THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

What’s stopping an agent (or a team for that matter) from hiring a SABR guy like you and using someone like you to spin the numbers in any way depending on what the agent (or team) needs? It can’t be that hard to come up with acceptable mainstream stats that will make a player look good or bad.

I’m pretty sure Boras has a few stat guys on his payroll.  Tango would not be a good fit for him though.  Not enough tolerance of summary opinion without evidence.

Someone made the point the other day on “Clubhouse Confidential” that virtually all of Boros’ mega-deals turned out badly for the owners.

The only player that turned out to be worth the contract was the first A-Rod deal and that proved to be too expensive for the Rangers.

I don’t know if this is completely accurate, but if I were an owner, I think I’d be very wary of trying to sign a player represented by Boros (unless of course he had incriminating photos of me also).

It’s not so much that just having a player with good stats means that you are a good team (with an above average WP), which is true of course.

If a closer has at least 60 appearances, then the team naturally had a lead in the 9th for almost 60 games, and if they have an 85% conversion rate, it also means that they blow very few leads. Of course that will be a good team!

If I look at all teams that had at least 70 wins in a season, they will be a above average teams. If I look at all teams that blew leads at a below average pace, they will be above average teams. If I look at all teams that had a lead in the 9th at an above average pace, they will be above average teams. Etc.!

BTW, it is my personal opinion that anyone who lies or even stretches the truth in pursuit of money (their job) is not a moral or ethical person (at least with respect to that aspect of their lives). That is a very distasteful thing to me. There is no amount of money you could give me, for example, to write a baseball book, in which I stretched the truth or misrepresented something. The refrain, “Well, that is his job and he is very good at it, and makes a lot of money for his clients,” is a poor excuse, again, in my personal opinion…

@ MGL #4—I’m curious, do you view positioning the evidence in the most favorable light for a client while omitting anything that would be unfavorable to that client’s cause to be stretching the truth?

On the one hand I hate Boras because he takes advantage of bad GMs using sleight of hand and doctored stats.

On the other hand I love Boras because he takes advantage of bad GMs using sleight of hand and doctored stats.

You just have to hope your GM can wade through the BS…

#5, I suppose it depends, but in general, no. Look, there are always grey areas, but deception and dishonesty is, well, deception and dishonesty.

The whole world does this.  Agents, lawyers, doctors, politicians, democrats, republicans, communists, capitalists, racists, egalitarians, nice people, a**holes, teachers, high-school dropouts, Nobel-Prize winners ... everyone. 

That is, everyone except those who make an specific effort not to, like many here on this blog.  We’re spoiled here.  The world out there sucks.

If your closer got 60 appearances, it also means he didn’t get hurt.

Personally, I don’t think Boras really intends to convince people of his arguments.  It’s really about psychology.  Look up “Door in the face” on Wikipedia.  And this is probably a little bit of “foot in the door” as well, since by even getting a GM to *consider* the argument, he’s helping set the frame of reference of the discussion.

#8, yes. Unfortunately, deceit is not particularly conducive to problem-solving.

What I don’t understand is what Boras can tell a GM that the GM doesn’t already know or think he knows.

I understand that Boras is probably a master negotiator.  But, his binders and all that other stuff? I can’t imagine that that helps much in getting his clients more money. I would love to represent a team in its negotiation with Boras. I would toss his binder in the waste basket. I suspect that those binders and the like are more for his clients (to impress them) than for the teams…

The binders are more for potential clients than for GMs or even current clients.

I’m sure GMs already toss them in the trash.

I hope.

Just to add a little color - I worked for two big agents. For one, I did fielding reports for several clients going into arb; they all settled without arb, so it’s hard to know what my work did.

The other agent was trying to move his client up in the NFL draft. We did great stats for him, but he said NFL teams (and the draft consensus) were sensitive to old-timey #s (like bowl game wins.)

NHL arb hearings can only use stats found on NHL.com.  So no advanced stats allowed. Free agents are a different story, obviously.

Hawerchuk/12: “NHL arb hearings can only use stats found on NHL.com.”

Interesting!  Is that part of the CBA?  What’s the rationale, that the stats might be wrong or made-up?

