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An Anonymous Coward writes:

TechTimes has a new interview with Bill James, a pioneer in the field of sports analytics (specifically applied to baseball); James started publishing his annual newsletters ("Bill James Baseball Abstract") in the late 1970's, coining the term 'sabermetrics' along the way, which arguably launched the trend of sports-related "stat geek" publications that continue to this day. He and likeminded peers came up with several new metrics which they felt provided answers to certain useful questions with more precision than one could obtain with the traditional ones used by baseball insiders and fans to evaluate players from time immemorial (batting averages, hits and home run totals, runs batted in, pitchers' earned run averages). But, don't call James a statistician or a 'numbers guy':

To James, the value of sabermetrics is more qualitative than quantitative. He gives a couple examples of how sabermetrics are being used by nearly every major league team today: batter-specific defensive shifts, particularly of infielders, based on location analysis of each batter's hit balls; and pitch framing (the catcher's art of selling a pitch thrown outside the strike zone as a strike to the plate umpire, using body language and glove position).

Since 2003, James has been employed by the Boston Red Sox to assist in player evaluation; however, James still maintains an active role in the sabermetrics community. A particularly good interview by Stephen Dubner was published on Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics blog in 2008, which goes into considerable baseball detail.