He Does It By The Numbers

•Rick Burleson, the ex-Boston short-Stop, never used Fenway to his particular advantage and should hit just as well in California.

•But Butch Hobson, the third baseman sent from Boston to California, is in for trouble. His home-run frequency will hold up, but his average will plummet so much that, in combination with his poor defensive play, it will make him a bad risk. The Angels will eventually bench him, since they already have an abundance of designated hitters and first basemen, and there's no other place to play Hobson. So he'll wind up hitting .230, with 15 to 22 home runs, in no more than 350 to 450 at bats.

•Joe Rudi will drive in 100 runs in Boston if he's healthy and playing. "But," adds James, "if he'd been healthy, he would have done it in California."

James seems to be going a bit farther out on a limb this time, as though trying to engender the attention he feels he deserves but hasn't received enough of yet. Nonetheless, he claims, "It's not important to me that people agree with what I have to say, just as long as they understand why I've said it." A couple of years ago, after he had noted that Bobby Murcer, then with the Cubs, had an embarrassingly low Range Factor, James received a letter from an outraged Murcer fan who declared that Bobby was "acknowledged to be one of the best rightfielders in baseball."

If you say so, James replied; still, he pointed out, the fact couldn't be disputed that Murcer got to fewer batted balls per game than any other rightfielder in the majors.

It's all there in the numbers.