It's not just sportswriters that are totally full of shit

I simply had to share this article that for some reason just came up on one of the news aggregators to which I subscribe. It was written by Ken Hunt, of The Globe and Mail, on October 29th (after Game 1 of the World Series, but before Game 2), and was ostensibly about how expected performance bonuses decrease performance:

Of the most lucrative pay packages ever handed out in Major League Baseball, the top two spots are held by one man: Alex Rodriguez. The $252-million (U.S.) contract he signed with the Texas Rangers in 2000 was topped only by the $275-million deal he inked with the Yankees in 2007. And that’s not counting the seldom-disclosed payouts he will receive for reaching certain milestones—playing in the All-Star game, for instance, or making the playoffs. But in baseball, as in business, paying top dollar is no guarantee that talent will come through in the clutch. A-Rod (or A-Fraud, a sobriquet his teammates once bestowed upon him) has a dismal playoff record. The Yankees haven’t won a pennant since he joined the team in 2004. And since 2005, he’s batted 7-44 in the post-season (a .159 average). It appears the richest player in the game—a three-time MVP—chokes at the prospect of winning it all.*

Note that there's an asterisk there, but there's no footnote anywhere on the page.

I can't say I know exactly what Hunt's angle here was, but my guess is that there are two options:

  1. He had written this paragraph much earlier, and realized that this was going to be the last opportunity he had to publish it. If that's the case, I feel bad for the guy that he'd rather throw something out there that's about to be proved false rather than trust himself to be able to write a new paragraph that at least might not be total bullshit.
  2. He thought that the fact that the Phillies won Game 1 of the World Series, while A-Rod went 0-4, meant that the series was over and A-Rod had choked it away once again.

Up to the time Hunt published this article, assuming it was published immediately after he'd finished writing as opposed to being delayed in some way, Rodriguez had batted .389/.500/.861 in the 2009 postseason, with 5 HR, 12 RBI, 9 BB, 3 IBB ... and had repeatedly hit lead-changing home runs in the late innings. He'd basically carried the Yankees to the World Series by himself, and he'd done it in as dominating and "clutch" a fashion as can be imagined.

The stats he cited, of course, did not include the 2009 postseason, which I think lends credence to option #1.

Frankly, I thought mainstream sportswriters had been doing a pretty poor job of evaluating baseball. Thank you, Ken Hunt, for putting this all in perspective.

Non-baseball writers understand considerably less about baseball than I ever could have imagined.

Posted by Sean Schulte at 2009-11-21 22:11

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