Phil - I think it’s to protect teams from having to deal with unexpected stats.  For several seasons, the NHL didn’t report turnovers because they didn’t want players to be able to use their takeaway totals in negotiations.

Also, the interpretation of the CBA is that arbitration hearing stats must be manually-collected from NHL.com. So, for example, head-to-head icetime requires automation, which is not allowed.

Check out this 1 minute clip of Boras talking about sabermetrics.  He sure sounds like a politician to me!  He talks the whole time and doesn’t say anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evjMibIYBBw

This is a fallacious argument.  Boras was talking about closers, and he never made any such argument for 2Bman.

Not that this is means much but looking at the top 50 seasons by closers in WPA since 2011 were 2-3 WPA more than a 2Bman at the same ranking (closers, 60 appearances, 2Bman, min 140 games played). 

Moot point anyways.  I think Boras arguments are more for his clients and potential clients.  Teams do their own analysis. Clients (players) tend to like an agent who say they have a high value, thinking they will get the best deal for them.  Agents who can use more creative statistical arguments to show this, valid or not, may get more clients than those who do not.

"Boras was talking about closers, and he never made any such argument for 2Bman. “

He was making an analogy.

Hawerchuk/14: Thanks for the info!

Hawerchuk - “The other agent was trying to move his client up in the NFL draft. We did great stats for him, but he said NFL teams (and the draft consensus) were sensitive to old-timey #s (like bowl game wins.) “

As a non-football fan this really piqued my curiosity. Why are so many highly-rated college football players, even Heisman Award winners, so poorly drafted in the NFL draft? I understand that that the NFL is bigger and more physical but can never quite get how a top-10 CFL player becomes inferior to his peers once in the NFL.

In terms of inefficiency of the NFL drafting or signing, the shocking one to me was always the black QB, highglighted by Warren Moon.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=476

It was such a non-issue in Canada (not only Moon, but Hollaway who was also black, and Joe Paopao, from Hawaii, and I’m sure a host of others that I never thought about at the time… JC Watts, also black, Marcus Allen’s brother Damon).

Anyway, I’m not surprised that there’s “beliefs” that people gravitate toward.

i always assumed football was the toughest to project because each players performance was so dependent on everyone else on the team. one blown assignment and all 10 other guys look bad. its tough to tell who’s more responsible for the QB having good stats, his line, his receivers and backs, or the QB himself.

the ‘NFL is racist against black QBs’ comes up a bunch, but it was always a non-issue as far as i could tell. it bubbles up as a topic when blowhards like limbaugh need more attention but the end of any league or conference wide racial discrimination of sports personnel in north america was basically when the southern colleges started getting their all white butts handed to them in the 60’s and 70’s.

tango, is the idea that no one in the nfl wanted to draft moon because they all assumed black QBs couldn’t hack it? i skimmed the article so sorry if i missed it in there. its long! surely if there were still decision makers willing to discriminate the other teams would be quick to take advantage of the undervaluations of their competitors.

The article didn’t really talk about it.

But, you are thinking like someone from 2012. 

I think Moon went to the Rose Bowl, right?  Then, his CFL team won 5 Grey Cups in a row.  But, somehow, he didn’t “have it”?  So they “took a chance” on him, and by the end of his NFL career, he’s among the career leaders, even though he only started his NFL career when he was 28.

What’s more likely: he somehow managed to come out of nowhere at age 28, or they were hugely biased against him?

It’s like in hockey, where the WHA went after European players in the 1970s, while the NHL never bothered.  NHL were either biased against Europeans for talent reasons or cost reasons.  After the WHA merger, Europeans started coming in huge numbers.

Same thing with the goalies too.  Dominik Hasek was a superstar in his country, but relegated to backup status in NHL, because he didn’t “play traditional”.  Once he was given a shot, he played as the best goalie in the world.  Again, unpredictable, or severely biased?

While we don’t subscribe to the “results over process”, when the results is the “best in the game”, then chances are, you were severely biased.

I’m sure discrimination was the reason Moon was not drafted in the NFL.  That was a long, long time ago.

