Ok, I just received an email from someone ridiculing me for my stance on Win Shares. I'll explain why I take this stance, here, for hopefully the last time.
Bill James is a builder of houses on quicksand. Sure, it might be fine right now, but I'm positive that sooner or later it's going to sink. And no matter who is selling it to me, I'm not going to buy it. Even if it's from TLBOrioles (I don't recall his stance on WS), who I think is probably the smartest stathead we have here. (There are many others like Aadik and Skipaway, but TLBO always stands out for me.)
Tangotiger, who is apparently a highly respected member of the SABR community, explains most of my reasons better than I ever could here:
http://www.geocities.com/tmasc/#Winshares (Part 3 is probably the best and most useful part.) And like he says, "Bill James is a great baseball mind, and is the inspiration for countless baseball analysts, including me. But sometimes, Bill James just doesn't get it.".
You can point me to #s till you're blue in the face, but like in financial statements, #s are often misleading and very easily cooked, especially if you make it difficult for anyone to really understand everything. Bill James cooks #s. Yes, many of his creations have been accurate for their times and I'm not saying he's an idiot about everything. I'm just saying that it's not surprising that his formulas are decently accurate if you start from where you want to get to and work back to the beginning. Ask him why he adds certain things here and subtracts things there. He won't tell you. You know what that is a sure sign of? Cooking the numbers. Don't believe me? Fine. Not everyone believed those who said Enron and Worldcom's statements were suspicious either.