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The Hardball Times
found this 3/20/2008
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tcfc Interesting idea but it proves how statistics can lie. So not as many fans saw Bert as other potential HOF candidates so what fans don't vote for the HOF sports writers do. The statistical lie is that Bert is harmed by playing for obscure teams.-
earthdyedred Ironically, I had a paragraph addressing this at one point but it didn't suit the flow very well...
I wouldn't have written this article if I didn't think the connection between fans and HOF sports writers could be made; it's just not immediately obvious. While it's true that the fans don't vote for the HOF, the fans affect the media's perception of events at the time, and that ink or lack thereof gets somewhat twisted around into other arguments.
As a hypothetical, let's take the year 1984. If you're trying to sell newspapers or what have you and you see the following rounded-off fan bases from 1983 (home totals only):
Dodgers 3,510,000
Angels 2,555,000
Blue Jays 1,930,000
Indians 769,000
Are you more likely to write a story about the Dodgers or the Indians? With 5 times the fan base, you're probably choosing the Dodgers every time, or your boss is to sell more stuff. The media prints out what people want to read, and if it's evident off the attendance records that lots of people care about the Dodgers and nobody does about the Indians, you're going to write a more sellable story. Similarly, the Angels and Indians both had exactly 70 wins in 1983, but the Angels had 3 times more fans. Who are you writing about in that situation?
The blogosphere has tipped the scales in favor of overall neutrality these days in terms of media, but I think capitalism and its effects on media tilts the coverage extremely in Blyleven's era. What does this have to do with the voting? Well, the same media that got caught up in the tilt back then is quite a bit of the HOF voting pool today, given its tortoise-paced turnover rate. If the voters were paying attention simply to the statistical arguments, Blyleven would have been in long ago. Why isn't he? Clearly, the voters are attracted to something that ought not be considered. My four factor list towards the end of the article gives a sort of composite picture of the problems of his case. The voters appear to be saying, "well if his record is good, then why didn't he...?" and something forms in their head. I suspect based on my research that part of the reasoning is "then why don't I remember anything about him?", not remembering that it was because of how the media works.
History has been kind to the one-team obscure stars, as the Obscurity Factor chart shows. We can give them sympathy for staying on moribund team after moribund team, like we do with Banks or Clemente or Walter Johnson. We can't do that with Bert, since he never stayed on a team long enough. He just wasn't "the story" anywhere he went, we can't place him anywhere, and so he's fallen through the cracks.
It's been seen every now and again that whether a player was a "nice guy" or not has affected the voting. Albert Belle probably deserved some more consideration for the HOF than he got, but the media didn't like him, so out he went. What happens when a player is not necessarily unliked, but unreported on, unremembered, and never on teams that the voters remember covering? Well, based on Obscurity Factor, the voters have never really had to deal with a case like Blyleven's before, and that's the point. They can deal with bad teams if they feel like it (Yount, Gwynn, Ripken, Sandberg) and have something else by which to remember a player.
Blyleven has nothing to recommend him except his stats, and it's a challenge flush in the face of a voting pool that likes amiability or newsworthiness or a host of other things (you may notice I don't hold the HOF voters in high regard as a group, but if they don't look at the stats to elect someone...) Not knowing what to do with just a stat record, the voters turn to "shiny objects," pointing either to something meaningless in the record (but good storywise, like getting to 300 wins) or to something else entirely (Cy Young voting and All-Star appearances, which are somewhat biased by the problems outlined already).
This is somewhat rambling, I know, but I hope it answers your concerns over the article methodology.
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tcfc While I agree the Blyleven belongs in the HOF I am still not buying your argument. Basically what you are saying is baseball writers are herd animals not bright enough to figure out things for themselves. Also can we really so that the case for Blyleven is "obscure" when ever HOF article during voting season mentions him as unfairly passed over or rightly ignored. Sorry sometimes statics are just numbers which don't really mean anything.-
earthdyedred I think, based on the evidence, it's clear that a significant group of Hall of Fame voters are herd animals if they keep pointing to things that aren't statistics to make their cases. (This may be extreme, but see http://vegaswatch.net/2007/12/woody-paige-is-thorough.html for an actual HOF voter's reasoning.) In a lot of ways, anything that isn't the statistical record is likely to be a popularity contest or some weird personal reason.
I'm not saying Blyleven's case for the Hall is obscure - I'm well aware that I'm not the only person who's written about the man in recent years. His reasons for being passed over, however, are unique to him if my argument holds at all in terms of what he went through.
People voting outside the stat record have stated different reasons for why they're not voting for him, but the thrust of my article is that no matter what they're actually saying, a lot of it boils down to how memorable he was, and he was one of the least memorable by any of the normal standards that the Hall of Fame has ever seen.
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DavidRF Why do you multiply the league average by .5 to estimate the road attendance? The league average attendance is already based on a half season (81 games).
The giveaway is when you say the average total attendance is 1.5*(average home attendence). If all games in all cities had the same attendence (att/g), then the average home attendence would be 81*(att/g) and the average total attendance would be 162*(att/g).
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earthdyedred You are completely right, DavidRF, and I am sorry for the error. When the adjustments are made to include road attendance as it ought to be, counting it full but also comparing Expected Fans to twice the league average instead of 1.5, all numbers regress about 25-33% towards zero (increase if they're negative, decrease if they're positive).
An amendment is being added to the article very shortly that will correct this as per your notice.
Thank you so much for keeping me honest, and I have no idea where my head was.
Brandon
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ger8ry I like it. But it seems odd to call it an Obscurity Factor when a high score rates as less obscure than a low (or negative) one. I think what you actually have is a Visibility Factor.-
earthdyedred You know, you're right.
Full disclosure: I wrote this article while battling a awful sinus infection from which I lost 9 pounds in 9 days. I had problems standing up, never mind thinking, never mind writing an article. I was fighting it all the way to the submission deadline, so I don't know what I could have done otherwise, but maybe I would have thought through the math and the terminology better when I wasn't in massive pain.
Better health/luck next time...
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Friday Links (21 Mar 08)
Ducksnorts —
... Brandon Isleib at Hardball Times examines Bert Blyleven’s career, specifically how much fan (and media) exposure he received during his playing days. In light of ...