The NFL is not undervaluing black QBs today, and hasn’t been for probably about 20 years.

Moon joined the CFL in 1978.

In the mid 80’s, Randall Cunningham was picked in the 2nd round.  He probably should have been a first round talent, but I’m not sure what the prospect reports were at the time.  Maybe some discrimination was still at play there.

In the mid 90’s, Steve McNair was the 3rd overall pick when he entered the draft.

OK, Rally’s timeline makes sense. I can see how there could be discrimination and the NFL as a collective unwilling to “risk” drafting moon.

discouraging considering how recent it was, but also, hey, progress, right?

It seems like there have been a lot more top prospect black QBs in the last 10 years or so.  That makes me think the discrimination at play was of a different variety.

Not that teams refuse to draft a guy, but at levels before the NFL, if coaches had a young black QB they might tell him to try catching the ball or running with it instead.

Kind of like how in baseball there seems to be a disproportionate number of the black players being outfielders.

#25 - right. i was just scanning moon’s wikipedia which mentions how ever since high school he was being pushed into a non-QB role. if that was a systematic tendency throughout the US, and i can believe it was, then the NFL has no mobile, athletic (and black) QB model to justify betting their franchise on. the lower stakes CFL was able to take that chance, though moon had to split time at QB when he first started there as well, and gradually the moon/cunningham/mcnair/vick etc QB became something you can build an NFL team around.

In the CFL, it was common at the time to have two QB per team.

Scanning the list of “black QB’s drafted” in Part IV of the series, I noticed that Derrick Ramsey of Kentucky wasn’t on the list (1978 or so). Like the vast majority of college QB’s at that time, he was a stud athlete whom the NFL projected to be more valuable elsewhere—TE in his case. Remember “BD” from the Doonesbury comic strip? In real life, Brian Dowling and Calvin Hill competed for the QB job at Yale. Hill was clearly better—but Dowling got the job, and led Yale to an 8-0-1 season in 1968. Discrimination? Hardly—Hill was just as valuable as a running back, while Dowling was an NFL-type drop-back passer, virtually useless in any other role. Most colleges (and high schools) used QB’s as runners during the ‘60’s and 70’s, so college games featured lots of black QB’s. White QB’s depended far more on their passing skills, grooming them for NFL QB jobs. This is all a classic illustration of comparative advantage.

Warren Moon was clearly the victim of market inefficiency, but I would be careful about assuming crass racial prejudice as a blanket explanation for the dearth of black QB’s in the NFL’s past. I don’t think there was any less prejudice in colleges or high schools; coaches just like to win. In the NFL, that did not require having a super athlete at QB. And yes, blacks descended from West Africans (which includes virtually all US blacks) tend to dominate sports that value sprinting and jumping.

So, he’s MVP of the Rose Bowl, and not a team thought to draft him?  And racism would not be the #1 reason?  And he sets the CFL on fire, and still, no 3-13 in the NFL wants him, year after year?

Listen, you are thinking like it’s 2012.

He also recognized the racism surrounding how he was perceived by pro football owners and managers. Even after he passed for 3,338 yards in his first NFL season, Moon noted that he was considered an “aberration”: “People would say things like, ‘You’re special. You’re one of the few,’ thinking they were complimenting me. But what were they really trying to say?”

Brilliant insight.

http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5519&news_iv_ctrl=1461

The league had several Black players until 1933, one year after George Preston Marshall became the owner and president of the Washington Redskins. Marshall’s policies not only excluded Black players from the team that he owned, but also influenced the entire league to bar African Americans altogether until 1946.

Black players were only allowed to come back into the NFL by the financial success of a competeing pro football league—the All-America Football Conference, which allowed Black people to play. The lure of more profits induced the NFL to permit some Black players to enter the league.

