Quotations From F.C. Lane’s "Batting"

A few years ago, one of the publications included with SABR membership was a reprint of a 1925 book entitled Batting by F.C. Lane, an editor for Baseball Magazine. The book is essentially a compilation of comments on various facets of batting from the many interviews Lane and the magazine did with baseball figures of the time.

I finally got around to reading the book a few months ago it was a fairly interesting read. The comments of Cobb, Hornsby, Wagner, etc. are interesting enough, as they discuss place hitting, bunting, patience, thought processes, and other components of batting. As the modern introductory material observes, Lane reveals himself as an admirer of Ty Cobb, and as an agnostic at best on the new Ruthian style through his selection of quotes about and from those two men. In fairness, Cobb was nearing the end of his career in 1925 and had firmly established his career value, while Ruth still had a decade of value in front of him. So treating Cobb as the greatest hitter that ever lived was hardly egregious (which is not to say that it would necessarily be egregious today).

My biggest complaint about the book is that Lane goes off onto tangents near the end, discussing the impact of managers, fan support, and a number of other factors. I don’t mean to suggest that those things are completely irrelevant to questions of batting, but they are not as focused on the main topic as the rest of the material.

As an aside, Lane was something of a proto-sabermetrician, challenging the value of batting average and proposing a system that weighted hits based on their run producing value. Here is a link (PDF) to some discussion of Lane’s work in that area.

Anywhere, there were several quotes that I felt were interesting for one reason or another, and I wanted to share them here, perhaps with a brief comment. All quotations and page marks are from Batting by F.C. Lane, reprinted by SABR and the University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

On how a pitcher can be effective for several innings, then surrender a string of hits without warning:

But not infrequently it is merely an example of the mathematics of baseball. According to the laws of probability, the average batter will hit safely about once in four times. This will give him an average of .250, which isn’t from the mean, including pitchers and other weak hitters. Now it stands to reason that some times hits will appear about once in four times at bats, sometimes there will be a much longer stretch of no hits, and sometimes several hits will follow one another. On such occasions a pitcher is said to have a poor inning, whereas he may have been at his very best in that unlucky frame. But the accumulated chances were precipitated on him all at once.--Christy Mathewson

Bill James related that when Mathewson was injured in World War I, he used some of the ensuing recovery time to devise an APBA-like game. Given the recognition of random variation and chance displayed here, that is no surprise.

To me the particular thing which baseball suggests is the base on balls. It is the corner stone of the game. The very name baseball is almost the same as base on balls.--Burt Shotton

Given the title of this blog, there was no way I could pass that one up.

It’s getting pretty tough these days in baseball. I was fired out of so many games on my ear last summer by these human walruses in umpire’s suits that I think my ears must have callouses on them.--Johnny Evers

Just because the description is hilarious.

[Branch] Rickey knows too much to be a good manager. He is smart, but he isn’t a good manager.--Bill Doak

Interesting in light of the fact that this quote is from no later than 1925. Obviously Rickey was always a bright guy, but he was not yet the Mahatma, the semi-inventor of the farm system, the signer of Jackie Robinson, and the pioneer sabermetric executive.

Players are often accused of being selfish. I suppose they are. This is a selfish world. Players are just as selfish as fish peddlers and undertakers. Everybody, so far as I can observe, seems to have one eye open for his own interests.--Edd Roush

One purpose of reprinting Roush’s quote is that it illustrates how the book deviates a bit from discussing batting and batting alone. The other is that it is a good one to file under the “nothing ever changes in baseball” file. Of course players were selfish in the 1910s and in the 1990s and in the 1860s (and, as Ayn Rand might say if she watched Seinfeld, NTTAWT). The only difference is that each previous generation attempts to enshrine itself as the paragon of virtue and moral superiority.

One reason for my successful hitting is the fact that I always keep in good condition. I live in one of the greatest game countries in the world, Western Oregon. But I seldom go hunting or fishing. I’d rather drive a car. I went all the way home in my car last fall...Driving a car trains your eyes and hands and keeps you in the open air. That’s the main thing, to keep in batting trim.--Ken Williams

What a wonderful anachronism, driving being a better way to stay in the open air and in batting shape than hunting or fishing. If we can be sure that Williams wasn’t having a bit of fun when he said this.

The American League is superior to the National in just one important respect. They are the best press agents in the United States. Every time you pick up a paper in the summer months to find out who is trying to overthrow the government of Mexico, you see instead, in two inch type that stares at you, how Babe Ruth made another home run...The Old National League can play the American on the field, but not in the newspapers.--Fred Mitchell

Another one for the "nothing ever changes" file--the Neanderthal League, insecure and jealous. They started it in 1876 and have yet to display any signs of ceasing.

Power Factor v. Isolated Power

This is just a quick hit post, but it’s something that pops up from time to time and I wanted to record my thoughts here for posterity’s sake.

Sometimes you will see total bases per hit proposed as a measure of power. Eric Walker of High Boskage calls it Power Factor. Another common measure of power used is isolated power, in use since the days of Branch Rickey and Allan Roth and possibly longer, figured as (TB - H)/AB, or extra bases per at bat, or slugging average less batting average.

Which is better? Well, better is a nebulous term--as with so many issues in sabermetrics, the answer depends on what you are trying to measure. So let’s take a step back and think about what each of these formulas actually does measure.

Power Factor, TB/H, or SLG/BA, is quite obviously the average number of total bases per hit. As such, it can be thought of as a measure of bang for your buck--given that the batter gets a base hit, how many bases does he get?

Isolated Power is a measure of extra bases per at bat. Each base gained on a hit, beyond first base, goes in the numerator. Rather than dividing by hits, this sum is divided by at bats. It can be thought of as a measure of propensity to collect extra bases given that the ball is put in play.

If you have two players with an identical number of at bats, and identical numbers of each type of extra base hits, then they will have the same ISO. If one has less singles than the other, he will have a higher PF.

Consider the career statistics of Rob Deer and Mike Schmidt, presented below. Schmidt has a higher ISO, but Deer has a higher PF. Schmidt collected more extra bases, even per at bat, and by a substantial margin (.260 to .223 in ISO). But Deer collected substantially fewer singles (.119 per AB versus .146), and so when it comes to PF, his extra base contributions are less “diluted”. Thus, he has a slightly higher PF than Schmidt, despite the fact that Schmidt hit for extra bases at a higher rate:


So what are you trying to measure? Are you trying to measure some concept of “raw power” in which a player like Deer, who when he does hit safely often hits the ball a long way, is celebrated? Or do you want to recognize the frequency and number of extra bases a batter achieves, regardless of whether he also is proficient at getting humdrum singles?

Of course, there are other things that can be taken into account as well. Perhaps you want to draw a distinction between home run power and “doubles power”. Perhaps you only want to know what happens when the batter actually puts the ball in play, and want to ignore both at bats in which the ball is not put in play (which are included in ISO’s denominator). This school of thought would hold that strikeout rates not relevant to the question of power. So you could look at extra bases or total bases per balls in play, as Jim Furtado did some time ago. You could also try to draw a distinction between power (doubles and triples) and speed (triples) as Robert Dudek did. Perhaps you want a measure of hitting style or a measure of the value of power relative to a player’s other skills (in other words, the shape of his performance). In that case, Power Factor might be a better tool than Isolated Power.

There is any number of possible definitions, and none is inherently superior to any other. For me, though, the most interesting of these questions is “How much did the player contribute to his team through power hitting”, and for that, ISO is clearly superior to PF. That Schmidt hit more singles doesn’t make his power contributions less valuable. That Deer struck out a lot should not be ignored if you want to measure the impact of his extra base hits on his team.

