Sunday, September 25, 2005
Winning Isn't Everything
Why is it that sports broadcasting is dominated by former players? Honestly, it doesn't make any sense, at least not from the perspective of trying to give the best commentary to viewers. I've ranted and raved about the stupidity of the ESPN football broadcast team (and my Redskins fandom does not prevent me from seeing the Joe Theismann is an idiot, although Paul Maguire is worse. I do not know if Maguire is a formal player, but he's so unbelievably stupid that I can't imagine he's not. I just looked: He was.) but it's not just them. They're just one of the best examples of inept announcers.
I'm not saying that ex-players shouldn't announce at all. But it's pretty clear that they aren't employed due to their announcing skill. Rather, many former players seem to have been hired as announcers because of their names. Isn't it strange that most of the big market announcers are players that were really good, or at least moderately popular? In baseball, it's Joe Morgan, Rob Dibble, Jeff Brantley. In football, it's guys like Theismann. Of course, there are some relatively unknown players that become announcers, but that's because they're actually good announcers. Harold Reynolds is a good example of this. In general, it's pretty safe to say that the better the player, the worse announcer they make.
Why shouldn't players be announcers? Because most of them are delusional about their playing days. They're (usually) not delusional about how good they are, but rather WHY they were that good. One of the great things about the technology we have these days is how it's allowed us to store and analyze data. With the internet, it's become possible for many different people to access statistical data, and understand some of the details about these sports really work.
A fantastic example of this is the "Moneyball" phenomenon. "Moneyball" is an outstanding book that dissects how the Oakland A's, with their tightly constrained budget, are able to compete, year-in, year-out, with teams that have two or three times the money available. One of their tools is detailed statistical analysis. The book describes, in detail, how Billy Beane, the GM of the team, figured out how to beat an unfair game. He determined that data on college pitchers was more useful than high school pitchers. He determined the value of players that took a lot of pitcher per at-bat. And, of course, he popularized the use of on-base percentage as an important statistic. Billy Beane actually used to be a professional baseball player. (However, he wasn't that good, which might be a reason why he's an effective analyst.) But the central message of his book was that you need intelligent analysis to determine what qualities are undervalued in the market if you're on a constrained budget. Pretty simple concept, actually, but hard to execute.
"Moneyball" is a compelling book, but it doesn't have all the answers. The A's still haven't won the World Series, so clearly it's not perfect. (Beane chalks that up to the randomness inherent in playing a short playoff series.) But what's amusing to watch the backlash against "Moneyball". Many pundits claimed that Beane's success was really just due to him having three fantastic pitchers. This year, he traded two of them, and they're still in the playoff race. It's almost like people are itching to see him fail.
Why do some people detest "Moneyball" so much? Well, the other month I was listening to a baseball show on the radio, and Larry Bowa was on. He's a part-time analyst for Baseball Tonight, and also a former All-Star and, more recently, a former Phillies manager. He was ranting against "Moneyball", and was quite incoherent. He talked about how on-base percentage was B.S., and how winning in the playoffs wasn't randomness. He poo-poo'ed the importance of taking walks, and just generally sounded pissed off that such a thing was ever suggested. A caller then asked him if he had ever read the book, and he replied that no, he hadn't. He said that he would never waste his time reading a book that claimed all of the things it claimed. The caller tore Bowa apart, telling him how the book was really about determining which commodities were undervalued in the market and exploiting those inefficiencies. Bowa continued, saying "the playoffs aren't about luck", and "who cares about taking walks?" He basically sounded like a bitter idiot.
So why was Bowa so pissed off? Why do Theismann and Maguire spout so much nonsense about "being tough", and blitzing all the time? Why does Tim McCarver rave about Derek Jeter during the playoffs every single chance he gets? Because it all feeds into this idea that great players have "something special" about them. This special thing is unquantifiable, and lives deep down in their souls. It can't be described by something as pedestrian as statistics. Really, it's self-aggrandizement, although I don't think it's on a conscious level.
With fantasy sports, a hobby that pretty much is based solely on statistical analysis, becoming more and more popular, the rift seems to be growing. But it's a tough line to tread. Lately, the NFL has been showing screens on its "top fantasy performer" during the games, and once in a while you'll hear an announcer snap and talk about how fantasy sports is completely unrelated to the real thing. (The particular example I saw today involved one announcer mentioning that fantasy owner had ranked a certain wide receiver pretty highly during their "drafts", and then he wondered if maybe that should have been a sign to the public that he was due to play well. The other announcer responded "no" in a quite disdainful manner.)
