Hey Blue Jay fans. Aren’t you glad you didn’t get Torii Hunter?
First, he’s old. Second, he’s overpriced. Third, he’s in decline. And fourth, you can’t tell him that he’s in decline unless you’ve played.
Oh, and then there is that thing about same sex marriage and how he feels it’s wrong, which I’m pretty sure would go over in Toronto about as well as painting a homophobic slur on your face.
Bear in mind that Yunel Escobar was a much better value to the Jays and they got rid of him after the eye black incident so it would be hard to imagine them bringing in Hunter, who, while not overtly malicious about his beliefs, would have been a lightening rod from the go.
Now, I’m not going to thrash Hunter for his views on same sex marriage. I am, however, going to thrash him for his views on Sabermetrics. Peter Gammons may also get a little of this since he wandered into my Twitter crosshairs last night, when I was poking fun at Hunter’s comments.
We’ll start with Hunter, who insists that Sabermetrics are how baseball fans who have no concept of what it’s like to play explain the unexplainable.
When I put on my former player’s hat, I can see what Hunter is trying to say. That, if you’ve not played, you don’t realize how little Sabermetrics factor into to a players’ actual in play decision making, at least on a pronounced, the numbers point to this so do it style. In many ways, Hunter’s comments highlight a common and willful misunderstanding of Sabermetrics by the player, wherein the player assumes that Sabermetrics breaks him down into equations, and what ever those equations say is what the player should do, period. The equations are the player. Players feel this is backwards, that their natural talent and instinct is what generates those numbers, and to focus on them, or give them any real credence would be to betray what got them where they are—his skills, which he feels are innate and intuitive, not the product of math. The player also feels he can’t be truly predicted by numbers since it undermines his intensity, commitment and focus; things that make him who he is and not compartmentalizable.
Consider that many players operate under simplification cliché’s and mantras that compound this, like, see ball/hit ball, and one pitch, one out, one inning at a time. They want things that make the game feel intuitive to them because that’s how they learned it and that’s the way they make adjustments. They don’t want to overcomplicate the schema on which they operate, or hear folks talk to them about Sabermetrics—especially not when it’s in the form of a question highlighting how they’re inferior.
I know what the player is trying to do because I’ve done it. Numbers can feel damming, and they weren’t there telling me how to play when I started. They weren’t a part of my pedagogy in the game, and since you didn’t play and I did, you don’t know how little I actually used them to get where I am, journalist. *hiss *hisssss.
But that doesn’t mean the numbers don’t exist, or that they explain nothing.
In fact, last night I said on Twitter, in my typically, tongue-in-cheek, totally an ass, way:
I thought it went unnoticed, like most of my life, until Gammons chimes in:
I’ve got all the respect in the world for Gammons, but he’s wrong on this, and I told him so:
Here’s the thing: Sabermetrics are what get a player paid. That alone means they matter.
And, even at the very basic level, things like batting average and ERA and so forth, are Sabermetrics. They’re not the advanced stats like UZR or WRC+ or whatever the Tom Tango is whipping up for us in his volcano lair, but they’re not voodoo. For a player who has been paid obscene amounts of money because of those numbers, even if they’re not at the forefront of Torii’s game play process, he should at least acknowledge their existence because the people who pay him sure do.
As far as sitting around and debating ways to critique players goes… I’m sorry, Peter, you do that for a living and have done so for years, and been paid well for it—rightly so. You’re great at what you do. You cant tell me that a just because Hunter has had a long career and played well at a high level that they don’t have to exist to him. No, he doesn’t have to sit around and think about the process (not until he’s retired and stuck behind a desk, on camera). Perfectly fine. But Sabermetrics are relevant, and to say they are not is, after the game has essentially realigned itself behind them, a little daft.
Moreover, Hunter didn’t say, “You know, I don’t really pay attention to the numbers. I know they’re there, but I focus on the task at hand and that doesn’t always have the same cut and dry feel that pure numbers do.” He said that if you believe in that stuff you’ve never played the game.
I played the game. I believe in that stuff. Not because, you know, I like Magic the Gathering or Star Trek or played D&D. But because they tell me stuff my eyes don’t always catch.
And, hey, it was a very compelling argument Hunter made afterwards, with help from Paul Molitor’s line on how Hunter doesn’t look that bad. But just like numbers with out proper interpretation can lie, so can your eyes. That’s why we use numbers in tandem with visual observation; one helps us interpret the other. And, for the record, it’s not like baseball has this crazy analytic math that rest of the world doesn’t. We’ve been using big data and statistical analysis to make efficient and accurate decisions since before computers were the size of office buildings. We manage the world with algorithms that predict human behavior. It only make sense that we evaluate data before we hand a guy who plays a kid’s game enough money to end poverty in a small third world country.
You don’t have to think about the numbers if you don’t want to, Torii, but you can’t look at world that clearly does and say, because you’ve played and had success, you know the truth and the rest are actors in a big, number heavy farce. You know how to play and you’re gifted—that’s not debatable and I would smash anyone who says it is. But that does not make understanding the game exclusive to you. If it did, those GMs out there that didn’t play should not be GMs. Those reporters who’ve covered the game for years actually wrote nothing but best guesses and vivid lies. Oh, and Peter Gammons has no idea what he’s talking about and never did.
I don’t buy that.
I didn’t play for as long as Hunter, or as well, but I did play and study the game on both sides now. The numbers are a part of this game. A huge one. In fact, you could argue their creation is all that matters anymore. While you’re on the playing side, doing well, you can focus on whatever you want and say it’s all that matters. Actually, you should focus on the process, it’s the best way to play. But there will come a time when all you have are the numbers and the memories that explain them. Who was the best and why. It’s how it all gets recorded. You could say that, at it’s core, that’s what competition at the professional level is—who is the best, why, and how much should we pay them for it.
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