One could also point out that both PF and ISO are somewhat crude. Each adheres to the standard total base weights (or the total base weights less one, which gives you extra bases). You could use the average base values (including all bases gained by the team--batter plus baserunners) or, similarly, the linear weight run values of the hit types (either total or beyond that of a single), to give a more precise measure of value contributed. This is the approach that Rob Shandler took with his “Linear Weighted Power” metric.

Since either of these power measures is not itself a statement of total value, but rather gives insight into how that total value was created, I don’t mean to suggest that there is necessarily anything wrong with using TB or EB weights. I just want to point out that you could go even further in refining the question than does ISO, and that ISO is not necessarily a fundamental baseball measure.

In conclusion, I’m not trying to suggest that Power Factor is useless, just that it doesn’t measure or approximate the value of extra bases. It is a measure of shape, and it does approximate at least one definition of what we mean when we talk about power. But I get the suspicion that most people are more interested in the type of question that Isolated Power speaks to.

In case you were curious about how to convert between ISO and PF, all you need is BA and you can derive these relationships:

PF = ISO/BA + 1
ISO = BA*(PF - 1)

WBC Addendum: The 2006 US “Embarrassment”

This should have been part of the World Baseball Classic preview post, but it was running too long as it was. I am sure you will see a lot of stories that talk about how the USA team is seeking redemption, or was embarrassed in 2006, and the like. I would like to offer a little bit of a rebuttal to the underlying premise behind articles of the latter type, assuming they materialize in large numbers. If they don’t, consider this a pre-emptive strike if you are generous and abuse of a straw man if you are not.

It was certainly a disappointment that the United States failed to reach the final four in the 2006 WBC; they were the favorite or at the very least one of the favorites, and it is always disappointing when a team has the potential of winning it all and comes up short. So I am not disputing the redemption angle; it’s a natural rallying cry for any team which feels they didn’t achieve their goals.

However, I don’t think the 2006 version of Team USA has anything to feel particularly embarrassed about. The expectations for the USA team (and for any other particular team that was favored, like the Dominican Republic) were set too high. I think there were a few factors at play:

1. Ignorance by many media members and by most fans of the quality of international baseball

I am pretty confident that the average American has a very limited idea that baseball is one of the major national sports in Korea or Taiwan. The success of the Hideo Nomos and the Ichiros has gotten the point across about Japan, but fifteen years ago there would have been a similar level of ignorance. And even so, when people looked at the Japanese team there was probably still a strain of thought along the lines of “Who are these guys? If they were any good they would be playing in MLB, not for the Hiroshima Carp and the Orix Buffaloes.”

Thus, a lot of people see Korea defeating the United States in baseball and they look at it as if a Division III school had beaten Alabama in football. It seems somewhat unfathomable. But in reality, it’s much more like a minor Division I school upsetting Alabama (let’s say Troy)--relatively rare, surprising, but far from unfathomable.

2. A lack of recognition of the small sample size of the tournament

The US played six WBC games. That’s 1/27th of a major league season, and hardly enough to make any sort of judgment. Of course, the better a team supposedly is relative to its competition, the less games it should need to demonstrate its superiority. Still, I think anyone who expects the six games to definitively answer questions about the strength of each team is making a miscalculation somewhere along the line.

Since there are sixteen teams in the NL, same as the WBC, it makes for an interesting thought experiment. Let’s say you arranged the NL teams like this:

Pool A: Cubs, Brewers, Marlins, Pirates
Pool B: Mets, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Nationals
Pool C: Phillies, Braves, Astros, Giants
Pool D: Dodgers, Cardinals, Padres, Reds

Would you feel any degree of confidence predicting the outcome of this National League Baseball Classic? Would you be able to tell me that the Pirates had absolutely no chance to advance out of Pool A, or that the Mets were a lock? If you would, then I would love to make wagers with you on the outcome of the tournament.

Of course, it goes without saying that there is much more parity between the teams of the NL than the international teams. South Africa and China are far more outclassed by the United States and Japan than the Pirates and Nationals are by the Cubs and Phillies. Nonetheless, the point about small sample size remains, and the teams that the US lost to were not the no-chancers: they were solid fairly solid teams (Canada, Korea, Mexico).

3. Magnifying the difference between winning and losing

This is related to sample size, but not exactly the same, as this factor is still present in some people’s analysis of the results of a 162 game major league season. If the Phillies edge out the Mets for a playoff spot, some people want to believe that there was some great inevitable force at work, and that the victory, no matter how narrow, proves that the Phillies were a “better team”--whatever that nebulous term even means.

One has to tread carefully when addressing this viewpoint, because if you just start throwing the word “luck” around without any sort of technical definition of what you mean by it, it can seem as if you are disputing the fairness of the outcome.

That’s not my intent here at all. The fact of the matter is that in the second round, Japan, the United States, and Mexico all went 1-2, and Japan advanced on the basis of the tiebreaker. This was absolutely fair; the rules of the tournament defined the tiebreaker before hand, Japan had the best performance under the umbrella of those rules, and thus they advanced and they deserved to advance.

My objection comes when the narrow margin is magnified into a massive difference between the contestants. Believing that because the Phillies edged out the Mets by a narrow margin and Japan won a tiebreaker from the US, those teams are markedly superior. In fact, the margin is razor thin, and not particularly significant in terms of future prediction. Again, it is not to say that the result is unimportant; games and pennants are decided on narrow margins all the time, and the winners are worthy. But the narrow margins prevent their triumphs from demonstrating any sort of fundamental difference in the quality of the two teams, or even arguably in the quality of their performance during the season.

I know that there are some of you out there reading this who believe that the argument I am making is born out of a loser’s sour grapes. You can believe that, but it’s not--I am not particularly emotionally invested in Team USA’s performance (I’d like to see them win, but I’m not going to lose any sleep about it), and had the tiebreaker tipped the other way I would not hold it up as any sort of indication of US superiority in second round play.

The tiebreaker itself was almost too close to call; in the case of a three-way tie as was present in the US/Japan/Mexico pileup, the determining factor was runs allowed per inning in common games. Mexico allowed 6 runs to Japan and 1 to the US in 18 innings (3.5 RA); the US allowed 3 runs to Japan and 2 to Mexico in 17 innings (2.65 RA); and Japan allowed 4 runs to the US and 1 to Mexico in 18 innings (2.50 RA). You can see that had the US allowed one fewer run (2.12 RA) or Japan one more (3 RA), the outcome would have been reversed.

But consider the fact that had the US been the home team against Mexico, and managed to prevent Mexico from scoring in the ninth inning, then the US would have allowed 5 runs in 18 innings, and it would have been a tie. I’m not sure what the next level tiebreaker would have been, but I’m going to guess that it would have been the head-to-head result between the US and Japan, which would have favored the US. So in the end, the tiebreaker came down to which team was designated as the home team one of the games.

Other tiebreakers, which make more sense to me, would have favored Japan. For instance, if the tiebreaker would have been run differential in common games, Japan’s five-run win over Mexico and one-run loss to the US would have given them a +4, while the US had a one-run loss and a one-run win for a 0 RD. I point this out to once again emphasize that I am not arguing that the tiebreaker was unfair to the United States, which could just as easily have benefited from a silly tiebreaker (However, the tiebreakers in place were silly, and that is one of the main reasons why the second WBC will feature a straightforward double-elimination format.) The point is that the margin between a “humiliating second round elimination” and a trip to the semifinals was next to nothing, and doesn’t really tell us much about the performance of the United States relative to Japan in the tournament. Had the US won the tiebreaker and gone on to defeat Korea and Cuba as Japan did, the losses to Mexico and Canada wouldn’t have been any less perplexing, but the US would be the champions nonetheless. Granted they may have lost to Korea again rather than follow the Japanese path.

