More Nonsense On Race And Sabermetrics

It's one thing when a politically correct newspaper like the Toronto Star lets it's own preconceptions about race mingle with ignorance of Sabermetrics to produce twaddle disguised as journalism.  But it's another thing entirely when ESPN, the so-called "worldwide leader in sports," lets that sort of garbage see the light of day.

What I'm talking about is an article that appeared on ESPN.com's Page 2 yesterday by Ralph Wiley.  In it, he set out to write about why Baseball seems to be dying in so many African-American neighborhoods around the U.S.  That's a worthy topic that merits discussion, but in the midst of an endless article (Does anyone edit Wiley at ESPN? Perhaps no one dares?), Wiley can't resist the urge to tar Sabermetrics with an unfounded accusation of racism.

There's a lot going on here, but lets take one thing at a time. Near as I can tell (and his reasoning here is tough to follow), Wiley seems to be implying that James has used Sabermetric analysis to "devalue" Henderson's impact on the game because he's Black:

It is usually the American-born blacks' records and place that are resented instead of celebrated.  For example, it's the stolen base that is denigrated as a weapon by baseball sabermaticians like Bill James, at precisely the time when a Rickey Henderson steals 130 bases in a season. There are sour grapes when a baseball man uses stats to tell you a stolen base isn't important. Any time a baseball manager will give up an out for a base, as with a sac bunt or groundball to the right side, any time a base is so precious, then it goes without saying that the stolen base must be important. Not the CS, the caught stealing, or stats of success rates, but the stolen base itself.

So Rickey Henderson becomes, in the media and our oral history of the day, a bad guy, "this guy," who did something meaningless, and refers to himself in the third person and, oh yeah (with a decidedly sour look), maybe the best leadoff hitter ever, whatever that means. Barry Bonds becomes somebody who is excoriated for the limitations of his personality, even though we do not know him as a late-night talk-show host, but as a big-league baseball player. That skill set is all that should matter. But anything to keep from judging him on those merits.

Even a relative Sabermetric neophyte like myself knows the following:

As Sabermetric theory has developed, it has been determined that outs, not bases, are the most precious commodity;

The most important components in determining run production is a combination of on base percentage and slugging average;

Further, Sabermetrics has determined not that stolen bases are worthless, but rather that they hurt overall run production unless your team can steal a base better than 70 percent of the time;

Finally, James and his cohorts do not claim that speed is worthless -- instead, they simply have determined that it is a rare commodity, and that the current market for baseball talent puts its price at a premium. Hence, if you are running a team on a tight budget, you probably can't affford to purchase it, and need to stick to the basic building blocks of run production (hits, walks, extra-base hits) and avoid outs, in particular, strikeouts.

With this in mind, lets take a look at Henderson's career stats and see how Sabermetrics judges his career. On the stolen base front, some quick math determines that Henderson has been successful stealing bases a little bit better than 80 percent lifetime -- well over the 70 percent threshold.

When it comes to on base percentage, Henderson has a solid career mark of .402, and has been in the top ten, 16 times in his 24-year career. His mark is so high, in part, because he knows how to be patient at the plate and take a walk. In fact, Henderson has more walks than anyone else in the history of Baseball, at 2,179.

Henderson is a Sabermetrician's dream ballplayer. And in James' latest work, entitled Win Shares Henderson absolutely gets his due, with one of the highest scores in the history of the game at 534. Ahead of him at 572, is Bonds.

If Wiley wants to make the case that both Bonds and Henderson are getting a bad break from the press and Baseball historians because they're Black, I might disagree, but nothing I've read would preclude him from making that case.

What's inexcusable, however, is that once again, Sabermetrics, an impartial tool that's being used to better understand the game of Baseball, is being painted as a tool of racists. For some reason, this is a meme that seems to be gaining traction in Baseball circles, and its important to call it out for what it is: garbage.

Eric 01:35 AM

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