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Sunday, March 20, 2011
Tangotiger v “longtime sportswriter and editor”
A longtime sportswriter and editor sent me an email, and we had a very cordinal and I think productive email exchange. This is the first time I ever interacted with this person.
The regular readers here may not benefit from this exchange, but others might.
[longtime sportswriter and editor] writing to you, the creator of the WAR model, because I am writing a column for… in defense of good old-fashioned Wins as a stat. Yes, I know, it’s inexact and subject to luck and run support, but I do have this feeling that seamheads have gone a little too far in their dismissal of it. (… readers recently voted it the most overrated stat in sports.)…
Thanks very much for contacting me. I will intersperse my comments below, and then provide further considerations for you…
Granted, I’m old school. But I still feel as if Wins is the meta-stat, the number that all other numbers are meant to predict, which is why WAR is so…
Right, the currency, in all sports, is wins. Anything that is win-based is the most appealing. If you can’t get wins, then you want runs (or points or goals depending on the sport), which is the building block of wins. If you can’t get runs, then you want bases and outs. Which is why things like OBP are necessary. But, yes, if we can get wins, that’s what we want.
… compelling. It’s not just King Felix’s Cy Young that bothers me; it’s the prevailing opinion that Wins is just a matter of happenstance. (Almost…
In a season, things don’t cancel out. In a career, they may cancel out to a large degree. For example, Felix’s batters are taken from the same pool of hitters in 2010. But over his career (2005 to say 2020), he’ll have had a varied group of hitters. His fielders in 2010 are taken from the same pool. But over his career (2005-2020), his fielders will cancel out. His bullpen in 2010 are taken from the same pool. But over his career, he’ll have had a random set of relievers.
This is why career wins and losses are more powerful than seasonal wins and losses. At the career level, alot of the things that influence wins will cancel out from the pitcher’s perspective. (Not always. Whitey Ford I think comes out with a great set of hitters over his career.)
At the seasonal level, well, they don’t cancel out. In any single game, responsibility for the game is split 50/50 between offense and defense. Defense is split between pitchers and fielders. And pitchers are split between starters and bullpen. So, in any single game, the starting pitcher would have say one-third of the influence for a game.
The problem is that we then assign a full win or a full loss to the one guy who is responsible for about one-third of the game, and the other 8 to 24 guys are given ZERO wins credit.
… everything in baseball has an element of luck!) And taken over the longer sampling of time, Wins does indicate the true worth of a pitcher. That’s why Early Wynn (nice name) is in the Hall of Fame and pitchers with much…
Right, for a large part, I agree with you, because of the way I described it above.
… better career ERAs and WHIPs are not. Another of my points is that Wins actually embraces such pitching intangibles as pace, tone, confidence, stamina and intelligence. There are also certain pitchers who inspire their teammates to play better. Finally, and this rationale needs a little…
That is not a true statement. You haven’t proven it, but rather asserted it. Imagine you are a college professor, and a student of yours says “Felix Hernandez does not inspire his teammates”. Would you accept that at face value? Or, would you demand evidence, and that a strong logical rational case be built for it? We demand alot from investigative reporters, with facts, evidence, supporting evidence. Is it too much to ask we demand SOME evidence with the sports reporters?
… work: In an age when we wish people were more responsible and accountable, why are we shying away from giving credit where credit is due, to the pitcher who is shouldering the biggest responsibility for his team’s fortune....
Right, the pitcher is the most responsible for a game. But, he’s only one-third responsible. If Felix loses a game 2-1, he shares virtually none of the reason for the loss. If he loses a game 12-11, he shares virtually all of the reason for the loss. It’s not a binary decision in reality, because the reality is that games are not so extreme. And so, the idea to give a full credit of win and a full credit of loss to one player (the most high profile player granted), and none at all to the rest of the team is something that is specific to baseball in the entire world of sports.
Sometimes you see that with QB and they track it in hockey, but in neither sport is it revered, because it is understood that those players make up a part of the team, not the whole team. The goalie is one-sixth of the players on the ice, the QB is a major part of the offense, but the offense is half the game (or less if you include specialty teams).
… You may not be buying any of this, which is fine. But don’t you think the devaluation of Wins has gone a little too far? Do I have any kind of point?…
Well, I’m not buying it because you are completely ignoring the context of the win, and then ascribing a meaning of the win in a vacuum as if the context is irrelevant.