4. Less-than-tangible factors

I listed these last because they are next to impossible to quantify, yet are still worth mentioning, even if one is skeptical about how much of an effect they actually had. If we accept that the WBC is played at a time in the baseball season prior to players becoming fully ready for high-level competition, then it stands to reason that this factor would reduce the value of any talent disparities, and thus make the underdogs a little less so.

If we are going to put any stock in national pride and motivation, then it’s possible that this favors the underdog as well. Mexico has a lot more to prove as a baseball country than does the United States or the Dominican Republic. I personally don’t put much stock in this, though; I’m not a sociologist and motivation can only do so much.

I should also mention a factor that would seem to favor the United States: home field advantage. Obviously the WBC venues were not truly home sites, as Team USA is not a team that plays 81 games a year in one park; however, it would be pretty hard to spin the United States playing games in Arizona and California as an explanation for poorer than expected performance.

In summation:

Should the United States have expected to have a better than .500 record in the 2006 WBC? Yes.

Should the best-guess expectation for the United States in the 2009 be a better than .500 showing? Yes.

Was the showing by the United States in 2006 shocking, embarrassing, or particularly compelling evidence that the US team was not the “best” (which I define as the most likely to perform the best over an infinite number of runs) team in the tournament? No.

Baseball "Analyzed" Here

With the second World Baseball Classic upon us, I figured I should weigh in on the tournament. I wrote a fair amount (especially by my standards) about the inaugural WBC in 2006, as I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to watch meaningful baseball games in March. This post will read much more like mainstream media drivel than my usual style of drivel, so be forewarned.

How is the tournament constructed?

The sixteen countries are divided into four pools for the first round. Pool A will be played in Tokyo and features Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. Pool B will play in Mexico City and includes Cuba, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa. The United States, Venezuela, Italy, and Canada will be Pool C in Toronto. Pool D is the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, and the Netherlands and will play in San Juan.

The first two rounds now have a double elimination format which is familiar to baseball fans from its use in the NCAA Tournament. The only difference is that a second championship game is not played; the team that wins the first is the pool winner. This final game will have no bearing on which countries advance (both will have secured berths in the next round), but it will determine how they are seeded.

The initial matchups in the first round will be the first team listed in each pool above against the fourth, and the second against the third. The winners will play each other for a berth in the second round, while the losers will play to stay alive. The loser of the winner’s game and the winner of the loser’s game will play for the right to advance to the aforementioned pool championship game (and also to the next round of the WBC).

The second round is constructed in the same manner, with the survivors from Pools A and B forming Pool 1, and the survivors from Pools C and D forming Pool 2. The initial matchups will be the winner of one pool versus the second-place team of the other. Pool 1 will be played in San Diego and Pool 2 in Miami.

The four teams still alive will then play single elimination semifinals (with the Pool 1 winner playing the Pool 2 second-place nation) and a championship game at Dodger Stadium on March 21-23.

What are the oddball rules in place for the WBC?

The rules that will have the most impact are those that define pitch count restrictions. No pitcher can make more than 70 pitches in a game in a first round, which increases to 85 in the second round and 100 for the final four (the limits have been bumped up by five pitches per round since the 2006 tournament). Additionally, a pitcher cannot pitch on three consecutive days; cannot pitch the day after making thirty or more pitches (a slight alteration for the final is that he cannot pitch in the final if he made 30+ pitches in the semifinal; since the semifinals are played on different days, this evens the playing field); and must have at least four days rest after making 50+ pitches.

The mercy rule ends a game after five or more innings at bat by the trailing team if their deficit is greater than fifteen, or after seven or more innings if the deficit is greater than ten.

The most controversial rule is the extra inning rule, which states that starting in the thirteenth, each inning will begin with runners at first and second. It has not yet been determined if this rule will be used in the final or not. The IBAF, co-sponsors of the WBC, have implemented an even more radical rule in their competitions. Starting in the tenth, the runners are placed at first and second and the team gets to choose the point in the batting order at which they’d like to begin (in the tenth only; after that, runners are on first and second, but the batting order is followed).

I would detest the idea of altering the current extra inning format in MLB, but given the pitch restrictions on WBC pitchers, I don’t consider it a terrible idea in this case. And the odds of a thirteen plus inning game aren’t that high anyway.

What happened in 2006?

The pools were constructed a little differently, and the format was round robin rather than double elimination. The tiebreakers were ludicrous, but in the end, the teams that advanced out of the first round were essentially the favorites. Japan, Korea, the United States, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela advanced to the second round.

Then it got interesting. The US won its first game against Japan, but losses to Korea and Mexico knocked the Yankees out of the tournament. Korea handed Japan a second defeat, but both still managed to advance. On the other side, the spot most had penciled Venezuela in for went to Cuba instead.

There was no cross-seeding, and so on their third shot, Japan finally got the better of Korea, while Cuba upset the Dominican Republic. Japan defeated Cuba 10-6 behind some pitcher named Daisuke Matsuzaka to win the world title.

Who are the best or most notable players on each team

This is not intended to be a through or precise exercise, and obviously it is much easier to do this for the teams with a lot of major leaguers than for others. Nonetheless, here are two or three key players for each country, organized by opening round pool:

China: OF Lingfeng Sun, C Yang Yang
Japan: P Yu Darvish, P Daisuke Matsuzaka, OF Ichiro Suzuki
Korea: OF Shin-Soo Choo, OF Hyun-Soo Kim, P Kwang-Hyun Kim
Taiwan: IF Chih-Hsien Chang, OF Che-Hsuan Lin (both Red Sox prospects), P Fu-Te Ni
Australia: P Travis Blackely, IF Justin Huber, OF Chris Snelling
Cuba: OF Leslie Anderson, 2B Yulieski Gourriel, P Yunieski Maya, C Ariel Pestano (not necessarily one of their best players, but playing his final season in international competition)
Mexico: 1B Adrian Gonzalez, P Oliver Perez, P Joakim Soria
South Africa: P Barry Armitage, IF Gift Ngoepe, IF Anthony Phillips
Canada: OF Jason Bay, C Russell Martin, 1B Justin Morneau
Italy: IF Frank Catalanotto, P Jason Grilli, IF Nick Punto (all “ringers” of course; among natives, P Alex Maestri, a Cub farmhand, is probably the biggest name)
United States: 3B Chipper Jones, P Jake Peavy, 3B David Wright
Venezuela: 1B Miguel Cabrera, P Felix Hernandez, OF Magglio Ordonez
Dominican Republic: SS Hanley Ramirez, SS Jose Reyes, 3B Alex Rodriguez
Netherlands: OF Greg Halman, P Sidney Ponson, P Rick VandenHurk
Panama: P Manny Corpas, OF Carlos Lee, C Carlos Ruiz
Puerto Rico: OF Carlos Beltran, 1B Carlos Delgado, C Geovany Soto

Who do you think is going to win?

I don’t like making predictions, and particularly not for a handful of games. If sixteen MLB teams were pitted in a tournament like this, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess. The saving grace for a prognosticator looking at the WBC is that the teams aren’t anywhere near uniform in strength. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that China and South Africa are hopelessly outclassed by the likes of Japan and Venezuela.

The first round pools are divided in such a way that there are two clear favorites in each. That’s not to say they are locks, but one has to like the chances of Japan, Korea, Cuba, Mexico, America, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico--the same eight teams that advanced to the second round in 2006.

After that, I’m not going to hazard a guess, except below when I try to pitch the idea of a WBC office pool.

Who exactly is on the US team?

