Thoughts on Bill James Handbook 2007

I've been meaning to write a few of my thoughts about some information provided in The Bill James Handbook 2007. Most of its pages are filled with tables of player statistics, most of which can be found elsewhere (including for free online), but there are also many interesting short essays. This is of course a very enjoyable book for any serious baseball fan, especially those of us who are in fantasy or roto leagues. Highly recommended!

But before the 2007 season gets underway, and some of these comments become outdated, here they are.

Barry Bonds the Run Scorer. I hadn't realized until reviewing the active career batting leaders listings that Barry Bonds has scored about 200+ more runs than he has batted in: 2,152 Runs vs. 1,930 RBI. Not surprising after a moment's thought, given his insanely high walk rate and OBP.

What is the deal with Jeff Nelson? He has pitched since 1992, mostly for the Mariners and the Yankees. I was surprised to see him ranked 8th in Opponents BA amongst active pitchers with 750+ IP. He has held hitters to a .224 average over his career! Even better, he ranks 4th in Opponents SLG (.331), and 6th in Opponents Hits per 9 IP with a 7.26 mark, 3rd in HR Allowed per 9 IP with a 0.63 mark, and 5th in K per 9 IP with a 9.51 mark. In all of these cases he rates higher than Roger Clemens! Granted, Roger has logged far more innings. But my point is to ask why Jeff Nelson has never landed a job as either a top starting pitcher or a closer? He seems to have great raw numbers, also including a 3.41 career ERA compared with 4.55 league average ERA, and 829 K in 784 IP. And yet he's never started a single game in the majors, and has never had more than 8 saves in a season. As a result of toiling as a middle-reliever and setup man he has only been an all-star once, even though his numbers seem quite impressive. He has even posted a 2.65 ERA in 54 postseason IP.

UPDATE on 4/2/2007: My friend John Erhardt has provided me the following comments on this: "Re: Jeff Nelson -- he was pretty terrible against lefties. He was basically a two-pitch pitcher (fastball, and the most ridiculous slider I've ever seen), and that was it. That was all he'd need when facing a righty. His slider would break down and in to a lefty, which is their wheelhouse. His impressive numbers have come largely because of a very carefully defined role. Even his great years with the Yankees were handled carefully: Nelson would face the righties, Mike Stanton would face the lefties. So aside from the usual problems that plague relievers (stamina, funky delivery), his arsenal wasn't really set up to be a starter. No changeup to speak of, and no really good pitch to throw to lefties."

Career Assessments. This section is extremely interesting. Here a particular method from Bill James that uses performance, age, etc. to give a probability that a player will reach a particular career milestone. So for example we see that Barry Bonds has a 97% chance of getting 756 HR. A-Rod has a 31% chance, and Pujols 22%. The 600 HR club is likely to grow in the coming years, and not just because Griffey Jr. already has 563 (and so has a 96% chance of reaching the milestone). A-Rod is given a 90% chance, Manny Ramirez 72%, and the still-only-29-years-old Andruw Jones a 57% chance. Plus Pujols of course with a 55% chance -- though given his consistency, I'd have thought it even a better shot than that.

No active player has a real shot at breaking Pete Rose's all-time hits record, and only Derek Jeter and Miguel Cabrera have even a 5% chance of reaching 4,000 hits. The 3,000 hit plateau is of course more reasonable, so here we find Jeter with a 71% chance, A-Rod 63%, and Vlad Guerrero 44%. A bit surprisingly, Edgar Renteria is given a 34% chance: since he turns 32 in August and has only 1,770 hits thus far -- and has never topped 200 in a season -- I would have thought he'd have less of a chance.

And as for pitching, as I wrote in a previous blog posting, the 300 Win club is not likely to see very many more members. Tom Glavine has 290 wins and so has 74% chance (why so low?), and Randy Johnson has 280 wins and so has a 70% chance. I guess their age (Glavine 40 and Johnson 42) leads the odds-making system to consider career-ending injury to be a high-risk at this point. But after these two the odds drop significantly, as Mike Mussina is next with 239 wins at age 37 leading to only an 18% chance of reaching 300. Young Johan Santana is off to a good start, with 78 wins at age 27, but his long way to go means he only has a 16% chance at 300.

And lastly, tables for Projected Career Totals for Active Players (batters only) provide a glimpse of what some young stars might end up with as career numbers -- if they stay completely healthy and play a full career. This is interesting in trying to read from current numbers whether these players have real HOF potential or not. Here is a sample, including many of the younger players, for whom such predictions are hence that much more speculative... see the book for many more:

• Carlos Beltran 475 HR, 2672 H, 385 SB
• Lance Berkman 511 HR, .295 BA
• Johnny Damon 2922 H, 242 HR, 401 SB
• Carlos Delgado 583 HR, 1862 RBI
• Adam Dunn 618 HR, .234 BA, 3,109 SO (yikes!)
• Jason Giambi 500 HR
• Troy Glaus 539 HR, .245 BA
• Vlad Guerrero 633 HR, 636 D, 3468 H, 2055 RBI, .318 BA, 265 SB
• Derek Jeter 3,604 H, 298 HR, 2089 R, 374 SB, .308 BA
• Andruw Jones 677 HR, 2009 RBI
• Paul Konerko 471 HR
• Carlos Lee 433 HR
• Derek Lee 421 HR
• David Ortiz 547 HR, 1726 RBI
• Albert Pujols 867 HR, 867 D, 3752 H, 2448 R, 2559 RBI, .323 BA (WOW!)
• Aramis Ramirez 531 HR, 1758 RBI
• Manny Ramirez 691 HR, 3041 H, 2228 RBI, .305 BA
• Alex Rodriguez 772 HR, 3429 H, 2234 R, 2273 RBI, 335 SB
• Alfonso Soriano 428 HR, 363 SB
• Mark Teixeira 558 HR, 1802 RBI
• Miguel Tejada 461 HR, 3249 H, 1900 RBI
• Vernon Wells 418 HR

Ryan Howard is said to be on his way to 711 HR, but I think it is far too early in his career to include him in this table. On the other hand, Carl Crawford and Miguel Cabrera were oddly absent from the table, and I would be interested to see the results from applying this method to their careers thus far.