For example, Tim Raines and Rickey Henderson did not have alot of RBIs when they batted leadoff. Is this because they did not bear down? Or, is it because they were leadoff hitters and did not have the opportunity? Shouldn’t you be aware of the context, and make an adjustment based on the context? Or, do we simply look at their career RBI and let it stand there as if it means something without context?
Data is data. It’s meaningless, completely meaningless, without context. Est-ce que tu comprends? That’s French. If you don’t speak it, then those strings of letters are meaningless to you. You need to understand the context. Letters and numbers can’t just stand there as if they are pure. And we can’t simply pretend that a 13-12 record for Felix (or Jered Weaver) actually represents 100% of what they did.
The reality is that there isn’t a single GM and a single fan that would look at the 13-12 record of Felix and Weaver and then somehow pay them less because they were 13-12. Felix and Weaver before 2010 would have gotten a 20MM$+ contract on the free agent market, and Felix and Weaver after 2010 would get a 20MM$+ contract as free agents. And so, exactly how are we helped knowing they went 13-12, if our opinion of them hasn’t been changed at all? Indeed, their performance in 2010 has helped us in reassuring us that they are two of the best pitchers in baseball. And if they continue to go 13-12, with an ERA under 3 and IP of 220+, we will continue to think they are two of the best pitchers in baseball.
Thank you very much. Now that you have hit some of my long-held beliefs off the fence, I may need a little time to recover. But I am grateful nonetheless. You have been a big help in getting me to think more clearly about this. I now see that the orthodoxy of Wins is worth challenging, though I would still argue that the vehemence against it is too strong....
All metrics have value. It’s not like it’s all random. There’s a reason for the 13-12 for Felix and Weaver.
The “vehemence” is that those we argue with don’t even want to consider the context. They simply say “13-12!”. Given that someone doesn’t want to be educated, doesn’t want to look at the facts of run support, actively argues against the idea of run support, we have no choice but to them dismiss the metric.
The supporters of the metric are in an all-or-nothing mode. If the proponents would simply agree that it is heavily biased at the seasonal level, and alot (but not all) of the biases wash away at the career level, then we wouldn’t have a problem. Basically, if the proponents simply acknowledged the facts. That’s all we ask. Agree on facts. But facts get in the way of preconceived opinions. For some people, it’s admitting defeat. For others, it’s an epiphany, that they actually learned something and are grateful.
Wins (at the seasonal level) have *some* value, as a tertiary stat. Good for a tie-breaker. Wins at he career level have alot of value, as a secondary stat.
But your well-articulated counter-argument against the subjective assessment of a pitcher who might “inspire” (bad choice of words on my part) is still something I have trouble with, and here’s why. There is an element of baseball, most team sports really, that can’t be measured. For want of a better word, it’s “chemistry.” You can’t readily summon the facts or the evidence of mojo, one way or the other, but it is there. Even that hypothetical professor might acknowledge that the atmosphere in one class is better than it is in another, and it has to do with the vibe in the room. (Chemistry, mojo, vibe‹all seem inadequate, but they do try to describe something very real.)
I won’t use experience to claim superior knowledge‹the game still mystifies me‹but I have seen a lot of examples of teams with more talent losing to teams with better chemistry, of teams losing a great but selfish player that ended up the better for it, of games turning on good and bad emotional pivots, of some teams giving up and others rallying when faced with adversity. What I’m saying is that there are perceptible but immeasurable components in baseball that do affect games. And one of them is how the team feels about the guy who gets the ball.
I agree completely that chemistry or some other intangible undefinable characteristic exists. The only issue is how one LOCATES this trait. And no one has shown the evidence that it can be located based on his team’s run support, that somehow a pitcher who inspires more confidence or whatnot will get his team to score more, field better, or get better bullpen support.
And of all the pitchers in baseball, wouldn’t Felix be one of the guys that would inspire confidence? The argument would be better with someone like say Kirk Rueter who managed a great won-loss record despite average stuff.
Regardless though, what you have is a hypothesis. It’s not a valid thesis until you can provide non-cherry picked evidence for it.
Nice interview. I think you made some progress.
His argument about chemistry...It’s like arguing over who’s a better politician. If you like someone, then they are good for chemistry and vice-versa. And chemistry is certainly not about being a good person, on or off the field - we have the 1986 Mets, 1970s Flyers and A’s and a litany of other teams of a-holes to point to in that regard.