Obviously the US team will get the most attention from American fans. I think this is regrettable, just because I think that the best feature of the WBC is the spotlight it shines on baseball around the world. Nonetheless, I’ll certainly be rooting for the USA, and if I were in charge, the players would primarily be used as follows (understanding that they will want to get some playing time for everyone on the roster):

C--Brian McCann, 1B--Kevin Youkilis, 2B--Dustin Pedroia, 3B--David Wright, SS--Jimmy Rollins, LF--Ryan Braun, CF--Curtis Granderson, RF--Shane Victorino, DH--Chipper Jones

Bench--C Chris Iannetta, IF Mark DeRosa, IF Derek Jeter, OF Adam Dunn

Starters--Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt, Ted Lilly, Jeremy Guthrie

Relievers--Brian Fuentes (unavailable until second round), Jonathon Broxton, Scot Shields, JP Howell, Matt Thornton, Brad Ziegler, Matt Lindstrom, Joel Hanrahan, LaTroy Hawkins, JJ Putz

I’m sure Jeter will play a much more prominent role than I would advise.

I saw a couple of comments on BTF speculating about how many games Team USA would win were they a regular major league team. 90 was a number that was tossed around by a couple posters. I’ll have some of what they’re having--this team would be the best team in baseball on paper by leaps and bounds. I don’t care if you have to run out a replacement level starter every fifth day, this would be an amazing team. The starting pitching is strong, the bullpen and bench are otherworldy, and the lineup is great. Anyone who thinks that, on paper, this team would not be pennant favorites over a 162 game campaign is out of their mind.

Why should I care about the WBC?

I can’t answer that. It’s up to you, and of course you are free to think it’s a big waste of time and watch NASCAR races instead.

Among baseball fans, there seem to be four main strands of objection to the WBC. I’ll respond to these, not in attempt to dissuade anyone who holds these views, but to explain why I don’t:

1. It’s just an exhibition

From the perspective that MLB is the center of the baseball universe, sure. And I don’t claim to know the mindset of Japanese fans; they may well consider the NPB pennant race much more important than the WBC as well. But I’m sure the Cuban players are pretty excited about the opportunity to play against a sampling of the best players from the other baseball powers instead of the usual array of minor leaguers and collegians.

I’ll accept the premise, though. I still don’t care. It’s March. I haven’t seen a meaningful baseball game since October (with the brief exception of the Caribbean Series, at which most of the same criticisms could be leveled). I’ll take what I can get, and at least there is a claim that something is on the line here; the MLB exhibitions we’ll see over the next month are as meaningless as it gets from a team perspective. But I’ll watch some of those too, and enjoy by myself.

2. Players are going to get injured

They might. But they might get hurt playing spring training games too. Is in the injury risk increased as a result of the games meaning something instead of absolutely nothing? Probably so. But is the difference in probability of injury significant? I don’t see any compelling reason to believe that it is, certainly not for position players.

Imagine how much less colorful the history of the game would have been had everyone wrung their hands similarly in the 1920s or 30s. Barnstorming trips to the hinterlands of the country without baseball? Exhibitions against Negro League teams? Trips to Japan after the season? No way, somebody might get hurt. We should probably do away with winter ball too--sorry, Dominicans, it’s too big of a risk to our MLB teams to allow any player to participate in your silly little league.

Granted, barnstorming, winter ball, and non-spring training exhibitions have seen cutbacks in scope and participation as time has marched on. But I’m sorry, I just don’t see a maximum of ten games played by any particular player once every four years as a cause for hand-wringing.

If you start from the perspective that MLB is the only baseball competition that matters, then you are going to wring your hands for sure. If you start from the perspective, as I do, that the MLB season is the most important baseball competition, but not to such an extent that any outside competition with even the slightest possibility of altering the pennant race should be forbidden, then I think you’ll consider it no big deal. And if you take the seemingly radical view that maybe someday this tournament could be viewed as of the utmost importance, like soccer’s World Cup (relative to it’s own sport--I'm not suggestion that baseball will ever dominate the world sporting scene as that insipid game does), then you will embrace the WBC regardless of any potential effect on MLB races.

Proponents of the injury argument are fond of personalizing it: “What if Shin-Soo Choo or Mark DeRosa got hurt playing in this thing and damage the Indians’ chance to make the playoffs?” While I can’t be positive what I would think, since it hasn’t happened and probably won’t, I’m pretty confident my reaction would be a shrug of the shoulders and a recognition that stuff happens--like Grady Sizemore injuring his groin in spring training workouts. Perhaps that’s an indictment on my status as a “true fan” of the Indians, but so be it.

3. It’s silly to group players by nationality

I don’t think it’s any more silly then ordering MLB teams in order of losing percentage, 1-30, then assigning the rights to players on that basis, and having that process play a large role in the composition of the teams. I don’t know that it’s any more or less silly than any other way of distributing players outside of a completely open player and franchise market.

Some of the more extreme proponents of this point of view are American leftists horrified at the prospect that any American could have any sort of pride in their country outside of Barack Obama’s presidency, and thus wring their hands about international tournaments promoting nationalism and jingoism.

If this was international soccer, and scores of people were compelled to riot because of the outcome, then I might be sympathetic to the possible dangers of national pride twisted into something else. But I didn’t see any of that at the World Baseball Classic. I didn’t see any of that at the Caribbean Series. I saw people from all over the world rooting passionately for their countries and celebrating the world’s greatest game. I am willing to bet that more pointless animosity was caused by the 2006 games between the Red Sox and Yankees than by the WBC.

The biggest danger I see, if you want to call it that, is that people will use the results of a tournament to draw unwarranted conclusions about the overall quality of baseball in the participating countries. After the US flamed out in the second round in 2006, there were a lot of snarksters scoffing that “we couldn’t even win at our own national pastime”. Regardless of the outcome of the WBC, the United States is still the world’s number one producer of baseball talent (from a gross perspective), and I believe that a team of the best American players would win the pennant in a 162 game “world league” campaign more frequently than any other nation. Whether they fail to win the WBC because of the small sample size of the tournament, lack of motivation, rebuffs by players who would improve the team, or any other factor is not going to do anything to convince me otherwise. Of course, if you want to switch from “total or top talent” to a per capita measure, then the US is not the shoe-in world #1. The point is: the WBC will determine who wins the WBC, and the result shouldn’t be extrapolated too far outside the scope of the tournament itself.

Now some of you may read that and ask, “Isn’t the belief that it proves little if anything an argument against having a tournament at all?” Fair enough, but I’d say the same thing about the World Series. Striking a balance between the desire for drama and marketing potential against the desire to have a sufficient test of strength is an ever-present challenge in all sports. And since international competition is subordinate to the MLB season itself, the difference between the two is even starker in the case of the WBC. I choose to accept the compromise and enjoy it.

4. The WBC is intended to promote baseball on a global level, but so what?

For my money, I’d like to see as many people as possible around the world exposed to baseball, and I hope they take up the game in some capacity, whether as a player or a fan. Baseball could be enjoyed and was when it was limited only to a small area of the United States, but I’d rather see the higher quality and more diverse style of play that will come with a larger talent pool.

Will the WBC be an effective way of spreading baseball? There I have my doubts. In many of the nations involved, baseball is already a major sport and I’m skeptical as to whether the WBC will increase its profile. It might help more in a country like Australia or South Africa, but how much exposure will it get there? Of course, you have to start somewhere, and nothing will be gained by not trying.

Hopefully this tournament will be as enjoyable to watch as the 2006 edition. If it is, then the seemingly presumptuous title of “Classic” will have been well-earned.

Why don’t people have WBC office pools?

Asked tongue-in-cheek, of course, but why not? As a certain other March sporting event has demonstrated, there’s nothing better to stimulate interest in a sporting event than a little friendly wagering. Your co-workers may not know anything about the Taiwanese baseball team, but how much do they know about Southwestern Arkansas A&M at Pine Bluff? The same amount--nothing. And sure, the WBC bracket is not as straightforward to fill in--you have to have the wherewithal to drop teams into loser’s brackets and reseed in the next round and the like. But come on, it would be fun, right?

