Bill James Online -- Baseball from a Fundamentalist's View - But Still Fun
Written: Jul 20 '08 (Updated Aug 23 '08)
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Bill James Online (billjamesonline.com) is a new website site for major league baseball fans. It features articles, statistics, player and team analysis, polls, reader questions, and a bit more, with content mostly authored by Bill James. James is the most prominent of baseball analysts known as sabremeticians. He's served as an advisor to the Boston Red Sox for the past 5 years, consulted for the Royals, and helped player agents prepare arbitration cases. Unfortunately, James says little specific on his website about the Red Sox or his consultations with teams and agents. He's best known for his series of Baseball Abstracts and other books published in the '80's and '90's, which provided statistically oriented and usually (I think he undervalues closers) fundamentally sound analyses of players and teams. While that might sound boring, his books were surprisingly fun to read and consistently interesting, even if he was only talking about middle relievers or utility infielders. Those books changed the way fans (and some professionals) looked at the game and convinced them to more often take a very fundamental look at how effective players were and how well the could be expected to perform.
Over the past decade, Bill James hasn't written nearly as much as fans might like. A new generation of sabremetricians (see hardballtimes.com, for example) has stepped in to fill a lot of that interest. Still, when I saw James had published a new book for this season (The Bill James Goldmine 2008), I quickly picked up a copy from Amazon and enjoyed it nearly as much as his abstracts from 20 years ago. More importantly, I learned that Goldmine 2008 turned out to be a "hilight" collection of articles, statistics, and various insights that James had started publishing on his website in 2007. After reading the book, I signed up for access to Billjamesonline, which currently runs $3 per month, billed quarterly.
Signing up with Bill James Online
Sign up options are pretty standard, provide your name, address, and credit card information to sign up and create a user name. The only payment options are Visa, Mastercard, and Discover card, no Paypal or Amex. I joined on March 23rd, received a confirmation immediately, and was able to access the site as soon as I joined. A $9 charge showed up on my credit card statement.
Billjamesonline renews your account automatically every three months, and on June 23rd, I received an email stating that my account had been renewed for another 3 months and I was being billed another $9. The email included contact information for canceling your account. I haven't tried to cancel my account, but I don't expect any problems doing so. It will be interesting to see how they handle the offseason, though I expect there will be plenty of potential new articles to write over the winter months.
What do you get for $3/month?
My impression has been that Bill James has never been a big believer in hot streaks and cold streaks, but the first thing you most likely will see when you log into Bill James Online is a short list of baseball's hottest hitters or teams, based on a specific Bill James formula. Other home page "attention getters" might be a list of tired closers (a more interesting and fundamentally sound stat, in this fan's mind), or perhaps a link to a poll or a notice to read some new posting. The format of the website is very simple (like the google search page). There are no ads, except one page where you can buy Bill James stuff. I can' think of a site that would have lower bandwidth requirements. There are no images, advertisements or video's. If you're a fan of Bill James work, you'll like this site. If you're you're looking for quick ESPN info bytes, you'll be disappointed.
Articles
Bill James mentioned in the front cover liner in his Goldmine 2008 that he hoped to have 100 articles posted online by March 1st (Mar 1st is the date a lot of a baseball fans start taking the upcoming season seriously, spring training is starting, most trades and free agent signings are done, players have been signed, etc. James was far short of his 100 article goal, though, and closer 50 or 60 was more accurate. About a third of those were included in the Gold Mine 2008 or other places.
Since I've joined the site James has been posting articles at a rate of about a half dozen a
month. Some are responses to ideas or questions that site users have asked about, and are the typical 3 or 4 pages of analyses and fun reading you'd expect from Bill James. Others are pretty short, like his 10 commandments of sabermetrics, which more or less points out some of the philosophies he thinks fans and some managers are hung up on (don't fall in love with good field no hit middle infielders, bunting, or low on base percentage hitters at the top of the order). If you just join the site to read the articles, and expect the consistent quality of the articles that were in his abstracts, you'll likely be a little disappointed, the quality is a little uneven (as you might expect from an effort like this), and the articles often have little to do with the current season. But if you like to read Bill James, you won't be too disappointed, and the stats, polls, and question and answer sections will bring you back to the site a few times each week. The new writers he's recently brought on also help.
Questions and Answers
The Ask Bill a Question section of the website has become one of the most interesting parts of the website, maybe the best part. One or two user questions get posted and responded to by Bill James, on a daily average. Sometimes his response is just "I haven't looked at that", or "why don't you look at that", but if a reader peaks his interest, some interesting discussions can result, worst players to ever make the all star team, or players who's careers appeared dead who came back, etc.
I get the impression that all questions get posted and responded to, but sometimes James's answers can be a bit off putting. After listening to a player get a walk after a 17 pitch at bat one night I asked if anyone had ever looked at how long bats correlated with on base percentage and batting average. James' declined provide a specific answer, but did respond that the effect was obvious, like asking if tall basketball players were better. (A few months later, a new stat was added to the statistics database on the site, tracking Short & Long AB statistics for all hitters. One of the sites columnists, John Dewan, analyzed the data, and showed that while on base percentages are higher for long at bats by 10-20%, batting average and slugging percentages are 30-40% lower.)
There's also a question and answer area where site users correspond. Its interesting, as are the responses and comments that are posted under James articles, but they're not a strong point of the site.
Polls
Polls are another tool James uses to get interest up on the site. Most have 100 or responses, enough to make the results meaningful, I believe. Questions range from whats the best ballpark food (hot dogs are leading by far) to would you rather have a bad field good hit shorstop (preferred by 76%) or a good field weak hitting first baseman.
Other Writers
Probably 80% of the site's current content was written by Bill James. But he's recruited other writers to add content. John Dewan's "stat of the week" is very good (his last article discussed which outfielders have the best arms). Dewan has been providing content for several months and seems perfectly in tune with the site. A few other volunteer writers were added more recently, and I don't feel their writing fits in quite as well yet, the "look and feel" is a little different. I expect the content provided by new writers will help make the site more interesting, and bring new users to the site, hopefully to the point where its profitable enough to continue for a long time.
Statistics
Lots of baseball statistics are available on the web, and I don't recommend you join this site just to get Bill James' version. But the statistics are more interesting and different than what you'll find at MLB.com or other sites. You can look at up to date stats on what kind of production each team is getting from each position in its batting order, how many defensive plays a player makes compared to an average player, and 30 or 40 other types of somewhat "off the main path" statistics to help you understand the game a little more than the average or even the "experts" on radio and TV.
Recommended:
Yes
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