Over the brief run of his annual looks back on individual baseball seasons, Bill James was concerned with demarcating the difference between ordinary performance and true excellence. This is made clear in this, the rough series midpoint which examines 1985.
It was a year like no other for James, because his team, the Kansas City Royals, finally won it all.
In the best and longest section of the book, James examines the history of baseball in Kansas City, from the dog days of the Athletics in the early 1960s to the Game 7 whipping of the Cardinals last October. It could have been a book of its own. Perhaps it should have been, because the rest of Baseball Abstract 1986 can only pale in comparison.
Still, I enjoyed this Abstract a lot. It renewed my long-felt desire that he had continued the series longer than he did.
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| Danny Jackson, a left-handed starter for the Kansas City Royals, was 14-12 in 1985 but a stopper in critical games throughout the season. In Game 5 of the World Series, Jackson did something no pitcher did before, or has since: struck out the side on nine pitches for an "immaculate inning." Photo by Ronald C. Modra from https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/16/1985-kansas-city-royals-world-series-champs |
The most immediate challenge faced by James was using his sabermetric skills to prove the Kansas City Royals’s 1985 World Championship was in fact fully deserved, and not the byproduct of a bad umpiring call. James is ready to get into it, pointing out the enormous run differential between the two teams. The Royals also fielded and pitched better, dominating their opponent in a manner seldom seen before:
The truth is that the Kansas City Royals kicked the holy crap out of the overmatched National League representatives. By a run of extremely good fortune in the close games, the Cardinals were able to keep the result in doubt for six games and three innings; they should be quite grateful for this.
This was the first time I read extended in-game commentary by James as he goes through both the American League Championship and World Series. It is terrific stuff, technical in approach yet full of human details on what happened on the field and in the stands. He doesn’t even mention the blown call in Game 6 by umpire Don Denkinger, which extended a come-from-behind Royals rally in the eighth inning in a game where they faced elimination. This is either an oversight or more likely hubris that the call didn’t matter in the larger scheme.
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| The ball is in the glove, but Jorge Orta is about to be called safe anyway. The Denkinger call in Game 6 was an indisputable turning point, though James methodically makes a case for most of the breaks in that Series going the Cardinals' way. Image from https://lonniesjukebox.com/senator-thomas-eagleton-baseball-fan/ |
Anyway, the entirety of the Royals section is a masterpiece, displaying James’s skill as a sports pundit. It is authoritative, engaging, probing, and often funny.
The rest of the book reveals a certain fatigue with the usual approach of Baseball Abstracts past. This time, there is less granular analysis about each team’s performance over the season, or how individual players rose or fell off. The joy in details is missing. Instead, he uses each team breakout, which collectively make up the bulk of the 1986 Baseball Abstract, as a launching pad to discuss broader trends.
One element he introduces several times is the concept of “secondary average,” a way of measuring offensive performance behind batting average or power numbers. James puts it this way:
“Unlike total average, runs produced, estimated runs produced, runs created, base/out percentage, linear weights and runs ad infinitum, secondary average does not attempt to sum up all of a player’s offensive contributions; rather, it focuses on the major areas of offensive productivity which are not reflected in the player’s batting average.”
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| Rickey Henderson was James's choice for American League MVP in 1985, an honor that went to teammate Don Mattingly. "Henderson's year was very possibly the greatest season that any leadoff man has ever had," he writes. "Mattingly's year, while an exceptional effort, was obviously not the greatest year for a number-three hitter." GIF from https://giphy.com/gifs/mlb-nyy-147-3rgXBNwde4u9tBsr6g |
The greatest avatar for the importance of this measure, and the possessor of the greatest secondary average by far in James’s reckoning, is Rickey Henderson, the newly acquired New York Yankees outfielder. “There is no doubt in my mind that Rickey Henderson was the greatest everyday player in baseball in 1985,” he concludes, after noting Henderson’s secondary average of .528 easily dwarves that of runner up George Brett (.455) and everyone else.
Walks and stolen bases, along with occasional power, were the reasons for Henderson’s dominance. It is a fascinating point for James to consider in light of his continued skepticism over the value of stolen bases. He still thinks stealing detracts from run production in the main, because batters are more inclined to take good pitches when runners are going, but Henderson’s example forces some reconsideration.
Many giants walked the earth in 1985. It is remarkable to look back and see how so many of them did not go on to baseball’s Hall of Fame, at least of this writing. These include both of the Most Valuable Players (the National League’s Willie McGee and the American League’s Don Mattingly) and Cy Young Award winners (Dwight Gooden and Bret Saberhagen). Other non-Hall luminaries ranked highly by James include Keith Hernandez, Pedro Guerrero, Dale Murphy, Kirk Gibson, Dave Parker, Hal McRae, Graig Nettles and Ron Guidry.