So in the spirit of fun:

What's In a Name?

I was using the depth charts at sportsline.com to help guide my pre-season predictions, and happened to notice that on their team pages, they list a number of facts: location, park, owner, GM, spring training site, etc (for example, here is the Rangers page). The one that caught my eye was "World Championships". They list Oakland as having won nine world championships, which means they are counting the titles earned when the franchise was based in Philadelphia. However, the Twins are listed with just two titles, meaning that they are ignoring the 1925 victory of the Washington Senators. The Braves are listed with three, which means they counted both 1914 Boston and 1957 Milwaukee.

As others have pointed out, the matter of franchises moving causes a lot of problems for record-keepers. On the one hand, in modern times at least, it is clear that the franchise is the same. The front office personnel move, the players move, the minor league affiliates stay tethered, etc. In nineteenth century baseball it was more difficult, as sometimes a franchise would said to have been sold back to the league or to a different city (as is the case with Worcester/Philadelphia between 1882 and 1883), and some people like to consider this a franchise shift. But it is usually closer to reality in those cases to say that one club folded, and the league simply added a new club in its place.

Of course, even in the modern era it can get confusing, if the league decides to get involved as in the case of my NFL team, the Cleveland Browns. You probably know that in 1996, the Browns ceased playing, and the personnel went to Baltimore and became the Ravens. But the NFL specifically stated that all tradition, colors, and records would stay in Cleveland for whenever a replacement franchise was obtained (we’re still waiting).

There are a number of different philosophies that someone in charge of these sorts of records could adhere to; I’ll sketch out a few, but they are hardly exhaustive:

1. The franchise is the same, no matter what--this is the philosophy that most recordkeepers use. It doesn’t matter if the team moves or not, they are still the same--the Nationals retain the history of the Expos, and the Twins should be entitled to the history of the Senators.

Pros: It models the reality that these are businesses, and sometime businesses move or change their names, but fundamentally remain the same.

Cons: Do the Twins’ fans care that the Senators won the World Series in 1925? Don’t the Senators have a lot more in common with the Nationals (and the second incarnation of the Senators), even if there is no direct lineage between the two? This point of view is all business and no soul.

2. Same as #1, except you obey the league when it tells you differently. If the Browns franchise is said to be on hiatus for three years, you roll with that, even if what happened to the management and personnel of the team is no different than what happened to that of the Houston Oilers or St. Louis Cardinals.

Pros: You get a pat on the head from the commish.

Cons: What makes the case of the Browns different than the case of the Oilers? Sure, the NFL promised Cleveland a new team, but Houston got one eventually too, and Cleveland didn’t (yes, I’m bitter, and I’m going to beat this into the ground). What if the league or the team claims something absurd, like that the Cincinnati Reds we know today, which started major league play in the 1882 AA, are direct descendents of the Red Stockings of 1869?

3. The franchise is the same if they maintain roots to the first location, like retaining the nickname (this seems to be the philosophy used by Sportsline, as the Braves, A’s, Dodgers, and Giants get to retain their titles, and they also retained their nicknames. The Twins are the only team that has ever won a World Series in one city, then moved and changed their name, so we can’t check to see if they are consistent on this policy).

Pros: I have no idea.

Cons: What if the original teams had been called the Washington A’s and the Philadelphia Keystones instead of the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia A’s? Today we might well have the Minnesota A’s and the Oakland Oaks. (The Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz may dispute this point.) But would it really matter?

One complaint that has been leveled about the Giants’ move to San Francisco is that they have done a poor job of retaining the New York heritage and properly celebrating McGraw, Mathewson, and the like (I’m not making this claim myself, just repeating what I’ve heard others say--I'm not a Giants fan and am in no position to make this kind of assessment). On the other hand, the Dodgers have been praised for trying to keep their Brooklyn roots in view. Is keeping the nickname enough, if you pretend that the old history doesn’t exist or push it aside?

Nicknames, particularly in early baseball, were somewhat specious. They weren’t official, they changed on the whims of newsmen, etc. Even if they were firmly established by 1920 or so, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use them as the defining characteristic of a franchise. And what to do about name changes for teams that don’t make a geographical move? Teams like the Devil Rays have tried to change perception and tweak their identity by changing their nicknames. They are just the most recent example; the Astros nee Colt .45s are another, as were the short-lived Boston Bees and Philadelphia Blue Jays. I don’t think anyone would seriously try to claim that the 1964 Colt .45s and 1965 Astros should be looked at as different teams.

4. Make location the defining characteristic. If the team moves, the records start over, regardless of whether they keep the name or any other factor.

Pros: This viewpoint recognizes that the team's location is of paramount importance, but also recognizes that each franchise is unique, and doesn't lump seperate entities together simply because they played in the same city. It recognizes that the Oakland A's have a unique history that they started writing in 1968. You could also of course maintain a set of records for the "A's franchise", and a seperate set of Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Oakland records.

Cons: With the compromise of keeping records for the franchise overall and in just one select location, this seems to me to be the best solution, so I will certainly welcome any drawbacks you see in the comments.

5. Recognize that there are at least two distinct ways to look at it: from the perspective of the franchise, and from the perspective of the city. Have two different sets of records.

Pros: It best models reality. In one sense, the Twins clearly are the same club as the Senators. They moved and Calvin Griffith and Harmon Killebrew came along, and if you were trying to handicap the 1961 AL pennant race you wouldn’t have treated them as an unknown or as an expansion team.

And from the other perspective, Walter Johnson has nothing to do with Minnesota. Fans can take pride in their team’s history, but generally can only truly cherish what they themselves have experienced. And no one in Minneapolis in 1925 shed a tear when the Senators won it all, as they had no idea that 36 years later that franchise would shift west to their town. And Washingtonians may be old enough to remember Frank Howard’s moonshots, or were told about it by their father and have considered it their baseball heritage, even if the team they now root for used play in Montreal.

From this perspective, the modern day Browns descend from the pre-1996 Browns (but also the Cleveland Rams and Bulldogs). And the Ravens spiritual roots trace back to the Colts.

Cons: It’s confusing. It takes up more space, and sometimes there should be even more nuance (speaking from experience as Cleveland fan, no one really cares that the Rams won the NFL championship while they were here. Most people treat Cleveland pro football history as truly having begun in 1946 with the founding of the Browns. Perhaps this was different when there were still a lot of people who remembered the Rams, but it’s no longer the case). So in that case, I could add a sixth approach, which is simply to have no strict policy and to judge each case individually. That may be satisfying on some level, but for a reference work, I think most people would agree that it’s better to have clear guidelines.

Most record books go with either approach #1 or approach #4, and I have no problem with that. However, the tack taken by Sportsline (again, they're using #3, as best I can tell), which considers the Twins to have won two World Series and the Giants to have won five doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. And don’t even get me started on the fact that they completely ignore the nineteenth century.

Hunting Wolverines

On Friday, the 126th season of Ohio State baseball will begin. The first 125 years have been successful--fifteen Big Ten titles, eight Big Ten tournament titles, four College World Series appearances, and the 1966 national championship speak to that. Recent history has been quite good as well; head coach Bob Todd is now a member of the College Baseball Hall of Fame and boasts a record of 831-435-2 with seven Big Ten titles as he enters his twenty-second season as head coach. He is easily the school’s all-time winningest coach, and he also boasts the highest W% of any Buckeye leader with one hundred or more wins.

