Ignorance Is Not Bliss

I will preface this rant by saying that I know that being a baseball announcer, particularly on radio, is not easy. There is a lot of air time to fill between pitches, and sometimes an announcer can't help but ramble on a little bit. However, it's gotten to the point where there is simply no excuse for some of the stupid things that are said on the air these days. Whether it be ignoring, or being ignorant of, available statistics, or spouting stupid cliches, baseball announcers far too frequently do far too little to educate their audience. In reality, that's a huge part of their job.

Take for example last Thursday's game between the Mets and the Rockies. Daniel Murphy made a nice play at first base, and Mets TV play-by-play man Gary Cohen said something along the lines of, "wow, Murphy has simply been a different player since moving to first base." As Mets fans know, he opened the season in left field but was such a disaster there that the Mets put him at first base when Carlos Delgado got injured. Now, there is some truth to what Cohen is saying. Murphy has gone from being a defensive liability to being at least average for his position with the leather. But the implication in Cohen's comment was that Murphy, having been freed from the pressures of left field, was no longer letting his struggles in the field affect him mentally and allowing him to flourish as a player. That could not be further from the truth. Check out his splits.

As a first baseman .237/.310/.362 in 200 plate appearances
As a leftfielder .260/.339/.390 in 116 plate appearances

As a turns out, he has been a different player at first base—a worse one. And what bothers me about Cohen's statement is that this information is available at his fingertips, literally. You can go to any number of baseball websites to get this info, and there is a laptop sitting between Cohen and his color commentator(s) in the booth! By not sharing this information with the audience, Cohen is being lazy and misleading his audience. I don't mean to pick on Cohen, who is usually quite good and honest in his assessment of the Mets. But this type of analysis is all too typical of modern baseball announcers. Like, for example, the Mets radio announcers.

I was listening today as I tried to sweat out my hangover on a run through the park, and I had to laugh at a few gems from announcer Wayne Hagin. First, he was talking about Mets relievers Pat Misch, and he said something like, "Misch has only allowed two runs in his last eight-plus innings of work, but the problem is that he has allowed three of his 14 inherited runners to score. As you now, the key to being a good reliever is keeping those runners on base."

Besides being the master of the obvious, Hagin's comment is problematic for all sorts of reasons. For starters, I have no idea if that is actually a good or bad strand percentage. And if somone like me, whose job and hobby is baseball, doesn't know, than I am sure the average fan does not know. So we have absolutely no context for this statistic he just spouted. Second, this stat doesn't pass the sniff test. Allowing just three of 14 inherited runners (21.4%) sounds pretty good to me. Sure enough, it is! The MLB average is 33%, so Misch has actually been doing a damn good job as a Mets at preventing inherited runners from scoring, so why didn't Hagin look this up like I just did? When talking about esoteric statistics, context matters more than ever, and this was just plain laziness.

That wasn't even Hagin's worst crime that I heard in the 30 minutes I was listening. While discussing Jon Garland, who was shutting down the Mets, Hagin went on and on about how Garland has won 18 games twice, and won 14 last year. But this year, he is just 5-10 (now 6-10 after his CG against the Mets) and not pitching as well. Maybe the 14 wins had something to do with pitching for the team with the best record in baseball last season (the Angels), while the losing record has something to do with pitching for a team with the ninth-worst record in MLB this year (the D-backs). Based on ERA+, a stat that measures ERA relative to the league average and adjust for ballpark effects, Garland is actually better this year. His ERA+ last year was 91 (100 is average), and its 102 this year, and Baseball Reference hasn't even updated it yet after his performance against the Mets. And if you don't want to get into ERA+, you can simply mention that Garland's ERA is actually quite better this year, and his 14 wins last year were clearly a result of playing for a great team. Heck, he had a 4.90 ERA in 2008, and this year it is 4.26. (Yes, he went to the non-DH league, but he is also pitching in one of the better hitter's parks around, so that evens things out a bit.) Point is, he is actually pitching better this year, but his record is worse because he pitches for a mediocre team. Reason #2,362 why wins are a dumb stat to measure pitcher performance.

I realize that I look at the game with a statistical bent, and I don't expect every announcer and fan to look at the game in the same way I do. However, if your job is to be a baseball announcer, you should be aware of these stats, and you should show a willingness to share this data with your audience. Even if you don't necessarily agree with it, you'll be educating your audience, and illuminating the discussion of the game. And all of this can be done without having to bring in VORP, WARP, or any other advanced metric that gives statheads a bad rap. Ignorance, as it turns out, is not bliss.