I'm certainly no professional, but I've played enough organized sports at various levels of competitiveness to understand the "code" that athletes seem to have. They like to believe that sports come down to willpower, spirit, and of course some talent. But the fact is that's it's some talent, and a significant amount of intelligence. Athletes don't want to believe that some nerd behind a keyboard might know a little more about the strategy of the game than they do, but it's slowly becoming that way. Teams that accept this, like the Boston Red Sox, who hired stat guru Bill James last year, will be able to succeed. Teams that hire Larry Bowa will not. (The Phillies canned him last year - lo and behold, they're making a playoff run this year. Of course, that might have nothing to do with stats, and more to do with the fact that he's an asshole.)
I guess ultimately, I'm not a big fan of those who delude themselves, but usually it's rather harmless. But announcer stupidity extends beyond just annoying me by stating stupid platitudes. In the case of the Cy Young award, deserving athletes get slighted because of moronic pundits. The Cy Young award is supposed to go the best pitcher in each league. There are a number of good statistics that can be used to determine who the best pitcher is: Earned Run Average (ERA), Walks and Hits Per Innings Pitched (WHIP), Strikeouts per 9 Innings (K/9), or what have you. But there's one statistic that's pretty poor for determining pitcher quality: Wins.
Seems pretty counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Shouldn't Wins measure how good a pitcher is at accomplishing his goal, namely, winning? Well, no. But it's that simplistic reasoning that leads Wins to be a huge factor in Cy Young voting, and it's a shame. The fact of the matter is that winning a baseball game depends on two things: How many runs your opponent scores, and how many runs your team scores. But here's the thing: Pitchers can only control how many runs the opponents score. (Let's ignore pitchers hitting for now.) That's what all these statistics measure.
This year is a good example of why the Wins argument is stupid. Chris Carpenter is having a fantastic season, and has a 2.71 ERA, with a 21-5 record. Roger Clemens is having an amazing season, with a 1.89 ERA, but only a 12-8 record. He's given up about 50 less hits than Carpenter. Is it his fault that his team is only scoring 3.57 runs per start, compared to St. Louis' 5.42 runs in Carpenter's starts? Of course not.
Why do people care about wins? Maybe it's just because the name of the stat is erroneous. It should be "Games Won In Pitcher's Starts". Good ol' GWIPS. Pundits wouldn't vote for a guy just because of something silly like GWIPS, would they? What kind of logic leads them to vote for the guy with more Wins, even though he clearly had the inferior pitching year? The same kind of logic that leads Larry Bowa to believe that "Moneyball" is crap. The common phrase is "good pitchers know how to win". How, exactly, does that work? Do the best pitchers somehow pitch better when the other team has scored more runs than their team is capable of scoring? Are they telepaths, so they know when to "bear down", because their team won't score any more? Maybe some pitchers are just such jackasses that their teammates refuse to score more runs for them to get them the win. Maybe the best pitchers are just so inspiring that they can guide a team to victory by sheer force of will. Of course, it's all crap, and that kind of thinking just feeds into the "superhuman athlete" mythos. And Poor Roger Clemens gets slighted. Of course, Clemens is precisely the kind of tough jock guy that wouldn't vote for himself in this situation anyways, so maybe it's all justified.
By the way, I do think that there's more to the analysis of sports and sports strategy than just armchair quarterbacking and managing. I do think that one can't quite understand the intricacies of certain sports unless one's played them. Furthermore, I'm confident that there are very deep sorts of analyses going on at the highest level, ones that I can't even understand. It's those details I'd like to hear about more from players. I want to know about the game within the game. I want to know what causes a shortstop to scoot two inches over to the right when a certain batter comes up to the plate. Those types of insights are valuable, and that's why you should have an ex-player sitting in the back of the broadcast booth, only offering little nuggets of wisdom when spoken to. And they should be wired up to electrodes and shocked whenever they utter some nonsense like "defense wins championships" or "he's a leader because he's a clutch hitter". (By the way, if the Yankees do manage to make the playoffs this year, expect to repeatedly hear about how Mariano Rivera is the greatest clutch closer ever, and ignoring him blowing the 2001 World Series Game 7, or the 2004 ALCS Game 4, or the first couple of games this year against the Red Sox. Here's the deal: He's a great pitcher. That's it. No better or worse in the clutch. Just like Jeter.)