However, the luster of the program has dimmed a little big in recent seasons. The Buckeyes have finished the last two Big Ten campaigns at 15-15 and have not captured a regular season title since 2001 (although OSU has four tournament crowns in that period). Last year was particularly frustrating as the Bucks finished second in the Big Ten in EW%, but were unable to convert their run differential into wins at the expected rate. And to make matters worse, the forces of evil to the north have run roughshod over the entire Big Ten over the last two seasons.

In 2008, the OSU offense was fourth in the Big Ten with 6.6 runs/game, just ahead of the 6.5 average. In continuation of a multi-year trend, the Bucks got runners on base (.318 BA to lead the B10, .389 OBA was second by just a point), but were dreadful at advancing runners once they got there (dead last in the conference with a .093 ISO, fueled by just 19 home runs, the fewest hit by a Buckeye team since 1980). The biggest hindrance to the team’s performance over the last 3-4 years has been a lack of power. It is a glaring weakness that needs to be addressed if OSU is to emerge as a top-flight offense.

At catcher, sophomore Dan Burkhart returns for his second year. He contributed -8 RAA in 2008, and the Bucks will certainly be hoping for improvement at bat, although reviews of his work behind the plate are generally positive. At first base, senior captain Justin Miller is firmly entrenched, coming off of a season in which he led OSU in just about every important offensive category except walk rate. He also served as catcher occasionally to spell Burkhart, but committed nine passed balls in limited time and thus it’s unlikely that he will be asked to don the tools of ignorance in 2009. That leaves juniors Shawn Forsythe and sophomore DJ Hanlin as the backups with sophomore Nathan Grove and freshman David Fathalikhani also on the roster.

It is not entirely clear how the other infield positions will be filled. One certainty is that junior Cory Kovanda will be at second base; last year he emerged as an important part of the offense with a .438 OBA, fueled by a team-leading 37 walks. His double play partner will be either fellow junior Cory Rupert or sophomore Tyler Engle. Engle moved Rupert off of his shortstop position to the hot corner last year, but contributed little offensively (-12 RAA). It is possible that Rupert will play short, which would leave junior Brian DeLucia, who mashed out a RG of 8.8 (albeit in just 71 PA) at third. In any case, the primary infield reserve will be whichever of DeLucia and Engle are not in the lineup, with Engle covering the middle infield and DeLucia the corners. Other reserves include junior Ben Toussant and freshman TJ McManus at first, sophomore Matt Streng in the middle, and freshmen Brian Cypret (son of assistant coach Eric), Brad Hallburg, and Zach Nowland also on the roster.

The outfield has lost its anchor, JB Shuck, to the Astros. That leaves an opening in center field that will be filled by junior Zach Hurley, who was essentially an average hitter last season but seems to have the potential to be a lot more and had played well over the summer. He will be flanked by some combination of senior Michael Arp (who benefited from a flukish .367 BA in 2008), junior Ryan Dew (who struggled at -8 RAA despite seemingly having the talent needed to be a solid contributor), and junior college transfer Michael Stephens. The odd man out will probably see the majority of at bats at DH, although DeLucia could be in that mix as well. His JUCO stats indicate that Stephens has a good bat, although with doubles and not homer power, the Buckeyes are still missing the big power bat they so desperately need. Outfield reserves will include junior Chris Griffin and freshman David Corna (also on the roster: sophomore Brad Brookbank and freshman Joe Ciamacco).

On the mound, coach Todd will have to do a staff overhaul. Shuck and senior Dan DeLucia were the top two starters in ’08, but both were drafted and have moved on to pro ball. Another one of the four weekend starters (the change in the Big Ten schedule format means that just three weekend starters are now necessary), Jake Hale, will move into the bullpen. That leaves sophomore Dean Wolosiansky (+7 RAA) as the only sure member of the rotation. He may well be joined by fellow sophomores lefty Andrew Armstrong and righty Drew Rucinski. Both were average last season, which is promising for freshmen, but it is still a very young rotation and it’s hard to classify it as anything other than a question mark.

The bullpen will be anchored by senior Jake Hale. Hale was a starter as a freshmen, assumed the closer role as a sophomore, was moved back to starting during that season, and served as a starter last year. The roller coaster ride will continue, and it’s not a move I would make. Hale was +5 RAA last year and is a tall, lanky pitcher with plenty of endurance. Moving him to the pen seems to be something of a waste.

The rest of the pitchers will all be competing for spots as midweek starters and key relievers, although promising but wild (+6 RAA, but 31 W and 51 K in 40 IP) sophomore Alex Wimmers is a good bet to be the key right-hander in front of Hale. Eric Best, a junior lefty with a similar profile to Wimmers, could be a good complement to him but may well find himself starting.

Hopefully junior lefties Josh Barerra and Theron Minium, who each had a promising freshman campaigns but were derailed last year by injuries, can claim key roles. The other pitching options have little to no experience and are all righthanders: Taylor Barnes (JR), Ross Oltorik (FM, and also a walk-on quarterback for the football team), Eric Shinn (SO), and Jared Strayer (SO).

OSU opens the season in the first Big Ten/Big East challenge, in which they will face Notre Dame, UConn, and Cincinnati. The next weekend (beginning February 27), the Bucks will be at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville for their tournament--two games against the hosts, and single encounters with George Mason and UConn. The weekend of March 6 will see OSU in Winter Haven to face Rhode Island, Northeastern, Maine, and Central Michigan. The weekend of March 13 will feature Indiana (a non-conference encounter that will extend a string of consecutive seasons playing IU that began in 1944), Hartford, and a twin bill against Army played in West Palm Beach.

The traditional spring break trip will see the Bucks return to Winter Haven on March 20 to face Indiana again, a twin bill against Army, and Hartford. They will then move on to Orlando for a single game with Rollins and down to Coral Gables for one game against the University of Miami.

The Big Ten schedule will be significantly different this year, as the conference has moved from a four game series format (with a Saturday doubleheader consisting of two seven inning games) to single nine inning games on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Bucks open March 27 at Penn State and continue Big Ten play over the next seven weekends. The sequence will be: at Minnesota, Michigan State, at Purdue, Northwestern, the forces of evil incarnate, at Illinois, Iowa.

OSU’s home opener at Bill Davis Stadium is March 31 against Xavier, and Marshall will follow the next day. The other midweek opponents are Morehead State, Bowling Green, Ball State, Akron, @Louisville (reciprocating the Cardinals’ 2008 visit to Columbus), and Eastern Michigan.

The Big Ten tournament will open on May 20 and for the first time will be played at a non-campus site (traditionally, the regular season champion serves as tournament host if possible). Happily for the Buckeyes, that neutral site will be Huntington Park, the new downtown Columbus home of the Clippers.

There seems to be a cautious optimism among OSU fans this season, but for once, I cannot share it (usually I am extremely bullish on the prospects of all OSU sports teams). I don’t see where on the diamond the Buckeyes will be significantly improved from 2008. The offense has the potential to put up more runs, but without a significant increase in power it will be a struggle, and I don’t see where that power will come from. The pitching staff is deep and has a number of talented arms, but replacing three starters (DeLucia, Shuck, and Hale as he is the closer once again) is a difficult challenge. I certainly hope that I am wrong, but I don’t see OSU contending for the Big Ten title. However, a top six finish and the accompanying conference tournament berth should be attainable. The combination of the tournament being played on friendly turf and OSU’s recent success in the event (a win in ’09 would be the Bucks’ fourth consecutive odd year triumph; I see no predictive value in that, of course) may make a tournament run the best hope for making 2009 a memorable season in Columbus.

