Desecrating Memories of Youth: Tom Boswell And (Evil) Numbers

I kinda lost baseball for a few years in my teens. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the sport, indeed I still played it at the time, but the professional game had started to bore me. The preponderance of writing done about the sport in newspapers (this was for the most part pre-internet) just got old. The same story lines were ascribed to players repeatedly, and after a while, it just got to be like following a soap opera. So-and-so is good, so-and-so is bad/evil, so-and-so plays the game like it should be played (what ever that means) blah blah blah crap crap crap. In a word: boring.

Then I discovered statistical analysis, and baseball re-opened up to me. Who really was good and who really wasn’t were now questions with actual answers. Even if the answers are disputable, the idea that there should be some factual evidence cited to prove what one thought was a novel one.

This is why sportswriters who actively denigrate statistical analysis really piss me off: its straight anti-intellectualism. Its small-minded people afraid of ‘numbers’ protecting what they see as their turf. Joe Morgan is the perfect example of this. Sad to say this but Tom Boswell is another example.

I grew up reading Boswell write about baseball in the Washington Post. Although my childhood home of DC (actually the suburbs) never had a team, I always felt Bos did a great job telling the stories that surrounded the players, teams, and seasons.

Despite that, Boswell’s has really gone off the deep end. His recent comments about the National League MVP were bad enough, but apparently ol’ Bos still hasn’t got the message as evidenced by an answer that he provided in his weekly chat at WashingtonPost.com.

Centreville, Va.: Hi Tom - at work so I can't look it up, but my memory is that folks like Bill James, etc. would argue that Rice's success was due in large part to where he was in the batting order. Good BA, but not a very good OBP and the RBIs a function of having people on IFO him. I think their argument was that Rice wasn't really the best hitter on the Red Sox -- not as good as, say, Dwight Evans. Comments?

The questioner is referencing former Boston Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice, who is a candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is significant because Rice’s candidacy is one of those things that has become an attack point between those who embrace statistical analysis and those who don’t.

A bit of background: Rice was a home run hitter for the Red Sox in the 1970’s. His primary skill was hitting home runs. He did not do a whole lot else. For some reason, many sportswriters think he should be in the hall of fame. This isn’t to dismiss his career, but there really isn’t much actual evidence that can be used to support Rice’s candidacy. Of course, evidence isn’t necessary for some writers, like… well, I’ll let him dig is own hole.

Tom Boswell: Just rewatched the "Hank Greenberg Story" on TV. One of his teammates said that the thing he loved most in life, including women (he was a "matinee idol" type) was RBI. Greenberg was very articulate (as always) talking about the value of hitting in the clutch, how most games turned on a few key at bats and how the big HIT, not the big home run, necessarily, was the most important thing in baseball.

-What Hank Greenberg thought about RBIs as a statistic is really beside the point, but Boswell feels it’s somehow germane.

The walk and on-base percentage were underrated for generations. I was one of the (many) people who beat the drum for its importance. But it is now overrated. I have no doubt of it. It's just another insight that, over time, become a cliché until, finally, it is blindly worshiped.

-I don’t like using capital letters when writing. It’s almost always not necessary, but that said: There is NO WAY on-base percentage is over rated. No way. On-base percentage is the single most important offensive stat in baseball. The batter’s primary goal when hitting is to get on base, or to be more general, not to make an out. Outs are baseball’s clock, and when you make an out the clock moves forward. I once read (and forgive me for not remember where I heard this) before three outs anything is possible, but after three outs nothing is. That should sum up how valuable outs are. On-base percentage, the measure of how frequently a player uses up his team’s most valuable possession, is vital. There is no arguing this.

Over the decades, stats change much less than I'd have thought. It seems that, despite what coaches or teams may prefer in hitting styles, baseball players draw just as many -- or as few -- walks as they ever did. Some players walk more than others. It is their baseball "nature."

-This is a curious thing to bring up in reference to Jim Rice potentially entering the Hall of Fame. One of the major tenants of the pro-Rice people is that Rice didn’t have a high on-base percentage because it wasn’t a part of the game that was emphasized when he played. In other words, Rice should get a mulligan on this because of the era he played in. Of course, this ignores many players who did have high on-base percentages in the same era, but we’ll leave that point alone to concentrate on another.

Boswell says that the number of walks given out over the years has been relatively static (at least I think that’s what he is saying). If this is true, and I don’t know where to look something like this up or for that matter if Boswell has bothered to account for more players and more teams, etc., it would seem to suggest that some players are good at getting on-base (i.e. have a high on-base percentage) and some aren’t regardless of era. If we accept that getting on base is important then we have to conclude that Rice was one of those players who did a bad job of this*, and the era he played in had nothing to do with it. This would seem to be a reason to keep Rice out of the Hall, not to put him into it.

And some drive in runs better than others. If you asked everybody in the Hall of Fame what they thought of the idea that a player -- Rice -- might be kept out of the Hall, despite great RBI, total base and batting average stats, because he didn't WALK enough, they wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. And they'd be right.

-Lets break this down. According to Boswell, Rice should be in because:

1. Rice drove in runs, i.e. got lots of RBIs
2. Rice had many total bases
3. Rice had a high batting average
4. Everybody in the Hall of Fame thinks Rice should be in

I think we can dismiss reason #4 as plain stupid and irrelevant. Reason #3 is just plain incorrect. Rice had a .298 lifetime batting average, which isn't awful, but is never high. Point #2, many total bases, is likely to be incorrect too, because players with high on-base percentages are often the ones who have the most total bases. Also of note is that Rice played in the 1970's and 1980's, an era defined by less offense, so he would likely be hurt (unfairly) by comparing his total bases to some other players.

Point #1 is bullshit because RBIs are a stupid stat. RBIs as a pure counting stat are pretty worthless in determining who is and who isn't a good hitter. RBIs are much more function of the lineup and where in the lineup a player plays. For example, take any player and put them in the middle of the Phillies lineup. They would get a lot of RBIs even if they weren't a good hitter simply because there would be many players on base when they came to bat. Now take that same player and put them in the Pirates lineup. Their RBI total would be greatly decreased because they simply wouldn't have the same number of chances to drive in a run.

Anyway, this is way too much to write about some stupid comment a sportswriter made in an 0n-line chat, but when you've spent the last three weeks cleaning poop out of babies butt holes, well, over analyzing baseball stats seems like a pretty good time.

* This is to say that Rice did a bad job relative to other Hall of Famers. This is always my baseline in this discussion – none of this is meant to say that Jim Rice was a bad player – just that he isn’t a Hall of Famer, i.e. not one of the best to ever play the game.