Maybe the sports are worried about becoming too "wonky", and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator intentionally: That wouldn't surprise me. At least, it allows me to be entertained by sites like Fire Joe Morgan and Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who basically exist to point out the stupidity of conventional sports wisdom. Eventually, we might go too far towards statistical analysis and lose the "soul" of the game", but as long as Cy Young voters still believe that Wins are everything, I think that's a long way off.
I'm not saying that ex-players shouldn't announce at all. But it's pretty clear that they aren't employed due to their announcing skill. Rather, many former players seem to have been hired as announcers because of their names. Isn't it strange that most of the big market announcers are players that were really good, or at least moderately popular? In baseball, it's Joe Morgan, Rob Dibble, Jeff Brantley. In football, it's guys like Theismann. Of course, there are some relatively unknown players that become announcers, but that's because they're actually good announcers. Harold Reynolds is a good example of this. In general, it's pretty safe to say that the better the player, the worse announcer they make.
Why shouldn't players be announcers? Because most of them are delusional about their playing days. They're (usually) not delusional about how good they are, but rather WHY they were that good. One of the great things about the technology we have these days is how it's allowed us to store and analyze data. With the internet, it's become possible for many different people to access statistical data, and understand some of the details about these sports really work.
A fantastic example of this is the "Moneyball" phenomenon. "Moneyball" is an outstanding book that dissects how the Oakland A's, with their tightly constrained budget, are able to compete, year-in, year-out, with teams that have two or three times the money available. One of their tools is detailed statistical analysis. The book describes, in detail, how Billy Beane, the GM of the team, figured out how to beat an unfair game. He determined that data on college pitchers was more useful than high school pitchers. He determined the value of players that took a lot of pitcher per at-bat. And, of course, he popularized the use of on-base percentage as an important statistic. Billy Beane actually used to be a professional baseball player. (However, he wasn't that good, which might be a reason why he's an effective analyst.) But the central message of his book was that you need intelligent analysis to determine what qualities are undervalued in the market if you're on a constrained budget. Pretty simple concept, actually, but hard to execute.
"Moneyball" is a compelling book, but it doesn't have all the answers. The A's still haven't won the World Series, so clearly it's not perfect. (Beane chalks that up to the randomness inherent in playing a short playoff series.) But what's amusing to watch the backlash against "Moneyball". Many pundits claimed that Beane's success was really just due to him having three fantastic pitchers. This year, he traded two of them, and they're still in the playoff race. It's almost like people are itching to see him fail.
Why do some people detest "Moneyball" so much? Well, the other month I was listening to a baseball show on the radio, and Larry Bowa was on. He's a part-time analyst for Baseball Tonight, and also a former All-Star and, more recently, a former Phillies manager. He was ranting against "Moneyball", and was quite incoherent. He talked about how on-base percentage was B.S., and how winning in the playoffs wasn't randomness. He poo-poo'ed the importance of taking walks, and just generally sounded pissed off that such a thing was ever suggested. A caller then asked him if he had ever read the book, and he replied that no, he hadn't. He said that he would never waste his time reading a book that claimed all of the things it claimed. The caller tore Bowa apart, telling him how the book was really about determining which commodities were undervalued in the market and exploiting those inefficiencies. Bowa continued, saying "the playoffs aren't about luck", and "who cares about taking walks?" He basically sounded like a bitter idiot.
So why was Bowa so pissed off? Why do Theismann and Maguire spout so much nonsense about "being tough", and blitzing all the time? Why does Tim McCarver rave about Derek Jeter during the playoffs every single chance he gets? Because it all feeds into this idea that great players have "something special" about them. This special thing is unquantifiable, and lives deep down in their souls. It can't be described by something as pedestrian as statistics. Really, it's self-aggrandizement, although I don't think it's on a conscious level.
With fantasy sports, a hobby that pretty much is based solely on statistical analysis, becoming more and more popular, the rift seems to be growing. But it's a tough line to tread. Lately, the NFL has been showing screens on its "top fantasy performer" during the games, and once in a while you'll hear an announcer snap and talk about how fantasy sports is completely unrelated to the real thing. (The particular example I saw today involved one announcer mentioning that fantasy owner had ranked a certain wide receiver pretty highly during their "drafts", and then he wondered if maybe that should have been a sign to the public that he was due to play well. The other announcer responded "no" in a quite disdainful manner.)
