This is our interview with Boston Red Sox special consultant Bill James. James is known as one of the pioneers of baseball statistical analysis, a founding member of SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research), and author of one of the very best overall historical baseball books ever written -

. He’s considered by most people one of the most influential minds on how the game is played today having influenced general managers such as Billy Beane, J.P. Ricciardi and others. His work was prominently featured in Michael Lewis’

I had the pleasure of meeting Bill last year in Denver at the 2003 SABR annual conference. This interview was conducted via e-mail.

1) Bill, what exactly do you do for the Sox as a special consultant?

I try to create organized ways of thinking about the problems the Red Sox face. 

What kind of problems do you mean?
 
Well, I work for the General Manager.  I don't work for the manager, nor he for me, so I don't usually involve myself in anything that would be the manager's decision--how to set the lineup, when to bunt, how to use the bullpen, etc.   I stay away from that stuff, unless I am asked for my opinion.  

How much is a player worth?  How much should a player be offered?  What is the chance that this player--given his age, his position, his batting record--will continue to be a productive major league player in three years?  In four years?  In five years?    Which of these players in some other team's organization do you like?   What center fielder under the age of 22 do you like?   Front-office type decisions. . .
 
 
2) How does your input influence decisions with Theo Epstein and ownership?

Well, here's an example.    When you're in a position where you HAVE to overspend for a player--you HAVE to pay more for a player than he really is worth--how do you know when to stop?    It's a very serious question for every baseball team, and I have a way of deriving an answer.   Theo needs an answer, and ownership needs an explanation.  Theo doesn't HAVE to buy my answer, and ownership doesn't have to buy my explanation.  Theo is free to ignore my calculations; ownership is free to reject my approach.  But. . .they need an answer; I have an answer.    So I have a certain degree of influence on the discussion. 

3) Are all decisions made by the group or do you suggest things that they try to implement?

I don't directly make any decisions at all.  Theo makes decisions; I make suggestions. 

How does that process work?  Do you go to him with suggestions?  Does he (or ownership) give you a problem and ask for possible solutions?   Is it a think tank approach or is it essentially every man working separately for the same goals?

I go to Boston every couple of months, and I listen carefully to the discussions going on, and I try to find places there where research would be helpful.   Then I do the research.

Sometimes. . .often. . .I am asked very specific questions.   Does this reliever have anything left?   Is this second baseman's defense as good as this other second baseman's defense?

And very often, I provide input based on what I have been thinking about, rather than based upon what they have been thinking about.
 

4) The 2003 team was very successful and really worked offensively. Which of those players did you want to see brought on board?

Oh, I think it would be a poor idea to try to answer that.   For many years I worked in salary arbitration cases.   When you try an arbitration case and you win, in some organizations everybody fights for a share of the credit.   When you lose, it can become an ugly game of finger-pointing.  You really have to avoid that.  
 
But I will say this:  I didn't have anything to do with the best decision we made, which was the signing of Bill Mueller.  To the best of my knowledge, that was all Theo.


5) Is there anyone in particular for whom you pushed, whom you consider to be the biggest success?

Same thing. . .can't answer it.  

6) You’ve been called the master of numerical analysis, but how much of this team was selected for more than that? (I am speaking here of intangible factors, maybe gut feeling, player attitude, money issues).

Well, this question implies that numerical analysis is one thing, money issues are something else.   If the system works, the analysis reflects everything outside of itself, and nothing inside itself.   The stats are just a mirror.   What you're asking is "how much do you rely on the mirror, and how much on the game?" 

Perhaps I phrased that badly.   What I meant to ask is whether your analyses include factors such as money, attitude, etc or do you provide information as to who the best player is statistically, and then let Theo and the management team worry about who is most cost-effective or who’ll fit best with team chemistry? 
 
All of our discussions have a dollar element.   It would be useless to tell Theo who was good, without a dollar sign involved in it.   The question is never "How good is he?"  It is always, "How good is he, relative to what he costs?"

7) Obviously this team is fairly free-spending, so how much does finance figure into what you recommend?

I can't speak for the Red sox.    But I think for every team, every player decision involves a dollar decision at the same time.  

8) The big story this offseason was the potential A-Rod/Manny trade. Would the Sox really have been that much better with A-Rod and without Manny and Nomar?

We have a very fine team.  Manny is one of the best hitters in baseball.  Nomar is one of the greatest shortstops in the history of baseball.  

9) I’m a little surprised by the selection of Pokey Reese for a second baseman to replace Todd Walker -- superficially it seems a very big step down offensively; can you explain a little of the thinking that went into Theo’s decision to sign Reese?

Defense.  I'm tempted to give you a one-word answer.  We believe that Pokey can save enough runs to justify the decision.  But also, if you look at what Pokey hit in 1999 and what Walker hit last year, it's really almost the same.    Maybe he won't hit at that level again, but then, maybe he will. 

10) It has been fairly well-documented, particularly in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, that baseball ignored your research and the work of other SABR members, despite your ability to prove your ideas mathematically for a very long time. Is this your first real job using that statistical knowledge to influence the Majors? If so, what would it take to really vindicate your work in your own mind? A championship?

Well, I don' t know that I completely buy the premise.   It always takes time for ideas to become generally accepted, doesn't it?   I don't know of any field in which accepted ideas are replaced wholesale overnight.  

We desperately want to win a World Championship in Boston, and there are no mixed feelings about that.   But at the same time, when the Detroit Tigers won the World Championship in '84, did that make everything that Sparky Anderson said true?  Of course not.   If we are able to win in 2004, that won't make anything I have said any more true than it was before. 

11) Along that same vein, Beane’s credibility has taken a lot of public abuse because he has never been able to take the team to a championship, despite the limitations he has to deal with. Will your credibility suffer if the Red Sox don’t take that same step?

Sure.

12) Has your attitude changed towards this kind of analysis since you now do it not for yourself, but for a professional team? Do you still enjoy it?

Very much.  The new position vis-à-vis the game opens up to me a new set of problems to work on, new ways to think about things.   It's the most fun I've had in 20 years. 

13) How does your team stack up against the new-look Yankees? Is the analysis still in your favor? Or was it ever?

The Yankees are very, very good.   We have a very, very good team as well.   There are a lot of people doing public comparisons of the two, but I'm not one of them.

14) How much did the A-Rod trade to the Yankees hurt the Red Sox? Is this a deal the Red Sox should have gotten done? How much better would it have made the team?

This is the world we live in.  If we can do enough things right from now on, we may win.

15) Are there any teams on the radar right now that you think are teams to watch as they reshape their franchise to compete in baseball as it stands today? 

We're almost reaching the point where the teams that stand out now are the teams that are behind the curve, not the teams that are ahead of the curve.