Goldman - Extra innings: more baseball between the numbers from the team at Baseball prospectus

More

Baseball Between the Numbers

from the Team at

Baseball Prospectus

BY THE EXPERTS AT

BASEBALL PROSPECTUS

DEREK CARTY COREY DAWKINS MIKE FAST
REBECCA GLASS STEVEN GOLDMAN
KEVIN GOLDSTEIN JAY JAFFE
RANY JAZAYERLI CHRISTINA KAHRL
BEN LINDBERGH JASON PARKS
DAN TURKENKOPF COLIN WYERS

EDITED BY

STEVEN GOLDMAN

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10987654321

To Jackie Robinson,
who made baseball a game worthy
of all this effort and emotion.
BASEBALL PROSPECTUS

To Clemens Goldman,
who only wants to know which batters are good.
STEVEN GOLDMAN

As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality.

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the liedeliberate, contrived and dishonestbut the mythpersistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichs of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, JUNE 11, 1962

Kevin Goldstein

Steven Goldman

Steven Goldman

Jay Jaffe

Jay Jaffe

Corey Dawkins

Jason Parks

Rany Jazayerli

3. From the Buscone to the Big Leagues:
How Is Latin-American Talent Acquired and Developed?

Jason Parks

Rebecca Glass

Ben Lindbergh

Steven Goldman

Ben Lindbergh

Colin Wyers

Corey Dawkins

Mike Fast

Jay Jaffe

Colin Wyers

Dan Turkenkopf

Colin Wyers

Derek Carty

Christina Kahrl

Dan Turkenkopf

STEVEN GOLDMAN

In September of 2011, Foxs Ken Rosenthal published a column on the candidates for the American League MVP award in which he chose to pick a fight with some sabermetricians.

I understand why some sabermetricians freak out over the MVP voting every year, howling for the mainstream media to get a clue. But you know what? Those analysts need to get over it.

Ignoramuses in the [mainstream media], including yours truly, continue to make greater use of sabermetrics; heck, we even elected 13-game winner Felix Hernandez the American League Cy Young Award winner in a landslide last season.

The MVP, though, is different. Always will be different. And heaven help us if the voting ever disintegrates into a reflexive regurgitation of the Wins Above Replacement (WAR) rankings.

Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective data. An MVP vote is subjective by design. Voters are instructedyes, instructedto vote any way they darn please.

There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means, the ballot says. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team.

TABLE I-1 MVP Award Winners and RBI, 19222010

Its not like were debating how to fix the economy here. Were debating an award that has a flexible definition, and anyone who pronounces his or her own definition superior to any other misses the point.

Putting aside the shot across the bow of those unidentified sabermetricians who need to stop freaking out (some Xanax for the man with the pocket protector, please) and calling for reflexive regurgitation (and some anti-emetics), this is the prelude, not a reasoned argument about who the best player in the AL is, but its antithesis: if an opinion is wholly subjective, then you are relieved of having to make an argument in its support or even the responsibility of making a reasoned choice. You can pick whoever you damn well please, and if that choice doesnt hold up to scrutiny, you can say, Hey, dont blame methe award was designed to be subjective.

This isnt so much an attack on sabermetrics as a preemptive weaseling out of making a difficult decision in a year in which there wasnt an obvious choice; if a player isnt standing under a neon sign that says MVP, then subjective becomes a cloak under which one can simply throw a dart at the list and then slink out the back door. In attacking the hypothetical sabermetrician who pronounces his or her definition superior, Rosenthal misses the point: its not the definition that needs to be superiorthe award is vaguely defined, so that is a dead endbut the argument in favor of ones choice.

Here intellectual rigor is cast as the villain in the ages-old battle between faith (its okay for me to believe what I believe, regardless of facts to the contrary) and skepticism, but blind belief and arbitrary conclusions arent any more ennobling than the dogmatism that Rosenthal rails againstat least that dogmatism is exercised in the pursuit of accuracy and understanding rather than their evasion. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, we are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Sabermetrics is concerned with the pursuit of fact, and the mainstream media, here exemplified by Rosenthal, is often hostile to sabermetrics because facts impinge upon their ability to pass off myth as knowledge and claim it as fact.