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To say that baseball and American culture are intertwined is cliché. There is an entire genre of American rhapsodic poetry reserved for reflection, reverie, and remembrances of baseball, in general used as a subplot or an allegory to some other major story line from 20th-century American history in the foreground. How the game of baseball affects and influences American culture is a fascinating field of study, one traversed by many before me.

Where, then, are the folks who look at the reverse? How does American culture affect the game of baseball? Here, I don’t mean "how did baseball come to be a revered national past-time within American culture?" I want to ask the question of how American culture directly (or indirectly) influences decisions that are made on the field of play. It may strike you, reader, as a strange question, since you are most likely an American yourself. It’s hard to answer questions like this, or even recognize them as questions worthy of asking, because to look at something, you have to be able to get some distance between yourself and it. Where is there a space where someone can step outside "American culture?" Ever ask a fish to comment on water or how it affects his life? He can’t. It’s all around him and all he’s ever known. But with a little training and a good shot of perspective, it’s possible to look at American culture (and baseball) from the outside… and to see how silly some things are when you look at them from a new vantage point.

As a quick example, take the batting average-versus-on-base percentage debate that happened some years ago, following the publication of Moneyball. Consider how many decisions were (and still are!) made based on batting average, a stat which was born from a cultural quirk.

Batting average is basically what happens if you take on-base percentage and ignore walks (yes, and HBPs too…). Why on earth would someone ignore walks? Alan Schwarz, in his outstanding book The Numbers Game (if you haven’t yet, go read it right now), discussed how it came to be. A batter, it was thought, didn’t really deserve credit for a walk. He was just a passive bystander while the pitcher made four mistakes. In American culture, there’s a great deal of value on people who take action and get things done, not those who wait for things to come to them. We have plenty of leadership academies and business schools, but few teachers of patience. So walks are, in a sense, un-American. I’d argue that, at some level, the reason that the A’s were able to exploit the market’s inefficient valuation of OBP was, that at some level, they recognized the cultural assumption and, on further reflection, realized that it was silly.

There are other places in the game of baseball where the influence of American culture is lurking, but still very much influencing decisions that are being made on the field and in the front office. In this article, I propose to look closely at one of them, and to show how it has a several effects on how a team operates.

Hero worship

Quick. Name the five greatest baseball players of all time. Go. Now, name the five greatest baseball teams of all time. Go.

I’m guessing that if you actually made the first list, you made a list of seven or eight players and agonized over which ones to cross off. Your second list probably reads "1927 Yankees…" and likely didn’t make it much past that. Who’s actually on the list is irrelevant. Everyone has their own views of what makes someone the "greatest." The point is that the individuals come to you much quicker than the teams. In fact, if I asked you to tell me why you picked the 1927 Yankees, you’d probably mumble something about "Well, they had Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig." Back to the individuals, eh? Strange, because baseball is a team game and generally, people form allegiances to teams ("I’m a Cubs fan"), not individual players. Or so we say.

Did you ever stop to wonder why we have a Hall of Fame for players, but not teams? American culture values the individual over the collective. It’s one of those truisms that doesn’t shock you to hear it, but it might not be something that you’ve ever consciously considered. It’s a cultural assumption, and often those just go unquestioned. It’s time to start asking some questions and to see whether the answers make any sense.

This focus on the individual works its way into the very language of speaking about baseball. Consider the pitching stats that go with each game. One pitcher gets a win, another a loss. Absent a complete game, does the starter really deserve all the credit (or blame)? No, but someone—emphasis on the one—has to be given the credit (or blame) for something that ultimately is a team achievement. Even laying aside the fact that wins and losses are a poorly constructed stat, why does one pitcher have to be singled out to begin with? And why the pitcher, for that matter?

Then there’s the save. The guy who shuts down the other team in the ninth inning gets one. The guy who does it in the eighth gets none. They both pitched a 1-2-3 inning in a close game, but only one of them gets mentioned (and only one of them will get the $10-million contract while the other gets the $3-million contract). Only one of them can be the hero. 

