Awesome Bill James Q&A

This is a veritable "goldmine" of information from the lord of sabermetrics himself.

I hope that some of the more devoted stat-heads at this site take a moment to reflect on what James is saying in this interview: namely that statistical descriptions of baseball are subject to misuse and abuse in attempting to explain what happens in the game of baseball.

To wit:

Q: Has sabermetrics pretty much squeezed the last drop of new insights out of traditional counting statistics? If so, what data ought to be collected to improve our understanding of the game? If not, where can the boundaries be pushed?

A: We haven’t figured out anything yet. A hundred years from now, we won’t have begun to have the game figured out.

Q: Generally, who should have a larger role in evaluating college and minor league players: scouts or stat guys?

A: Ninety-five percent scouts, five percent stats. The thing is that — with the exception of a very few players like Ryan Braun — college players are so far away from the major leagues that even the best of them will have to improve tremendously in order to survive as major league players — thus, the knowledge of who will improve is vastly more important than the knowledge of who is good. Stats can tell you who is good, but they’re almost 100 percent useless when it comes to who will improve.

Q: As advanced statistical analysis becomes more of a norm, will a general consensus emerge on the correct value of a player, or will teams have unique measures and calculations to find undervalued qualities (like O.B.P. has been)? How will player scouting change to fit this progression?

A: There will always be people who are ahead of the curve and people who are behind the curve. There will never be a shortage of stupidity. There will always be an advantage to being on or near the leading edge of the research.

The goal in any analysis, in this case a sport, is to provide fruitful lines of inquiry and valuable insights about those. And as James notes, most people do not do this well at all.

Because there are a bunch of numbers and statistics floating around baseball, many bloggers retreat behind them and use them as shields, as if they somehow explain or provide insight. In most cases though, they are simple descriptions of what transpired and do not actually provide new thinking or analysis.

The hard part, providing that insight and analysis, is much more about shrewd observation, creative lines of inquiry and insightful ways to connect the data.

We all love baseball, but to push each other to think more creatively, more insightfully, and in James' words with greater love for the game, is the true mission of any blogsite worth its salt, IMHO.