I'm certainly no professional, but I've played enough organized sports at various levels of competitiveness to understand the "code" that athletes seem to have. They like to believe that sports come down to willpower, spirit, and of course some talent. But the fact is that's it's some talent, and a significant amount of intelligence. Athletes don't want to believe that some nerd behind a keyboard might know a little more about the strategy of the game than they do, but it's slowly becoming that way. Teams that accept this, like the Boston Red Sox, who hired stat guru Bill James last year, will be able to succeed. Teams that hire Larry Bowa will not. (The Phillies canned him last year - lo and behold, they're making a playoff run this year. Of course, that might have nothing to do with stats, and more to do with the fact that he's an asshole.)
I guess ultimately, I'm not a big fan of those who delude themselves, but usually it's rather harmless. But announcer stupidity extends beyond just annoying me by stating stupid platitudes. In the case of the Cy Young award, deserving athletes get slighted because of moronic pundits. The Cy Young award is supposed to go the best pitcher in each league. There are a number of good statistics that can be used to determine who the best pitcher is: Earned Run Average (ERA), Walks and Hits Per Innings Pitched (WHIP), Strikeouts per 9 Innings (K/9), or what have you. But there's one statistic that's pretty poor for determining pitcher quality: Wins.
Seems pretty counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Shouldn't Wins measure how good a pitcher is at accomplishing his goal, namely, winning? Well, no. But it's that simplistic reasoning that leads Wins to be a huge factor in Cy Young voting, and it's a shame. The fact of the matter is that winning a baseball game depends on two things: How many runs your opponent scores, and how many runs your team scores. But here's the thing: Pitchers can only control how many runs the opponents score. (Let's ignore pitchers hitting for now.) That's what all these statistics measure.
This year is a good example of why the Wins argument is stupid. Chris Carpenter is having a fantastic season, and has a 2.71 ERA, with a 21-5 record. Roger Clemens is having an amazing season, with a 1.89 ERA, but only a 12-8 record. He's given up about 50 less hits than Carpenter. Is it his fault that his team is only scoring 3.57 runs per start, compared to St. Louis' 5.42 runs in Carpenter's starts? Of course not.
Why do people care about wins? Maybe it's just because the name of the stat is erroneous. It should be "Games Won In Pitcher's Starts". Good ol' GWIPS. Pundits wouldn't vote for a guy just because of something silly like GWIPS, would they? What kind of logic leads them to vote for the guy with more Wins, even though he clearly had the inferior pitching year? The same kind of logic that leads Larry Bowa to believe that "Moneyball" is crap. The common phrase is "good pitchers know how to win". How, exactly, does that work? Do the best pitchers somehow pitch better when the other team has scored more runs than their team is capable of scoring? Are they telepaths, so they know when to "bear down", because their team won't score any more? Maybe some pitchers are just such jackasses that their teammates refuse to score more runs for them to get them the win. Maybe the best pitchers are just so inspiring that they can guide a team to victory by sheer force of will. Of course, it's all crap, and that kind of thinking just feeds into the "superhuman athlete" mythos. And Poor Roger Clemens gets slighted. Of course, Clemens is precisely the kind of tough jock guy that wouldn't vote for himself in this situation anyways, so maybe it's all justified.
By the way, I do think that there's more to the analysis of sports and sports strategy than just armchair quarterbacking and managing. I do think that one can't quite understand the intricacies of certain sports unless one's played them. Furthermore, I'm confident that there are very deep sorts of analyses going on at the highest level, ones that I can't even understand. It's those details I'd like to hear about more from players. I want to know about the game within the game. I want to know what causes a shortstop to scoot two inches over to the right when a certain batter comes up to the plate. Those types of insights are valuable, and that's why you should have an ex-player sitting in the back of the broadcast booth, only offering little nuggets of wisdom when spoken to. And they should be wired up to electrodes and shocked whenever they utter some nonsense like "defense wins championships" or "he's a leader because he's a clutch hitter". (By the way, if the Yankees do manage to make the playoffs this year, expect to repeatedly hear about how Mariano Rivera is the greatest clutch closer ever, and ignoring him blowing the 2001 World Series Game 7, or the 2004 ALCS Game 4, or the first couple of games this year against the Red Sox. Here's the deal: He's a great pitcher. That's it. No better or worse in the clutch. Just like Jeter.)
Maybe the sports are worried about becoming too "wonky", and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator intentionally: That wouldn't surprise me. At least, it allows me to be entertained by sites like Fire Joe Morgan and Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who basically exist to point out the stupidity of conventional sports wisdom. Eventually, we might go too far towards statistical analysis and lose the "soul" of the game", but as long as Cy Young voters still believe that Wins are everything, I think that's a long way off.
Comments:
Post a Comment