Hero? If you want to know how people really feel about something, listen carefully to the way that they speak about it. How often is a really good active player or a famous retired player referred to as a "hero"? Someone who saves the day. Someone who’s a little more than a mortal man. He’s a hero! He stands out. He’s a little more than the others. Why can’t we have multiple heroes? Well, having too many heroes kind of takes away from the whole point of having heroes, doesn’t it? One unfortunate side effect is that it sends fans and front offices alike into a tizzy this time of year worrying about the hero roles, like whether their team has a "legitimate ace" or a "shutdown closer." Of course, it’s not a bad thing if the team does have one (or both) of these. But at what price? 

Consider the following thought experiment: let’s take all 150 starting pitchers in the majors (30 teams times five starters… yes, I know there are more) and split them into the top 30 (the aces), then the next 30 (the second starters), and so on. Now, suppose that you could have your choice between a rotation headed up by a "legitimate ace" and three guys from the third or fourth tier (we’ll call this team the 2005 Toronto Blue Jays) or a rotation composed of four guys from the second tier (let’s call them the 2005 Chicago White Sox). I don’t suppose that it would take much to show that one could built a rotation from the second tier that is measurably better than our ace-high rotation. Yet, people would still be drawn to the Roy Halladay-led ace-high rotation. Adherents will often say things like "Well, but in an important game, whom do you want out there?" If our team with the ace-high rotation makes the playoffs, it’s clear who will pitch in Game One and who they will want on the mound for Game Seven. The designated hero. Our team of "good but not great" pitchers has nothing to recommend one starter over another, even though over the entirety of the series, you never have to settle for a below-average starter. But it offends our sensibilities as Americans. There must be one who stands out! A leader. An ace. That’s the American way.

Does it have to be that way?

Places of Honor

Let’s move over to the batting offensive side of the equation and look at the lineup card. Managers usually put their best power hitters (dare I say, their heroes?) in the 3-4-5 spots in the lineup. Again, we note the language used. This is the heart of the order. A move into one of these spots is considered to be a mark of distinction. The player has made it. He’s now one of the important people in the lineup. There are good, statistically sound reasons for putting good hitters in these spots, particularly if they are power hitters, namely that if the top of the order is doing its job, then these men will come to the plate with runners already on base. That’s a good thing.

Then, there’s the leadoff hitter, which also seems to function as a place of honor for guys who are fast… and sometimes really their only redeeming quality is that they are fast. (That’s a rant for another day.) But those first, third, fourth, and fifth spots are the ones that are filled first with the standout players. The rest of the spots are filled by the lesser players, including those in the two-hole. For some reason, the second spot in the lineup has been relegated to "a guy who’s a good bunter" or a good "hit it to the right side" guy… even if he’s not a good hitter. This is the man who will get the second-most plate appearances on the team. Curious.

Suppose that a team had its second hitter get injured. Why is it that in this situation, it is rare to see a manager elevate his third hitter to the two-spot, but he has no problem putting his eighth or ninth (!) hitter into that spot? Thinking about that for a moment, it makes no sense, yet it happens all the time. The three-hole is a hero spot. The two-spot is not. People become so attached to these hero roles and the people who occupy them that it becomes hard for them to envision that things could be different.

You Can’t Trade Him!

If you haven’t been vacationing in Western Slevetika this past week, you’ve surely read of the rumored Albert Pujols-for-Ryan Howard swap that was floated about last week. The immediate reaction to the idea was generally an uproarious "You can’t do that!" (For what it’s worth, Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has said publicly that there’s no truth to the rumor). In a chat I did last week, someone asked in what universe this type of trade would make sense. I encouraged him to set aside the names Pujols and Howard and to consider the deal as it would affect both teams.

There is a certain logic to the proposed trade. The Phillies are in a win-now mood, and Pujols would be an upgrade over Howard. Not a huge one, mind you, but big enough to warrant mention. Pujols will be harder to sign long-term, but when a team is in win-now mode, this is not as big a deal. For the Cardinals, Howard is a better bet to be signed long-term, primarily because he’ll supposedly ask for less money than Pujols and because he’s from St. Louis. The Cards would thus be hedging their bets on having an MVP first baseman on their books for the next five years and going for the safer option. There are, of course, a thousand other moving parts to this deal, but on some level, it makes sense. It’s at least not that strange an idea.

