, with an extra “e” thrown in so you can pronounce it.

James’s 1983 Abstract employs this eloquence to advance some interesting ideas. Even when I don’t agree with his preference for the four-man pitching rotation or the designated hitter, I find his arguments stimulating. Many times, though, he was on the money. Most importantly, he is always offering new ways of looking at the game of baseball, and making you feel like a smarter fan by reading him.