Bill James didn’t need sabermetrics to see his best seasons were behind him.

The godfather of baseball analytics ended his 17-year tenure working with the Red Sox, announcing his retirement while lamenting his decreased contributions to the franchise.

“I haven’t earned my paycheck with the Red Sox for the last couple of years,” James wrote on his website. “I’ve fallen out of step with the organization. The normal flow of work assignments to work products has deteriorated to basically nothing; honestly, I should have left a couple of years ago.”

James, whose statistical innovations include win shares and range factor, was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006.

After James — a senior baseball operations advisor — joined the Red Sox in 2003, the team ended an 86-year championship drought, then added three more World Series rings. The front office was first shaken up in September, when Dave Dombrowski — the president of baseball operations — was fired.