Bill James and Steve Phillips

I recently picked up a copy of The New Bill James Historical Abstract from the library, and read through most of it. I enjoyed the decade-by-decade tidbits. James was entirely too much in love with the win shares stat he created, but, hey, it's his book. The player rankings were interesting. My biggest quibble, or, at least, the only one I'm going to take a major issue with here, is one sentence in his summary of ranking Bonds third all time among left fielders, where he writes "Biggio passed Bonds as the best player in baseball in 1997." I'm not taking issue with the Bonds part; he was the best player of the 1990's, which many people were blinded to, at least partially due to their adoration for overrated media-darling Ken Griffey, Jr. The Biggio part, however, is, er, questionable. Let's start by comparing him with Bonds for 1997-1999 using James's own win shares. Biggio comes out ahead each year, but only by small amounts in 1997 (38-36) and 1998 (35-34), and while 1999 had a larger margin (31-20), Bonds missed significant playing time due to injury (off the top of my head, he played in 102 games, and this was back when he rarely took a day off), so the difference in their win shares per game is negligible. Yes, I'm aware that playing every game at that level is more valuable than playing only 2/3 of the season, but one such season like that is hardly big enough for any pronouncements about who is the better player. Moreover, as James points out in his small update section, Biggio had his own injury problems in 2000 (the book was written in 2000 and James only used stats through 1999 in writing it). Now many people are familiar with the man-crush that Bill James has for Craig Biggio, and could forgive him for declaring Biggio better than Bonds based on three seasons of negligible difference, but Biggio was not leading the majors in win shares during that period. Frank Thomas edged him out in 1997 (39-38), McGwire beat by a solid margin in 1998 (41-35), and he was solidly bested by his own teammate, Jeff Bagwell in 1999 (37-31, plus it looks like Bagwell was bested by Jeter, though I can't find Jeter's total). He wasn't second all of those years, either (I don't have a complete listing, otherwise I'd give his rank each year). While he may have the best combined total for 1997-1999, if you add 1996, he doesn't have the best total on his own team (Bagwell bests him by 1). Bonds, meanwhile, had the best total in the majors in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1995, plus the second-best total in 1990 and 1996 (losing out to Rickey Henderson and Bagwell, respectively), for a much better established period of domination. The period of 1997-1999 (you could throw in 2000 as well, I guess) is more of a period where no one player dominated before Bonds returned to domination in 2001-2004. Bonds played well enough in those intervening years that you could say he dominated the majors for 15 years (1990-2004), though, of course, James had no way to know about his second run of dominance when writing the book.

One other tidbit from the book; for each decade it mentions someone as "a better man than a ballplayer" and lists Doug Drabek for the 1990's. I find this quite pleasing, as Drabek was my favorite pitcher, while my favorite player when I started following baseball was Darrell Strawberry (okay, I admit, it had something to do with his last name), who I dropped when I discovered his drug problems, in favor of Barry Bonds (who, while his nastiness is overrated, is certainly not in line for such a distinction). Drabek is somewhat forgotten now (I did see him in an interview or two with his son, who I believe was drafted last year), but he won the Cy Young in 1990 (before I started paying attention), and pitched well for the Pirates in the postseason in 1990 and 1991 (taking a tough-luck complete-game loss in each series, for a combined 2-2 record despite an ERA of 1.15 those years), pitching less well in the 1992 NLCS, but not as poorly as his 0-3 record might indicate (overall, he was 2-5 in the postseason, with a 2.05 ERA). He had only one good year after leaving the Pirates (the strike year, though despite his 9-18 record in 1993, his ERA was above league average, adjusted for ballpark), and his post-strike years are best left unmentioned.

Steve Phillips has a poor write-up of the Rangers' playoff chances. He says that if you consider the Yankees to have a chance at the postseason, you have to say the Rangers do as well. Well, yeah, they do have a non-zero chance, but what's this business of comparing them to the Yankees? The Yankees are three games back of the wild card, and 5.5 back in the division, while the Rangers are 6.5 back in the wild card and 12 back in the division. Moreover, we're far enough into the season that run differential matters, and the Rangers are -30 while the Yankees are +54. The Rangers do have a more favorable home-road split remaining, but he doesn't use this to make his point. It seems that we're supposed to believe him primarily on the evidence that he said so, with secondary evidence that they have a high waiver priority than the Yankees. A higher waiver priority is not nothing, but it's unlikely to be enough for the Rangers to make up the 3.5 games they're behind the Yankees, let alone the 6.5 for the wild card.

One other thing I think I neglected to mention: Barry Zito nearly made it through July without a loss. After losing 12 games in the first three months, his only July loss came in his last start of the month, and he's 3-1 since June, with a not terribly impressive 3.77 ERA (coming in three games in San Francisco, one at Shea, and one at San Diego -- pitchers' parks, all, with only one opponent with a good offense (Mets)).