Gooble Gobble, Bill Simmons Is Now One of Us
Bill Simmons, ESPN’s Sports Guy, may be the most popular sports columnist on the internet, but until recently he was a saber denier, writing about how people like you and me were making baseball less fun for him. Until the day after April Fools, when the Sports Guy finally, proudly proclaimed himself a member of our ranks. He explained: “I stopped writing about baseball these past two years when the sabermetrics movement became too complicated for my liking… Fundamentally, it’s moronic.” So he decided to learn more about stats, and recommended all of his readers familiarize themselves with OPS, OPS+, UZR, VORP, WAR, BABIP, and FIP.
You’ve read Bill Simmons — pretty much everyone has at some point. He’s funny, he’s ubiquitous on ESPN, and he’s been prominent for more than a decade, basically a lifetime in internet terms. If you’re not from Boston, you may have gotten annoyed at how happy he was when every single one of his teams kept winning, but that’s who he was: he wrote like a fan, and just about every sports blogger to follow in his footsteps has consciously or unconsciously borrowed from his style. As Rany Jazayerli has written, “If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Simmons is the most flattered writer in America.”
But the most-imitated sports writer in the country barely wrote about baseball in the last two years, during which time we’ve seen nearly every team in baseball turn to sabermetrics either implicitly or explicitly (by hiring someone like Tom Tango or Josh Kalk), and we’ve even seen a few more beat writers willing to integrate sabermetrics into their dispatches, like Chico Harlan of the Washington Post and the sainted Joe Posnanski. Beginning this offseason, many Fangraphs writers have written for ESPN, first on the hot stove and now on a new baseball stat-oriented blog, TMI. And they’re bringing in their fans and readers, slowly but surely.
Still, few institutions have the readership of Bill Simmons. At this point, he’s about as mainstream as mainstream gets. Now that Simmons is one of us, his favorite stats are mainstream, too. If he keeps writing about FIP, UZR, and WAR, they will gain a much wider currency than ever before. Of course, that also means the nuances will be missed, the stats will be misused, and faulty conclusions will be drawn. Just days after the Sports Guy’s stat piece, in which he’d condemned Bobby Jenks on the basis of FIP, Matthew Carruth responded on the TMI blog to point out the drawbacks of FIP and merits of xFIP when evaluating relievers. Simmons’s conversion doesn’t mean that stats will be understood better, just more widely.
And that’s enough. As T.H. White wrote in The Once and Future King, the best way to spread an idea is simply to make it available. That’s what the Sports Guy did. (He also linked to me in the UZR section, which was — I’ll admit — a thrill.) Welcome to the mainstream, fellow freaks!
Alex is a writer for The Hardball Times.
simmons is awful (and i cant stress awful enough) regardless if hes moved away from his ignorant view of sabermetrics. with that being said, if his stats are mainstream i rather he not use uzr which for advanced metrics kinda sucks.
…?
I figured that he would write something like this sooner or later. He’s attended the Sloan conference, so my assumption was that at least part of him understood the usefulness of advanced statistical analysis.
He also hit on one of my big points: like him, I come from a liberal arts background, with almost no background in math or stats. That said, I think someone with my background can grasp the stats and articles posted on sites like this one. You don’t need an advanced degree in math to understand that these numbers can increase your understanding of the game.
He’s been talking up advanced stats in basketball and football for the last couple of years, writing about 82games.com and footballoutsiders.com in his columns. For some reason, he was a holdout on baseball. But he isn’t any more.
That is weird, especially since baseball is the easiest to measure and the leader of the 3 in terms of statistical innovation/revolution. Basically, they’re both just following in baseball’s footsteps…
But, advanced stats in football and basketball are hardly talked up to the point that baseball is. That was his point. He got bored of writing about baseball because all his observations would just be stripped down FJM style.
And, he doesn’t use advanced stats for his NBA analysis, only mentions their place in certain front offices.
He goes back and forth. In his article about the Patriots 4th and 2 call, he lambasted Bellichek and threw stats out the window while claiming that baseball was so mechanical that a robot could run the team.
He’s certainly not totally on board with box score type basketball stats, and I think he’s right. The interactions between players are too complicated to gather simply.