Numbers are Just Numbers, and That's All They Ever Were

It is my contention that if you took a systematic poll of sabermetricians or sabermetrically-inclined fans, you would find that as a group, sabermetricians are much less militant on the steroids issue than the average fan. This survey has never been taken, and it is possible that I am wrong about what it would find. I certainly am not claiming that there is a proper sabermetric position on steroids, or that there aren’t good sabermetricians who despise steroids use. But I’m going to assume that I’m right, for the sake of argument, and proceed from there.

So why is this? If I was being particularly arrogant about it, I would try to claim that sabermetricians are more logical than the average baseball fan, and that logic leads one to an apathetic position on the matter. But that would be self-serving, and it’s probably not true, even if I’d like it to be. In my own case, my steroids nonchalance is based in politics, more or less--a hatred of government regulating what people can put in their bodies (or just about anything else), a fear of invasive drug testing when it is implemented because of state edict rather than private economic concern. And none of that has anything to do with sabermetrics.

A less self-aggrandizing and more satisfying explanation (although potentially not any more plausible) is that sabermetricians are far less likely to feel violated by “tainted” records. One of the most common laments of the anti-steroids crowd is that steroids have cheapened and degraded statistics. “No longer,” they say, “can we compare the records of Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx to those of today’s great sluggers.”

And so if you have made a career largely out of pointing out frivolous, meaningless, but occasionally interesting or entertaining statistical factoids, as Jason Stark has, you just might think that the statistics themselves are of paramount importance. And so you will respond to additional steroids news by going absolutely off the reservation:

What compares to it? The Black Sox? This is worse. Game-fixing in college basketball? This is worse. Nominate any scandal in the history of sports. My vote is still that this is worse.

How detached from reason does one have to be in order to believe that players taking substances that weren’t explicitly banned by MLB in an attempt to improve their performance on the field is worse than players attempting to intentionally lose games? It is impossible for me to comprehend anyone actually believing this. If they do, I am at a loss at how to reason with them, as the worldview from which they must begin is irreconcilable with my own.

Of course, Stark does not explicitly say that his angst arises from the destruction of the numbers he enjoys so much, and if you want to accuse me of putting words in his mouth, I’ll take the arrows. But he does say:

Once, the numbers of baseball used to mean something special and magical. And the men who compiled those numbers were transcendent figures in American life.

I enjoy playing around with baseball stats, with no objective and just for sheer amusement, from time-to-time too. But I don’t kid myself about it. Those statistics were compiled in a specific time and place, with each player from year-to-year, from game-to-game even, in a unique context.

If the numbers themselves, rather than the people that compiled them and the wins they contributed to, ever were magical to you, then I have no sympathy for you. You should have known better. If you ever believed that Pete Rose collecting his 4,192nd hit (*) ever meant anything more significant than that he had compiled more hits than Ty Cobb, then you were horribly misguided. It surely didn’t make Rose a better overall player. It didn’t make Rose a better offensive player. It didn’t make Rose a better player at the isolated skill of collecting base hits. It simply meant that he had managed to collect more of them.

Having more hits or home runs does not make someone a better or more valuable baseball player. It can certainly be evidence that speaks to those questions; I am certainly a big believer in the premise that the objective record of what occurred on the field (statistics) can tell us a great deal about those questions. But the context in which they were compiled is an absolutely essential consideration. In the case of Rose versus Cobb, one factor that has to be considered is the number of opportunities each man had. Everyone inherently recognizes this one, particularly on the question of hits thanks to the ubiquitous nature of batting average. But that is far from the only contextual factor in play--the league environment and the impact of the park in which a player performs are crucial as well, and of course you can dig deeper still.

And it is that subtle distinction, the recognition of the importance of context, which marks the biggest difference between how sabermetricians view statistics and how other baseball fans view statistics. Sabermetricians are always considering context; non-sabermetricians are intermittently concerned about context, usually when the point of view they’re espousing will benefit. It’s not that they don’t understanding the importance of considering context; I think most people do. It is more a matter of not reflexively considering context, and all too often neglecting to ever consider it.

The so-called steroids era has thrust the issue into the limelight, though. Suddenly, everyone is aware that numbers can’t be taken at face value. Unfortunately, many of the fans who have recognized this may have only done it because they believe the specific player cheated or that all players must be viewed with a jaundiced eye because of their era. My hope is that it will compel some of them to always consider the era in which a man played, the parks he played in, and the way the game was played at that time.

Baseball statistics are simply counts of what a player or team has done on the field. They can be fiddled around with and enjoyed, or they can analyzed and enjoyed in an attempt to relate them to the goal of the game (which is to win), or they can be ignored. But they cannot be taken (at least not rationally) as magic numbers capable of make comparisons at face value without any interpretation.

If you lament the use of steroids because they result in an unfair advantage or are illegal or set a bad example for children, or some other reason, I disagree with you. But I don’t inherently write you off as a fool; we happen to have a difference of opinion. But as for the minority that decries the damage to the sacred records…

Stark also laments the fact that he believes a number of players who hold or held important records (Rose, Bonds, Sosa, ARod, Clemens, McGwire) will not be in the Hall of Fame. While I suppose it can be inferred that he agrees with this decision, I think it is worthy pointing out that the only way all of those men, sans Rose, will be left out of the Hall of Fame, is if Stark’s brethren in the BBWAA choose to keep them out. It is not inevitable that they be excluded--indeed, somewhere around a quarter of the voting writers are voting for McGwire. Their exclusion from the Hall will be a result of the mindset of observers, and not a natural consequence. And if you think that the identities of the players in the Hall of Fame is of grave importance…well, I’ve written about that before.

(*) Of course, Cobb is now credited with 4,189 hits, so Rose had already broken the record when he got the “historic” hit. There is a minority of people who complain about such corrections to the historical record, sometimes based on a similar mindset to the one described above: a belief in the sanctity of the records themselves.

Finally, I have two quick opinions on other aspects of the ARod story and the surrounding furor.

1. The most disturbing aspect of this story, by far, is not that ARod tested positive for steroids, it’s that a supposed non-disciplinary and anonymous round of testing was obtained by the government and leaked to the media. The real villains of this story are the leakers, and those that enabled them.

2. Even if the premise that steroids need to be removed from the game is accepted, it needs to be remembered that this test came before penalties were implemented in the rules. Therefore, it is ridiculous to use this test to draw any conclusion about the efficacy of the current testing policy or the associated penalties.

The Ten Years War

For once, I’m going to attempt to be early to address a topic instead of late. I am usually pretty reactionary; something will happen, everyone in the world will weigh in on it, and then I come in a month later when no one cares anymore (not that my take on it would have been particularly interesting if it were timely). This time, I hope to beat the rush by six or seven months.

Since we are now in 2009, I believe it is safe to assume that we will be treated to a number of pieces on “X of the decade”. The team of the decade, player of the decade, trade of the decade, left-handed sidearming reliever of the decade, etc. This is all well and good, and harmless enough; there’s nothing wrong with frivolous baseball discussions and there’s certainly nothing wrong with putting things in (short) historical perspective.

The key word is “frivolous”. Once the question is allowed to take on greater significance (like being used as a Hall of Fame argument, with Jack Morris as “Pitcher of the Eighties” (*) the prime example), then I have problems with it.

Being the best over a ten-year period is certainly a noteworthy accomplishment. The problem is that the decade approach to issue emphasizes one particular period over all others. Take for instance the fact that Mark Grace led MLB in hits for the 1990s (he had 1,754, seven more than Rafael Palmeiro). In fairness, if anyone has used this to proclaim Grace’s greatness, it has not gained much traction, but still, it sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. The next six men on the list (Palmeiro, Biggio, Gwynn, Alomar, Griffey, and Ripken) all had more career hits than Grace.