Of course, people weren’t analyzing it in that sort of detail. The thought that a team would actively trade a former MVP still very much in his prime was shocking enough. Had such a deal been proposed with mid-range players, my guess is that there wouldn’t have been any controversy concerning the move. But when we get to the designated heroes, people begin to respond with their emotions.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Americans tend to emphasize the individual over the team. Even within a team game like baseball, we single out individual players as heroes and can tend to see the rest of the players as simply his supporting cast. This leads to decisions which are analyzed not in their relationship to the team, but how they affect the heroes involved. Some of these issues that I have brought up (the importance of the second hitter, for example) have been addressed before, but these examples are just the symptoms. If you really want to understand why these things happen, you have to look for the underlying cause, and oftentimes, it’s something that’s so deeply ingrained in the mind that it’s hard to bring up to the surface.

 Baseball is a team game, and we live in a culture not programmed to see things from a team perspective. What that means, though, is that there’s a blind spot, and a team that can identify the blind spot and work around it has a strategic advantage. The problem is, of course, that it’s not nice to go against major cultural assumptions, and the team will probably incur a little bit of feedback. But they’ll be better off for it.  

Thank you for reading

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bpickclass08
3/22
really, really, really interesting take
mafrth77
3/22
1. The Cardinals are in a win-now mode as well

2. Pujols represents a three to four win improvement based on runs prevented and created over Howard. That is a enormous.

3. Sure you could sign Howard long term, but would you want to?
pizzacutter
3/22
The thought process would be that while Howard is a drop from Pujols, if the Cards aren't confident that they can sign Pujols long-term, then the decision is between Howard and some other random first baseman. It does assume that the Cards are taking a longer view, at least in the financial aspect of things. This is probably where the deal falls apart.
misterjohnny
3/23
It falls apart because the gap between Howard's value and Pujols' value is only going to be greater, yet Howard is going to ask for almost as much as Pujols, and Pujols is just as embedded in the St. Louis community as Howard, maybe more so, and thus you could get a "hometown discount" from Pujols as well.

Ryan Howard has David Ortiz and Mo Vaughn in his Pecota comparables. Do you want him long term?
pizzacutter
3/23
I don't personally. But you could perhaps see how someone might mistake him for a good long term investment.
swartzm
3/23
Pujols is worth far more than Howard certainly, but let's not make the mistake mixing up Howard being overrated and Howard being bad. David Ortiz is way down on Howard's comparables this year, and Mo Vaughn isn't listed in his Top Ten. McGriff and Thome are far better comparables. Ortiz and Vaughn are/were dead pull hitters. Ortiz is a poor fielder who is very flyball happy. Howard hits a lot of line drives all direction and pulls almost all his ground balls which he hits very hard, and he hits most of his home runs the other way. He also fields his position at an average level, outside of having a noodle of a throwing arm. Howard isn't going to lead the league in HR when he's 40, but he's still going to be a wrecking machine in his early 30s like Thome was. Thome is the model here. He's shaped like Howard, hits an absurd number of his home runs the other way, strikes out a lot, and hits rocket hard ground balls (all of which are also pulled, unlike his flies and liners). Thome also is like Howard in having average fielding range without looking graceful in the process. Howard's early 30s likely will look more like McGriff and Thome than Ortiz and Vaughn.
mafrth77
3/23
Howard is a star level player, but he doesn't really have the same skill set as Thome much higher K/BB or McGriff who had a much higher contact rate.
swartzm
3/23
The walk and strikeout rates are different for Ortiz and Vaughn, too. None of these are perfect matches.

Howard: 13% BB/PA, 33% SO/AB
Thome: 17% BB/PA, 30% SO/AB
McGriff: 13% BB/PA, 22% SO/AB
Ortiz: 13% BB/PA, 21% SO/AB
Vaughn: 11% BB/PA, 26% SO/AB

Howard obviously isn't a perfect match for any of them, with worse K's than all, but his batted ball profile is more similar to Thome and McGriff than Ortiz and Vaughn. If you throw out McGriff because of contact rate, you have to throw out Ortiz. Latest PECOTA cards up today have McGriff as his 1st comparable, but doesn't list Ortiz til 8th. Thome is 4th and Vaughn isn't on there. None of these people are the exact same player, but Thome's batted ball profile is the one that looks most like Howard. Eye, patience, and contact skill are all important traits that could suggest one aging curve or another, but batted ball profiles demonstrate physical skills and muscles used too, which also suggest other aging curves. My suspicion is a batted ball PECOTA would map Howard and Thome even more closely than Howard and McGriff, and far more than Howard and Vaughn or Ortiz.
mafrth77
3/23
Sure, but in the last 2 years Howards walk rate has been around 10.5%. If he goes back to 2006-07 BB/pa levels, he's fine, otherwise it will be tough for him to put up "star level" (4-5 win) numbers with his contact rate.