I love Simmons columns
Simmons is a good basketball writer, and overall pretty enjoyable, but man did he know nothing about baseball for a while there. Maybe he’ll come around.
I really didn’t know who this guy was until very recently. He seems like he thinks he is funnier than he is. And apparently he went to my high school, but a few years after I did.
I think you’re misusing his quote out of context. Here’s a more complete piece of what he said:
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“If numbers always prevailed, what was the point of watching baseball or having arguments about it? I longed for the old days when you could say things like, “I hate watching J.D. Drew — when is that contract going to end?” and there wasn’t some dude lurking behind me with Drew’s stellar OPS, VORP and WAR numbers saying, “Well, actually … ”
Look at that last sentence again.
Fundamentally, it’s moronic. I just admitted I longed for the old days … you know, when we were poorly educated about what we were watching.”
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I’m pretty sure that he was saying that it was fundamentally moronic to want to be less informed/educated.
Right. That’s how I read it, and that’s what I intended the quote to convey.
Huzzah is exactly right… the quote is completely mis-used in this article. He was admitting the error of his ways – that is, of being nostalgic about ignorance.
Simmons is such a Boston homer.
Hmm, a guy who got his start writing at boston.citypages.com and grew up in Mass is a homer for Boston? Seems hard to believe.
The media is supposed to be unbiased, in case you didnt know.
Bill Simmons is not supposed to be unbiased, in case you didn’t know. He’s not a journalist, nor is he trying to be.
DW and Alex, he is a journalist, but since he is a columnist, he is allowed to have his own opinions.
Why is this a surprise to anyone?
With the RedSox invention of the concept of run prevention, the contractual obligations of ESPN to weave in a mention of “offseason focus on run prevention ” in every Sox game recap, BBTN show, and televised BoSox game – Simmons would have been disciplined for failing to convert.
This is a classic nerds vs. jocks war that isn’t going away any time soon. This isn’t a realistic suggestion, but I almost think the best thing the nerds could do to advance the cause in the short term is to put some sort of cap on the number of stats, so that for each new one they create, they have to eliminate another, relatively obsolete one. Even as a bit of a baseball stat nerd myself, I often find it tedious to keep up.
not a fan of this post – firstly, you assume that the purpose of baseball analysis is to convince all the jocks that they’re right, and not to further analysis. secondly, stats go in and out of saber popularity all the time. thirdly, i instinctively hate the mention of the “nerd/jock” dichotomy, feel like it’s outdated and that, though there’s clearly some divide between mainstream/saber, calling the saber side nerds 3 times, even while describing yourself as one, is sort of grating.
He linked to my WAR article and mentioned me by name, which was quite a shock and a thrill at the same time.
Bill Simmons is the greatest ever at declaring things the greatest ever.
Yea Simmons is hard to figure out. In basketball he is one of the most knowledgeable guys around and his columns at funny, informative and generally unbiased. But man could his view be anymore slanted in baseball? The guy is pretty much forced to acknowledge sabermetrics the way the Sox have been constructed.
Generally unbiased, except that in his “Basketball” coffee-table tome, he has Dennis Johnson, Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, and Bill Walton heinously overrated. He can, however, pretty fairly assess (and support his arguments for and against) the non-Boston players, teams, and eras.
It’s a trap!
(Be careful what you wish for. And who you allow to carry your banner.)
I like Simmons, if only because his attitude about sports is one i enjoy (that it can be fun, funny, or baffling) and he tries to entertain. It’s the playground of the world, and he treats it as such. I feel like every person that I don’t have to explain BABIP to when i want to talk about my favorite players, great.
On another note, GOOble Gobble? That’s a typo fangraphs is usually above.
Not a typo — it’s a reference to the movie Freaks, which has a famous, often parodied scene in which the circus freaks all chant: “One of us, one of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble!”
I linked to the scene above, on the words “one of us” in the fourth paragraph.
Ah, I can’t get YouTube at work. I see now though. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen The Simpsons parody this.
I have never read Simmons but I have to give some love for anyone who makes a reference to one of my favorite movies, “Freaks”. Gooble Gobble is, in fact, the correct spelling, Matt.
I will check Mr. Simmons out.