Yes, the list is for hits in the 1990s, not career hits, but this is not a case of getting Grace plus a bunch of guys near the end of their careers or just getting started. With the exception of Ripken and possibly Gwynn, the 1990s were the prime decade for all of them (and Ripken and Gwynn were both productive throughout the decade). It just so happens that for those ten seasons, Grace had a few more hits.

If you look at the ten years from 1989-1998, Grace is third with 1,731 hits, 46 behind Gwynn. The ten years from 1991-2000? Grace (1,715) and Palmeiro (1,719) trade places. So what is it exactly that makes the ten year period from 1990-1999 more important than periods offset by just one year on either side? “The ‘90s” sounds a lot better than “the ten years beginning with ‘89”, but there is no real distinction. By picking out “the ‘90s”, we get the one ten year period in which Mark Grace happened to lead the league in hits. It would be much more impressive is if you could find a player who led the league in hits over multiple ten-year periods. By not examining any other time period, Grace is held up as a singular player, when he should be viewed in a group with other ten-year hit leaders around the same time (for the ten year period beginning with 1988, the leader is Molitor; 1989--Gwynn, 1990--Grace, 1991--Palmeiro, 1992--Alomar).

Organizing history into workable periods can be helpful, but doing it based on endpoints that happen to make a nice numerical cohort (namely, the same digit in the tens place) is a crude way of doing so. If you intend to put any stock in the exercise, why not go through the trouble of dividing time on the basis of important changes in the game? It might be helpful to start a new “era” of baseball history sometime around the middle of the 90s, with events like the strike, the offensive explosion, the influx of Asian talent, the two expansions, and the purported steroids era all as possible markers of a historical shift. I’m not advocating placing too much stock in this sort of classification (for the purposes of establishing statistical leaders, not constructing a historical narrative), either, but if you must break up time into rigid segments, I believe it’s a better way to go.

I’ve been assuming throughout that the “decade” is a natural way to divide time, but who can forget the fascinating (**) arguments that erupted over what constitutes the decade? This issue popped up a lot in 1999 and 2000 as people debated when the third millennium actually began. Since there is no year zero AD (CE if you must, but if you must, please leave), if you actually start counting off ten years to define your decades, the first would be years 1-10, which would eventually lead you to 2001-2010 as the current decade. Furthermore, there’s really nothing to stop you from re-centering the entire calendar of Western Civilization and declaring that the year we call 34 BC should be year 1, and starting from there.

Don’t get me wrong; I have no qualms about calling this the year 2009. The preceding digression is just intended to drive home the point that no specific ten year period is inherently significant solely because of the digits we use to represent it.

In that vein, George Brett’s Hall of Fame plaque includes the tidbit that he was the “first player to win batting titles in three decades (1976, ’80, ’90). There have been objections to this statement on the grounds I described above--a non-negligible portion of observers claim that ’76 and ’80 are in the same decade. Regardless, it’s a fairly impressive feat, but what impresses me about it is that he had batting titles separated by fourteen years, not that the three each fell in a different decade. That’s a long time to be a candidate to lead the league in anything.

However, Ted Williams won batting titles separated by seventeen years (’41 and ’58), and Stan Musial matched Brett at fourteen (’43 and ’57). Brett still has one of the longest gaps between first and last titles, but it’s no longer a historical oddity. And Williams and Musial both won a bunch of them, not just three, the bare minimum needed to have any chance at three decades. The distinction I draw is that Brett’s feat is an ok trivia question, but a really stupid thing to put on someone’s Hall of Fame plaque.

Another issue raised by the decade family of questions is sort of related to the classic career v. peak value issue. Let’s say we were going to pick the player of the ‘00s, as of this moment (I’m writing this in January). Should our pick be the player who contributed the most value over the course of the decade? Should it be the player who was the most valuable in his decade prime, whether he played for the whole decade or not? Should it be the best player, over the course of a full career, for whom this was his most productive decade, even if somebody was more productive in this decade. If you use the first definition, then Jack Morris is a *potential* choice for pitcher of the 80s, and Roger Clemens is probably a poor choice. If you use the second definition, then Clemens or Dwight Gooden is probably your guy (please don’t argue with me on the specific names here; I don’t care and I didn’t check to see which I would pick if I had to). If you use the third definition, you could make an argument along the lines of “I think Hank Aaron was more valuable than Willie Mays in the 1960s, but I also think Mays was a more valuable player over the course of their entire careers, and therefore Mays is the player of the ‘60s.”

If you think it should be the player who added the most value in the decade, period, then what do you do about Albert Pujols (let alone Barry Bonds)? Ignoring fielding (but considering position), I have Alex Rodriguez at 70 WAR and Pujols at 71 WAR for 2000-2008 (those figures are a little higher than most, because I’m using a lower RPW than most people; the specific numbers aren’t really the point). That is too close to call, but consider that Pujols did not play at all in 2000. What if ARod was at 75 WAR and Pujols at 71? That’s still well within a margin of error, but it would make it makes ignoring ARod’s advantage a little tougher. A one win difference is easy to waive off with “He did that in eight seasons rather than nine, but one extra season of 4 WAR is a darn good season.

Another point which should be obvious but that I’ll mention anyway is that the used of a fixed decade period can be a boon to players based on their birthdays. ARod, born in 1975, went from 25 to 34 in the 00s. This is a good ten-year stretch to have considered, as it safely includes his expected peak seasons and avoids seasons in which he would be very young or very old. What about a player like Hanley Ramirez, though? Born in 1983, the 00s are his age 17-26 seasons. And the 10s will be his age 27-36 seasons. Even if Ramirez is the best something (shortstop, maybe even player) in the majors over a legitimate stretch, there is a non-negligible chance that he will never be the “shortstop of the decade” simply because of how his age corresponds to the definition of decade in use.

I chose to highlight ARod/Pujols precisely because it’s so close that it’s easy to justify Pujols if you’d like. But what happens when the difference in playing time is more profound? I previously mentioned Roger Clemens v. Jack Morris for “pitcher of the 80s”. Do Clemens’ brilliant seasons make him better, or do you go with Morris because it’s hard to take a 95-45 pitcher over a 162-119 pitcher? We can all agree that Clemens was a much greater pitcher than Morris, and over each of their best ten-year periods, but if we limit ourselves strictly to just 1980-89, we almost are forced to honor Morris and not Clemens.

The career v. peak issue is a legitimate one, one which is largely a matter of personal preference and on which many reasonable people arrive at very different preferences. Why muddy the waters even more by forcing comparisons into arbitrary timeframes?

My protestations aside, the end of the year figures to yield an explosion of “X of the decade” stories. Hopefully, they will be offered in the spirit of fun, not profundity, and everything will be kept in perspective. The good news is that it’s just baseball, not a war, and so the worst thing that can happen is that we get treated to a number of ridiculous and overly serious choices from the media and groups of fans. Like the Sporting News choosing Pete Rose as “Player of the ‘70s” over two superior teammates. Or the players selecting Ken Griffey, not Barry Bonds, as “Player of the ‘90s”. And who could forget the “All-Century Team”, in which a group of experts had to be impaneled to avoid leaving Lefty Grove, Christy Mathewson, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, and Hans Wagner off the team in favor of Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, Ken Griffey, Bob Gibson, and Ernie Banks? I’ll embrace these opportunities to chuckle, even as I shake my head at the thought-process that generates them.

(*) Tango wrote a piece for the Hardball Times about Jack Morris and the “Pitcher of the Eighties”, which addresses the arbitrary definition of a decade and the silly emphasis placed on it.

(**) Fascinating in the sense of arguing over the pronunciation of "tomato".

The National Pastime Almanac is a very handy tool for answering questions like “Who had the most hits between years X and Y”, and it was the source for the data in this piece. If you are not a database whiz and like to fiddle around with the numbers, I highly recommend it. And it’s free.