From: spira@panix.com (Greg "Sarcasm Is A Way Of Life" Spira)
Subject: Re: Value of Stats
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 06:09:06 GMT
Organization: Boo! 

In <5091@transfer.stratus.com> jmann@vineland.pubs.stratus.com (Jim Mann) writes:

[Jim, I'm using your post as a reference, and I'm discussing some of
the stuff you bring up, but this isn't really a direct response to
what you wrote; it's more a rambling essay on some relevant points]

>One thing I never understand in these arguments is why somehow
>baseball should be different than everything else. We all use 
>intagibles to judge lots of things, so why shouldn't they count,
>at least in part, in judging a player.

Well, to be honest, I try not to use intangibles to judge anything.  I think
they tend to cloud my judgment in cases where there is other stuff to go
on.

But I think here we should throw out the word "intangibles."  Its a silly
word, and I don't think it really properly defines what you're talking
about.        

Let me just throw a few ideas out:

In trying to define the best player, all we're trying to do is define who
does the most to help the team win.  You can only win on the field, and you
win by outscoring your opponent.  So all that we're interested in is the
contributions of a player towards the goal of helping his team score more
runs or helping to limit the opposition's scoring.  Therefore, all
contributions of a player must show up in the statistics.

So the question is, then, can player A help player B improve his statistics?
I think that's the key question here.  Player As contributions have to show
up in statistics, but they don't necessarily have to show up in his own
statistics. 

Now, the most obvious way for Player A to do that is by coaching.  One
example of a player helping his team through other player's statistics
is what Mike Boddicker did in Boston - he helped out Greg Harris a lot,
and he also helped out Dana Kiecker, whose only decent year came when
Boddicker was around.

I suspect that kind of coaching from players is relatively rare, but
not non-existent.  I suspect pitchers are more likely to do this kind
of thing than hitters.

Next we get into more vague stuff - players who help set the tone of
the clubhouse, players who provide an example of a good work ethic for
others, etc.  I'm a lot more skeptical of this kind of stuff.  I don't
think that certain clubhouse atmosphers (happy, cherry, everybody
gets along) are any more likely to produce a winning team than other
clubhouse atmospheres (everybody hates each other's guts, the manager
is slime).  I think that different players are better off with different
atmospheres.  I also tend to think that major leaguers are professionals,
and they can do their job without having clubhouse conditions affect their
performance all that much.  That is probably more true today than in the
past because baseball teams don't function nearly as much as a social unit
as they used to.  

  In our jobs we certainly
>judge people that way.   If, for example, there is a software
>engineer, say, who not only does his/her job, but is prone
>to help others in time of need, be an information resource to
>the department or company, go out of his/her way to help on extra,
>people-oriented work (volunteer work on the department policy task
>force, or whatever), and so forth.  I would expect this engineer
>to be more highly valued (and more highly paid) than the engineer
>who does his/her job but nothing more.  And one of the reasons we
>do value the former engineer more is that he/she is not only
>performing well but helping to raise the performance level of
>others in the office.

>Why should the same count in baseball?  Shouldn't we value the 
>player who likes to give pointers to his teammates, who helps
>establish a work ethic in the clubhouse, and so forth?

>I agree that these things are harder to evaluate, and that we 
>are more likely to be wrong in that part of our evaluation than
>on the part of the evaluation that is just based on statistics,
>but that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying.

Well, if our judgments are so off that we could randomly assign "good
presence" and "bad presence" to players and be right just as often, I
think it isn't worth trying.  And since we are forced to view things
through the warped perceptive of the media and through who is able (and 
wants to) look good by promoting themselves, I tend to think that that
just might be true.

And since, frankly, all indications show that these things really don't 
play a major effect on who is winning, I just don't see the point.  On
the rare occassions when there is seems to be a clear effect, it's certainly
worth looking at.  But most of this stuff that we read about seems to be
the result of the media needing some kind of explanation for events that
don't have any.

And when do we look for evidence that the psychological stuff that the
media talks about is there, we usually can't find it.  The best example
is the so-called "hot hand," which always fails to show up anywhere.
For reasons like that, I think most of the analyst types here are very
skeptical of the psychological explanations that are harder to test out.

Speaking of which, I'd just like to take the time to recommend a book that
, while it has nothing to do with baseball, is somewhat relevant.  It's
called "How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility Of Human Reason In
Everyday Life" It's by Thomas Glovich.  It's all about how "even highly
educated people become convinced of the validity of questionable or
demonstrably false beliefs about the world, and the unfortunate impact
of those beliefs."  Part of the book focuses on "our tendencies to impute 
too much order to random phenomena; to 'sharpen' the central points of
stories while we "level" or omit important qualifications and situational
details, and to remember only positive instances while we forget
nonconfirming negative ones."   Okay, it sounds weird, but it's about a
lot of the same stuff that is talked about here; it's just that baseball
isn't used as a reference or example.   

Greg 
-- 
  spira@panix.com       "The one-O delivery to Fisk.  He swings.  Long drive,  
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