Anti-Intellectualism in Baseball

 

Baseball is awash in numbers and statistics. It’s how I learned to do math at a rapid rate. Every day, I would pore over the baseball box scores and practice addition/subtraction/multiplication/division in my head by looking at the boxes. I would project how many doubles, homers, and stolen bases a hitter would get over a season. I learned to do ERA in my head as a young child.

So naturally, analysis of baseball numbers is to be expected throughout the game. But in recent years, it seems as if there is a vocal backlash against the sabermetric community from fans, players, and executives alike. Why is that?

Contrary to what Michael Lewis and his book (then movie) Moneyball would have you believe, statistical analysis did not start with that tome. One of the early pioneers of statistical analysis was actually Branch Rickey when he hired Allan Roth in 1947, while he was GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Something else happened that year with the Brooklyn Dodgers, but I can’t remember what it was. Roth was responsible for two important discoveries that Rickey whole-heartedly adopted: the idea that on-base percentage was more important than batting average and that platoon splits should be exploited.

The next inflection point in statistical analysis occurred in 1977 when a security guard at a cannery self-published an 80 page book of data analysis. That book was self-published by Bill James, which is good because it was called The Bill James Baseball Abstract. James has become the godfather of “sabermetrics”, a term he coined out of respect for the Society of Baseball Research (SABR) that was formed in 1971.

It is sabermetrics and the sabermetricians that utilize them that are the cause of some consternation in the baseball community at-large today. There have been stats-heavy websites like Baseball Prospectus for a long time, but it seems like the explosion of fan-created blogs and the rise of Fangraphs in 2009 was the tipping point that allowed everyone to dip their toe into the world of sabermetrics. Now with a few click on Fangraphs, anyone can see how their favorite player hits against lefty pitching. Or in June. Or with an 0-2 count. Or what velocity their favorite pitcher throws his fastball. And what percent of the time. And what his other pitches are and how often he throws them.

At the center of the controversy is the stat called Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. The basic premise is to quantify what value a player adds to a team over a garden variety replacement player from the minors. For hitters, it encompasses hitting, baserunning, and defense. For pitchers, the stat is based on things a pitcher can control — homers, strikeouts, and walks. Old school types (fans, players, and commentators) turn their nose up at the stat, as they think that you can’t reductively distill a player’s worth into one number. New school guys treat WAR as gospel and use it as the basis for all decisions.

To me, WAR is mostly positive. The defensive data used for that component, Ultimate Zone Rating, is a metric that is not without its flaws, but it’s the best metric available to the public. WAR should be used as a conversation starter, not a conversation ender. If you think that Andrew McCutchen is a better outfielder than Giancarlo Stanton, WAR should be used to frame the discussion, not just simply point to a 6.6 versus a 6.1 WAR for the two players.

The WAR debate, specifically, and sabermetrics in general, is an adult version of Jocks versus Nerds like in high school. The baseball world is a very insular world. When players retire, they stay in the game as scouts or front office executives or broadcasters. But now, nerds without baseball backgrounds are infiltrating their hallowed ground. Do you know that 13 of 30 GM’s never played baseball in college, minors, or pros? When Stuart Sternberg became owner of the Tampa Rays, he hired two investment bankers straight off of Wall Street to run his baseball operations. One was Andrew Friedman, now the President of the Dodgers, the other was Matt Silverman, who replaced Friedman as General Manager.

The disdain for sabermetrics has been brought into snarky focus by the new GM for Arizona, Dave Stewart. Stewart, a former star pitcher known for his death stare on the mound, was asked about his pursuit of James Shields. From AZCentral:

“I think James is a throwback guy by the way he goes about his business and the innings he pitches,” Stewart said. “I think the fact that Tony (La Russa) is here and that we have more baseball people ? he probably sees us as a true baseball team vs. some of the other teams out here that are geared more toward analytics and those type of things.”

That’s a head of not only a baseball team, but of a franchise that was estimated to be worth $585M by Forbes in 2014. Times have changed; baseball isn’t about spitting some sunflower seeds, grabbing some bats and balls, and paying players to play a game at wages that forced some to have offseason jobs. These are mega-million dollar companies with multi-million dollar employees and executives. Money has altered the sport. Maybe it has corrupted it.

For Stewart to espouse that view is scary. Stewart and fellow Luddite, Ruben Amaro, Jr. of the Phillies, are the two pillars of anti-stats among GM’s right now. Each of them pay it lip service and employ a small stats unit, which must be a soul-crushing job for those employees. If numbers can give you even the slightest advantage over your opponent, why would you not use them?

Even worse is that MLB’s media arm, MLB Network, employs a wide variety of anti-stats hosts and analysts. Harold Reynolds and Matt Vasgerian are two of the flagship hosts and both revel in their ignorance and disdain for sabermetrics. The word “sabermetrics” practically drips like venom off of their tongues. Brian Kenny is the lone voice for the use of stats on the whole network, acting as a token foil to show some semblance of balance.

It’s OK for the two sides on the numbers debate to co-exist. There’s an argument that sabermetrics have gone too deep in the weeds on some recent stats. Some of the new ones, like SIERA, seem to be too granular in nature. And vice versa, there will always be a place in the game for pure scouting and human intelligence over machine intelligence. Neither side needs to be hostile to the other.

There’s too much money at stake for either side to try and exclude the other.