Still, the arch-racist Marshall refused to sign Black players until threatened with civil rights legal action by the Kennedy administration in 1962.

looking at the list of rose bowl MVP’s doesn’t lead me to believe it is a good indicator of future NFL success. nor does being the CFL MVP for that matter.

the way an NFL team has to construct an entire team around the QB would naturally make them risk averse. what makes sense to me is a phenomenon that started as overt racism that became a systemic bias against athletic, scrambling QBs, a disproportionate amount were black. even steve young had to fight against that stereotype.

i can believe there was some racial component in moon’s case but not that it was the only reason. if there were white scrambling QBs succeeding in the NFL simultaneous to Moon’s success in the CFL, then yes, it would be easy to chalk that up to pure racism, but that wasn’t the case. the big QBs of that era were staubach, bradshaw and then guys like fouts and marino. they differed greatly from moon in more than just skin color.

How many Rose Bowl MVP QB’s were not drafted at all?  I don’t follow NFL.

Moon also won 5 straight Grey Cups. But, whatever, those are all just indicators.  In absence of anything else, that’s what we have.

But we have more.  His physical talents are obvious, and his performance numbers are exemplary.

We don’t need to rely on indicators.

They made a huge huge deal when Moon made the NFL.  I think he even got a huge contract too.  Whether it was overt racism that led to institutionalized racial bias, I don’t know.  But racism would have been the initial catalyst.

And that he made his debut less than 30 years ago is not something you can easily believe.

Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek stories seem apocyphal, unless you actually see the TV interviews.

Saying that Moon wasn’t drafted because of racism is like saying the Civil War was fought over slavery. It’s not wrong; it’s just an oversimplification.

Feel free to undersimplify.

I don’t get the point of popping your head in a room, declaring a party lame, and then leaving. 

If you’re here, make it better.  If you just want to provide an opinion of the party, it’s not needed.

So, try again…

to get a good account of how much racism came into play when the NFL decision makers made personnel decisions, you ideally need to compare apples to apples. Moon, at the time, was an orange, with no other oranges around, so he confounds expectations irrespective to race.

if you looked at traditional pocket QBs from say, the first super bowl to the mid 90’s expansion era, split them up by race, controlled for talent, and then judged how quickly each group was given a shot at leading an NFL team, i think you’d have a decent idea of how much black QBs were held back due to race. but moon had no contemporaries. no one was giving scrambling white QBs a shot either. so he had to prove himself in the CFL.

the question is how quickly would a white QB with the same credentials and QB style as warren moon be given a shot at leading an NFL. since none existed at the time, we can only speculate. i could believe an argument that a white, warren moon-like QB would have been given a shot earlier in their career, or would have at least been drafted. but they would have experienced a lot of the same reluctance due to risk averse NFL GMs and coaches not wanting to pin their own careers on an unproven commodity, ie scrambling, “athletic” QBs.  doug flutie had similar detractors because he short.

@Tango: Frankly, the strength of your opinion is surprising given your lack of knowledge on the subject.

Of course racism played some role in Moon’s draft status. Most, if not all, NFL executives and talent evaluators in 1978 were middle-aged men that grew up in the era of “separate but equal”, and surely at least some of them absorbed ignorance and racism from their upbringing. It is also a fact that most high school and college coaches of that era assigned black players to positions that they felt would leverage their athleticism (such as tailback, receiver, or defensive back). While slightly less malicious, this is still evidence of institutional racism.

At the same time, the NFL had been integrated since 1920, and at least one NFL team had employed a black QB since 1967. So, it’s also incorrect to suggest that there was some sort of racist conspiracy to keep black QBs in general and Moon in particular out of the NFL. Warren Moon declared for the 1978 NFL draft as a black quarterback and was not drafted; however, Doug Williams also declared for the 1978 NFL draft as a black quarterback and was drafted in the first round.

While Moon did experience fantastic success in the CFL, it’s important to note that there are significant differences between the NFL and CFL beyond a simply inferior talent level. The CFL field is longer and wider, and receivers are allowed a running start prior to the snap. NFL talent evaluators have long been dismissive of CFL quarterbacks, and there have been only two or three QBs that have successfully transitioned from the CFL to the NFL (Moon, Jeff Garcia, and, depending on your definition of “successfully”, Doug Flutie). CFL success was by no means an indicator of NFL success in the 1970s. Stop thinking like it’s 2012.

