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I wanted to respond to some of Matt's points and for now thought it was best to keep this separate from my essay, but I'm open to suggestions on integrating this discussion into my main essay. As a reminder, some of Matt's comments are pasted below. Matt - if you're reading this, I certainly appreciate your thoughts on my paper. | | | If you are surprised that your "wins" comment generated the outrage, then you haven't been paying attention to the statistical revolution in baseball the past 10 or 15 years. It is a bitter, generational battle with deeply entrenched beliefs that has led many heated arguments. I am not saying that players do not care about team results (of course they do), but when evaluating an individual player's contribution to the team's success, using statistics that are very heavily team dependent is not helpful. Just as batters are not judged on the success of their team's pitching, pitchers should not be judged on their team's hitting. If you haven't, go read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Perhaps it will change your mind. Before I move on, I will leave you with the one point: the ideal baseball pitcher is one pitches every day, nine innings a game, and strikes out every batter. This pitcher is not guaranteed to register a pitching "win."
As for the rest of your thoughts and Matt's thoughts, let's talk about the motivations of baseball owners and fans. Baseball owners want to do two things, 1. Make money and 2. Win baseball games. These, of course, are not unrelated goals. Since MLB is governed by the owners, and not every owner can win baseball games, MLB attempts to ensure that owners make money. Fans like winners. Baseball fans will not watch baseball if they don't feel that the game is being played fairly, especially if they their team does not have a fair chance to win the game. That is why the MLB was fine with allowing steroids until the information became public. Baseball fans were happy with the gaudy home run totals, until they heard that home run were hit in an unfair fashion. Only then did the crackdown on steroids begin. Fairness and the desire to make money are not two distinct desires. Since fans like winners, it also follows that owners will sign players that they believe gives them the best shot to win, regardless of the color of their skin. -- JohnAlbanese - 17 May 2010 | |
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> | I just wanted to respond to a couple of your points. Winning and losing is about how you perform in game situations. I don't care if my pitcher gives up 4 runs if my team has an 8-0 lead, but if we have a 1-0 lead then allowing 2 runs is incredibly significant. There is some truth to this, but the statistic's ultimate flaw is that spread out over 162 games a pitcher asked to hold opponents to less than 8 runs per start has a much easier burden than a pitcher asked to hold opponents to less than 2 runs per start. When using the stat as a metric for yearly awards, the concept of 'in game performance' is severely diluted. I second John's recommendation that you check out some of the writing on sabermetrics. The other professional sports leagues in the US are relative infants compared to Major League Baseball. In at least some areas I think baseball has embraced change. Baseball, due to its rich history, was the first to embrace player unionization, final offer arbitration, and free agency, which is why the MLBPA is the strongest of the players' unions, as well as why teams are pressured to pay so much.
On the subject of race: The general impression I get is that baseball was on the forefront of racial integration in this country, although I'm not an expert in that area This is essentially true, but it's also extremely misleading. While baseball is the only sport that celebrates its integration yearly (Jackie Robinson's number is worn by players across the league), it is also the sport where race (exclusively in the case of African-American ballplayers) is consistently a matter of concern. Unlike basketball or football, at times characterized by writers as sports "whose existence depends on African-American men," baseball struggles to attract young, urban African-American athletes. The reasoning and rationalizations that defend these discrepancies (9.5% in 2010 vs. 27% in 1975) vary wildly, so I'll leave you to your own decision-making there.
On your other points, the use of race as a platform for unfairness is hilariously and unfairly exaggerated. The majority of fans of most American sports leagues are white This sounds extremely made up. Putting aside how 'fan' is defined, there is no way to verify or deny this statement without troubling generalizations. Furthermore, even in the case of baseball, the generalizations work against you. The MLB has an international fanhood largely linked to the global ties of its athletes. When considering all the fans abroad (South America, Japan, and Korea) combined with the minority fans within the U.S., this statement becomes pretty tough to swallow without any empirical evidence. As far as "Artificially" trying to amplify the perceived success of white athletes (at least in the modern era), I also doubt this, but I cannot respond in terms of the NBA or boxing, as my knowledge of the two sports is limited. I would even question in baseball whether certain white pitchers have been undeserving of their great careers out of the desire to see white superstars. I won't name names, but most baseball fans are familiar with certain white pitchers who don't throw particularly fast and have had incredible careers due to what is deemed their "great control." Without naming names, this doesn't really mean anything. How a player is perceived is a function of about a kagillion variables. "Finesse" pitchers, as they are often called, are pitchers that have accumulated successful careers without the dominance of the fastball (and by extension usually have a comparatively low strikeout rate). Considering career longevity, obviously older pitchers cannot throw as fast, so they are said to rely on "great control." Pedro Martinez is considered one of the greatest power pitchers of all time, but for the last third of his career he could barely throw over 90 mph. He was routinely described by the media as a "finesse" pitcher in the same vein as Greg Maddux (who is considered one of the greatest finesse pitchers of all time despite having more than 3,000 strikeouts). Could the same thing happen to a Dominican born player? I can't think of many black pitchers who've made careers out of "great control" the way certain white pitchers have. We've already established that the number of African-American major leaguers vacillates, and the numbers of hispanic players and East Asian players are on the rise, so this would be a tough historical argument to make. Fergie Jenkins, Bob Gibson, and Satchel Paige, routinely discussed among the greatest pitchers of all time, all had careers that were so long that we can assume they were not characterized as 'power pitchers' in their last few seasons. -- JoshuaHochman - 17 May 2010 |
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