I don't know how PECOTA came up with McGriff as his number 1 comp.
swartzm
3/23
I think 4-5 wins with 10.5% BB is exactly where he's been lately. I guess you're probably guessing his HR-rate falls. That's certainly possible but Thome seemed to maintain his pretty well. I think there are different muscles and reflexes involved in hitting oppo-HR, and those just tend to be muscles and reflexes that age better. We really know so little about aging. In this article (http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9055), I talked about how sluggers who hit opposite field HR seemed to age better, at least based on my puny sample size of Howard's 2009 PECOTA Card comparables.
Richie
3/22
What other "blind spots" do you think are actually out there in baseball?

"American individualism" is mostly a cliche. Including re sports. When Americans at the Olympics (or sports bars watching such) are chanting "USA! USA!", we're being very tribalistic. As Seinfeld would observe, we're rooting for our laundry to beat their laundry. Nothing individualistic about that at all. Favre got (lightly) booed at Lambeau this year. When a hometown star willingly chooses to move on, he often becomes quite the villain. No fan allegiance there to the individual at all.

When judging why a team/organization wins/succeeds, well, it's just so much easier to pick out an individual. The quarterback, starting pitcher, driver, CEO. Rather than "OK, let's break out how many successful ABs each guy had, make a WAG about how good Penske's engineer assistant is compared to Foyt's, internally estimate how much HR is contributing to things." Not really individualism at work there, just (probably unavoidable) intellectual sloppiness.

Most all other cultures are also just as hero-driven as ours' is. In 3rd World political marches, people carry pictures of their political heroes.

I could go on, but I mercifully won't.
pizzacutter
3/22
I would argue that the booing of Favre had more to do with "You can't leave us! You broke our hearts!" rather than "Your departure has made our team worse." The focus is still on the relationship between the individual and the fans. I don't know much about football, but if Favre's departure made the Packers a better team, then the proper response would be to cheer him to thank him for leaving.

You're right that it's much easier to pick out an individual from a cognitive load perspective (it's easier to focus on an individual rather than do all that messy work), but I'd argue that it's deeper than that. Hence, my example on the name the greatest teams vs. name the greatest players. There's no philosophical reason why teams shouldn't be as available. It's a matter of what we're taught to focus on.
hiredgoon1
3/22
Interesting article. I've read that in Japan even the very best hitters routinely bunt runners over, which reflects the importance of collectivism and self-sacrifice in Japanese culture.
buffum
3/22
If you haven't read "You Gotta Have Wa" about the Japanese professional leagues, it is an interesting book.

Note, however, that the NPB still measures wins, saves, and batting average.

(Note also that batting average DOES tell us something useful: if OBP had been reported from Day One, some "stat nerd" later would have developed AVG as telling us something about a player's plate discipline and the sustainability of his OBP.)
BallparkFan
3/22
I wholeheartedly echo your endorsement of Alan Schwarz's book The Numbers Game. This book provides a fascinating look at the history and evolution of baseball statistics, and in turn provides a ton of insight into why and how 'traditional' stats were and still are so highly valued by a broad population.
ScottBehson
3/22
Awesome article. I'll be using some of this material in a cross-cultural management class I teach.
bokosox13
3/22
Interesting that of all the team games baseball is probably the most individualistic. The primary conflict involves just two men, the pitcher and the batter. Maybe this is why your thought game doesn't work the same in other sports. I think a lot of people could just as quickly think of the five best football teams as the five best football players.
aaronbailey52
3/22
This reminds of the cultural assumption I questioned the other day- why do fill our toilets with clean treated drinking water? Why not fill our tanks with waste run off from the shower or wash basin? And I'm not trying to make commentary on this article, jsut bandying about the possibility that there's a better way to pee.
pizzacutter
3/22
Thanks?
WaldoInSC
3/23
There's another great American trait: ingenuity!
barrysanders
3/23
Seems as if America is shifting to the collective over the individual. No?
tnt9357
3/23
As bokosox13 points out, baseball is more individualistic by design (offense doesn't handle the ball, so coordination of offensive players, and therefore teamwork, is practically non-existent), and is therefore a poor example of culture trumping reality.