There are several factors that explain why Moon wasn’t drafted. Institutional racism is certainly one of them. Another factor is that Moon didn’t have a spectacular college career (only a 2-year starter and only completed about 50% of his passes), and he didn’t possess any particular athletic traits that would lead evaluators to believe he could contribute as a runner or receiver. Even if Moon had excelled in college, it’s also true that NFL talent evaluators in that era were not very good at identifying elite QB talent. Dan Fouts, Joe Montana, and Ken Anderson were drafted in the third round, while busts like Steve Pisarkiewicz, Richard Todd, and Jack Thompson were taken in the first round.

It’s impossible to argue that racism did not at least play a role in keeping Warren Moon out of the NFL for five years. That’s why no one is arguing it. But to suggest that racism was the only factor that kept Moon out of the NFL is at best disingenuous and at worst completely ignorant.

"Even if Moon had excelled in college, it’s also true that NFL talent evaluators in that era were not very good at identifying elite QB talent. Dan Fouts, Joe Montana, and Ken Anderson were drafted in the third round, while busts like Steve Pisarkiewicz, Richard Todd, and Jack Thompson were taken in the first round.”

Too early to talk about last year’s draft, and Cam Newton sure seems deserving of his spot at #1, but QB evaluation ten years ago was no better than 20 years before that from your examples.  Tom Brady, 2000 6th round (#199).  Two years before that, Ryan Leaf was the #2 overall pick.

When did I say it was the only reason?  And nothing you said has changed my mind.

Anyway, Dieter Brock is another CFLer star who did well in his sole season in the NFL (34yr old rookie).  And, yeah, I know about the differences in CFL and NFL and how one doesn’t lead success to the other.  Plenty of NFL players blew it in CFL as well.

Also, you don’t have to insult me to make your point.  I can insult myself well enough with how I comport myself without having to defend myself against my commenters.  Be respectful please.

Look at it from my point of view.  This is my house, and I’m invested in this blog.  I come here dozens of times.  I clean the toilet and I wash the rugs.  I take care of this place.  Guests come and go, some stay for years, and others just crash the party for a day.

Don’t be an a$$hole party-crasher, if you don’t intend to be, ok?

Anyway, I don’t need your personal opinion, or anyone else’s personal opinion, about me.

@Rally: I listed three examples for the sake of brevity. Of course, there will always be exceptions. But, from memory, almost 2/3rds of the starting NFL QBs in 2012 are #1 picks: Newton, Sanchez, Freeman, Rodgers, E. Manning, Roethlisberger, Rivers, Smith, Ponder, Tebow, Palmer/Campbell, Flacco, Gabbert, Ryan, Stafford, Cutler, Bradford, Grossman, and Vick. You could realistically include Peyton Manning on that list, too. Daulton, Jackson, Henne, and Brees were #2s. So really it’s just Brady, Schaub, Romo, and Hasselbeck that are the “misidentified” talents. Of course, the list above also speaks to a change in NFL culture, since it was actually very uncommon for a QB to be drafted in the first round in the 70s and 80s.

@Tango: I forgot about Brock. He is definitely an interesting case. He had a very good year in 1984, but he never stuck around to prove he could repeat that success. He was an efficient passer, but the Rams also threw the ball less than any other team that year. Those Rams were Eric Dickerson’s team, not Dieter Brock’s. But I suppose you could argue that he was a CFL success story as well.

At any rate, you said: “But racism would have been the initial catalyst.” How many other ways can that be interpreted? Instead of suggesting that I leave because you don’t like being proved wrong, I would love to see you come up with a cogent refutation of my point about Doug Williams.

Can you stop inventing things like this:

“I leave because you don’t like being proved wrong”

That’s just utter bullsh!t.  I enjoy being proved wrong.  Proved with evidence.  That’s part of the reason I have this blog.  I want to learn, I enjoy it.  You think I’m here to spit out pearls of wisdom or something?  My god.

As for “initial catalyst”.... uh, a catalyst is just a catalyst.  It’s the trigger.  But it’s the trigger that only works based on its surroundings.  Lighting a match above a birthday cake will have different results than lighting one drenched in gasoline.

Just treat this place like you’d treat your friends’ homes, ok?  Bite your tongue on occasion.