It's one thing when a politically correct newspaper like the Toronto Star lets it's own preconceptions about race mingle with ignorance of Sabermetrics to produce twaddle disguised as journalism.
July 16th, 2003
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I’ve been reading Bill James for two decades now, and enjoy his writing immensely. However, to flat-out claim that james, or sabermetrics, or statisticians, have zero bias when it comes to race etc is ludicrous.
Bill James’ judgements change every ten seconds (Bonds is better than Williams—no Williams is MUCH better). Mantle vs Mays in ceneter is classic.
As far as RACE goes, let’s look at mark McGwire. Despite all objective Win Sahres crunching etc showing that Mac was 1998 excepted just a “very good” IB, James rated him #3 at his position in his New Abstract. Over Dick Allen who had better numbers, and Eddie Murray, whose career far outstrips Big Mac’s. Now I’m not saying that james has a bias, but he did inform us that mcGwire was “his son’s favorite player”.
James also called Cecil Fielder “a big, fat guy who just hits homers”, although in my mind Fielder’s career peak was about the same as Mac’s.
Check out Dale Murphy vs Rickey Henderson. Dale Murphy was rated higher during the 80′s despite Rickey’s better sabermetric numbers by james. In fact, Rickey diodn’t even crack Bill’s top 10 lists in his abstracts until his recent model.
And George Brett, James’ home-boy, rates suspiciously high given his injury history and inconsistency.
Looking at Bonds vs Williams and Ruth, James makes arguments that have zero validity (as Rob Neyer shamefacedly pointed out recently). Win Shares may well lie comparing players from the 1920′s and 30′s (segregated) to current players.
If so, then guys like reggie Jackson and Bonds can NEVER measure up to guys from the 1930′s—because of an unfair bias built into a supposedly “objective” system.
Was Babe Ruth twice the hitter Reggie Jackson was?
If he wasn’t, a claim that certain Sabermetric methods are unfair to the many modern black stars seems quite plausible.
I came to this post on a “Wiley Attacks James!” link, and well, Wiley had a brain fart there, but the article from which it comes is pretty interesting, if rambling. The part about James, while incredibly stupid (as you mention, RHenderson was much admired by James and other sabermetrically inclined types), was just a small section of that article.