It certainly works for football (O-Line incredibly important, but rarely recognized) and basketball (more isolation plays than passing halfcourt offenses), but I guess this would be the wrong site for those observatiions.
rcmerino
3/23
Russell, thank you for writing this article. As an baseball-loving expat living in Barcelona, I love these kinds of topics.

Even at this distance I can't say whether your thesis is true, though it is compelling at first read. Nevertheless, when I compare baseball to sports here, heroes are heroes no matter what they play.

And American culture may not be as exceptional as we think, even when applied to baseball.

Something that is unique to US sports (baseball included) is the idea that a team could pick up and MOVE. Unthinkable here. The team is really a part of the local community. It would be as though the University of Washington decided to become Texas Metropolitan State University and leave Seattle. Are you kidding?

Keep up the good work.
puelkes
3/24
Totally agree to the comment on relocation, that's unthinkable in e.g. European soccer.

As a non-American (I'm German) I think there's also another feature involved in the hero worship issue: in European soccer there are of course 'heroes' (e.g. Messi, Chr. Ronaldo, ...). But in a given match a star player having a bad day is much more easily able to fly under the radar and have his teammates pick him up than in baseball where a hitter is exposed in every at-bat. I've seen many star strikers jogging around on the field of play for 80+ minutes and then being at the right place at the right time and scoring a goal which makes them again the 'player of the game', i.e. hero.

Also in soccer as well as in baseball fans often especially like the 'hustling' players, the ones giving their all on the field while maybe possessing less raw talent than some of their teammates. Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox is one example as well as Tobias Levels (bet you never heard of him ;-) of my favourite soccer team who also happens to be a local kid.
worldtour
3/23
Even better foray into Japanese baseball culture than You Gotta Have Wa is The Chrysanthemum and the Bat. (same author)
DanoooME
3/23
Personally, I think it's time that wins and losses for pitchers to no longer be measured, because of the crux of this article. I'm sure I'll get minused to death for suggesting it, but pitcher wins and losses tell us nothing about a pitcher's ability and is just some aribtrary assignment of values and should be abolished from the record books. I'm sure that this won't happen in the next 50 years at least, so it's unrealistic, but something that should be considered.
glennb
3/24
Hi - you ask an interesting question, but the answers you provide are a bit lacking:
a) A team which picks 5 solid 'second tier' starters may have a better chance at making the playoffs, but may not have as good a chance at making it to the WS, when the dynamics of a lineup change;
b) Keeping 'franchise players' has a value in keeping a fanbase energized and loyal. How about this thought experiment: would fans still be loyal to a team which changes its entire roster every year? Would you root for or against the Omar Minayas versus the Theo Epsteins in the 2020 WS?
c) While I agree that the term 'closer' is a misnomer (and produces market inefficiencies!), there are other reasons for placing a speedy batter at the top of a lineup, in front of power hitters. I believe I saw a piece in BP a few years back which suggested that randomly distributing players in a lineup produces fewer runs at a statistically significant level.

Regarding your observations about American Culture - I am American, but have lived abroad for the last 15 years. I believe the initial statistics were designed by a British cricketing fan, who might not have understood and/or inculcated the importance of walking to a base. Furthermore, evolution goes a long way to explaining atavistic body parts and functions as a distant echo of a time long past. Perhaps this is the case with baseball.

THought provoking and unusual article, thanks.


Slappy
3/25
America has definitely embraced a superstar culture. It extends to all aspects of American entertainment and most aspects of American life. Movies, music and sports are obvious examples, but the most telling cultural difference can be found in CEO pay. Back in 1980, the average pay of a CEO was roughly 40 times that of the average worker in the same company. Today CEO compensation is more than 500 times that of the average worker. No other country in the world comes close to this level of disparity. Ronald Reagan's true legacy.