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| In an appendix to the 1986 Baseball Abstract, James lists all-time top players by ages. For age 38, Darrell Evans of the Detroit Tigers gets a callout. A year after the Tigers won the Championship, Evans hit 40 homers and created 96 runs by James's estimate. Other things went wrong for the Tigers in 1985, but not Evans. Photo from https://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2020/08/14/detroit-tigers-darrell-evans/3338253001/ |
The elusive nature of lasting greatness is a persistent theme of this book. James is always trying to identify it, calling out concepts like “secondary average” or the advantages of playing in particular ballparks. Each team section is headed by a breakout of their win-loss records over the last ten seasons, by month as well as how they compared to other teams over the last three seasons.
The idea that some teams benefit or are hindered by playing on artificial turf is examined in detail. So do their performances in close games, in getting blown out early, and in coming from behind:
The A’s in 1985 were a very good late-inning team, but a very poor early-inning team. They won six games in which they trailed entering the ninth, and fourteen games in which they trailed entering the seventh. (By contrast the division-champion Royals won only two games in which they trailed entering the ninth, and only six games in which they trailed entering the seventh.)
I feel the book suffers from James’s less dialed-in approach, at least when it comes to considering specific teams. As a fan of the New York Mets, I was looking forward to reading James opine on my favorite season, but he doesn’t say much except that Dwight Gooden was pretty, pretty good, His 24-4 record is evidence enough of that.
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| Doc Gooden dealing. In 1985, Gooden and other Mets pitchers were bolstered by their ability to guard leads. James compares them to the other great National League pitching staff that season: "Given two runs, the Dodger pitchers were .333 (10-20), whereas the Mets were .435 (10-13)." With four or five runs, that dominance increased. Image from https://www.si.com/mlb/mets/news/new-york-mets-dwight-gooden-negro-leagues-hall-of-game-induction-matt9 |
One point he does make is on the remarkable decline of recent Cy Young winners, a pattern he predicts Gooden will break in 1986. This he did as part of a championship season, though 1986 proved ominous for Gooden in other ways which harmed his career.
James is less a statistical maven in this Abstract than a repository for common sense. I love this takedown in the introduction of the maxim that baseball is 75% pitching:
The general manager who says that baseball is 75% pitching will turn around and trade his number-two starting pitcher to get an outfielder. The owner who says that baseball is 75% pitching will still pay out more money to keep the Gold Glove shortstop than he will to keep the relief ace. The manager who says that baseball is 75% pitching will spend an hour a day figuring out batting orders and an hour a week lining out his pitching plans. The reporter who says that baseball is 75% pitching will still vote for Willie McGee over Dwight Gooden as the Most Valuable Player. No one in baseball acts as if he really believes that baseball is 75% pitching.
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| James makes a case for why the snug confines of Fenway Park, with its close left field wall, determines success for the home-team Boston Red Sox. "The Red Sox, to win, have to expect to score at least 450 runs in Fenway Park, and have to lead the league in runs scored," he writes. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Boston_Red_Sox_season |
There are also more left-field comparisons of the kind that make the Abstracts so fun, like when he writes of the Houston Astros:
Jazz uses comparatively few instruments. Jazz ensembles are rarely enlivened with sousaphones, steel guitars, oboes, bassoons, or any other instrument which might tend to break up the monotony. Similarly, the Houston Astros used comparatively few weapons, relying heavily on the stolen base and the starting pitcher, but with no power hitters, no batting champions, no Ozzie Smiths or Jack Clarks. Both jazz and the Houston Astros, in short, are boring.
One thing I liked about this Abstract was the approach James takes with outside collaborators. He was working extensively with them in the creation of Project Scoresheet, an attempt at creating a statistical game-by-game database accessible to all. In this Abstract, as in his two most recent, he incorporates contributions from others. This time, though, he is more collaborative and gracious in the give-and-take, rather than making snarky interjections. The result is better reading.
James is less snarky overall, which some will miss more than me. He doesn’t ding players or managers the way he did in the past. This time around, he is more playful than belittling: “The Indians have a player in their system named Pookie Bernstein. I can hardly wait ‘til he reaches the majors, so he can join the All-Star team with Mookie Wilson, Tookie Gilbert, and Cookie Rojas.”
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| James examines the importance of hitting in critical situations, identifying clutch hitters like Carlton Fisk of the Chicago White Sox (seen above). "The manager who hopes to win the pennant by getting better performances 'in the clutch' is like a man who hopes to get rich by making a few well-timed investments in the stock market." Image from https://wordsabovereplacement.com/an-ode-to-carlton/ |
His harshest take is one I felt entirely merited, when he goes after recently fired Pirates manager Chuck Tanner for being too nice a guy in the face of drug use infiltrating his clubhouse. He asks: “Who is more culpable: the man who commits a crime, or the man who creates the moral climate in which the crime is acceptable?”
His softest take is on collusion, a bane of future baseball commentators who look back at the 1980s. He seems to think it an entirely reasonable free-market response to the rising cost and declining value (relative to the rest of the team) of established veterans like Rick Sutcliffe and Fred Lynn, and not an illegal conspiracy that watered down the final product to fans. “All of the teams which ‘won’ the free agent wars a year ago came out of it worse than they went in,” James concludes.
At
times, James openly ponders how much these statistics really matter, a fair
point which suggests his ennui with the Abstracts was crossing over into
despair. Thankfully he was still writing them, at least for now.
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