Narrow-minded Xenophobia Makes Its Way to the Big Leagues

Torii Hunter, step right up:

"People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American," Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter says. "They're not us. They're impostors."

"Even people I know come up and say, 'Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero? Is he a black player?' I say, 'Come on, he's Dominican. He's not black.'"

Scott Boras, no stranger to idiotic statements, supports his player with trademark hide-the-ball, divert-the-enemy flourish:

"The colleges have corrupted baseball," says Boras, whose son plays at Southern California, "because they have taken away the scholarships. They've taken away America's pastime from the grass-root level of homes."

Putting these two quotes together, it seems Torii should have gone to college and learned a new trade, since baseball is likely to go the way of the Detroit, in his mind. Or, perhaps he could have taken a statistics class or two so that he could understand that it is a far more complicated question.

Defending Youk

Reading through the blogs this evening, I found a rather interesting take on statistics from Kevin Youkilis. Reaction from my fellow Interneters was swift, and a bit harsh from where I sit. Among his choicest barbs:

No, we don’t. I’ve learned a lot about all different kind of stats we have going now. Some of them are just ridiculous, because if you break down all the stuff, you can find a negative and a positive in every single player. And that’s what I think they do, throw out so many different ones so every guy either looks really good or a little less down on the level playing field.

Youk and his brethren get a fair amount of ridicule for throwing out the baby with the bathwater (see Jeff Francoeur here). It seems like everyday, one of the meatheads is caught in print dismissing prized on base percentage like it was Fox's newest asinine iteration of hitting with runners in scoring position.

But when I think about baseball players’ main interaction with stats, I start to see green. And therein lies the root of the dissonance between players and stats.

Baseball players are taught from an early age to play their asses of for the good of the team. No relevant stats are kept until these guys are in college or the minors, and have racked up about 11 or 12 springs and summers on the diamond (even more for Caribbean players, as I assume they are given a broom handle and roundish rocks out of the womb). Playing for stats is a way of life for the fantasy-crazed, box score junkie, but it is an uncomfortable second language for players.

More specifically, Youk’s comments belie the fears of many players: unfair judgment by club brass on the basis of cherry-picked stats. AAAA-types know damn well that 100 at-bats in September or spring training don't prove much, but they also know that poor numbers mean a return trip back to the land of bus rides and Taco Bell. An arbitration-eligible player must feel a particular strike at his manhood when his ability to stick in the major leagues for three years earns them a subpeona to baseball court, where clubs brings out the heavy artillery to chip away at his value. Free agents must cringe when their value is distorted by the asinine Elias system. Even at the end of a player’s career, one or two down months transforms them into a case of “inevitable decline,” whereby clubs shy away from them as though they were leprosy patients shedding handfuls of skin.

Such is the life of a baseball player, and it’s certainly still a charmed one. Yet I completely understand why they don’t trust numerical analysis, and resent attempts to pin value to them.