Scorecasting

Last time I said I would be back with a post all about the new baseball books this year. I’ve decided to postpone that for another week or two – there are just so many new baseball titles that it’d be a shame to leave any out, and I want to read and check out as many of them as possible before revisiting the topic here.

In the meantime, I figured I would cover a book that I nearly included in the last post. I’m glad I didn’t, as it covers a broader spectrum of topics than just baseball and it’s worth devoting a separate post to it. The title is Scorecasting, and it’s squarely in the pop-economics genre popularized by “Freakonomics” a few years ago – this is confirmed by the cover blurb by Steven Levitt declaring it to be the “closest thing to Freakonomics I’ve seen since the original.”

That’s a pretty fair comparison – it’s a similar brand of behavioral economic analysis, but applied to a host of sports and sports-related issues. The first chapter, for example, is entitled “Whistle Swallowing,” and examines the phenomenon of referees and umpires preferring to err on the side of failing to make a call, than actively making an incorrect call. In terms of influence on a basketball game, there isn’t much difference between an actual foul that goes uncalled, and a phantom foul that is mistakenly called, but referees openly admit they’d rather not call an actual foul, than mistakenly call a foul where there isn’t one.

Likewise, it’s been determined (using Pitch f/x) that baseball umpires call a much smaller strike zone for an 0-2 pitch than they do for a 3-0 pitch – essentially, they are more comfortable making the passive mistake (failing to call the ball or strike that results in the at-bat continuing), than making the active mistake (mistakenly calling the ball or strike that results in a walk or strikeout). Examples abound across all sports – the officials, in their desire not to mistakenly affect the outcome, strongly prefer errors of omission to errors of comission.

What makes this revelation doubly interesting is that it seems fans as well as officials prefer this inherent bias. The loyal fan may complain when his favorite player is fouled and it goes uncalled, but not nearly so loudly as when he complains that the referee has changed the outcome by calling his favorite player for a non-existent foul. Fans know that referees will make mistakes, and it seems that they are more comfortable with the officials occasionally failing to make a call when they should, than if they change the outcome by actively making calls they shouldn’t.

I couldn’t help but think about Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game when I read this chapter, as it stands as possibly the most striking and tragic counter-example in recent memory. On June 2nd of 2010, Galarraga was one out away from completing the 21st perfect game in Major League history. The 27th batter, Jason Donald, hit a slow infield roller that first baseman Miguel Cabrera fielded and flipped to Galarraga for the (apparent) final out at first base. Umpire Jim Joyce signaled that Donald was safe, but replay confirmed that Donald was in fact out by half a step.

Perhaps Joyce really was convinced that Donald was safe. But somehow, I can’t help but think that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was worried about falsely awarding a pitcher with an undeserved perfect game. Joyce, an umpire widely regarded for his professionalism and class, was inherently biased against creating an historic outcome with a mistaken call – one can imagine him steeling himself to make the unpopular “safe” call if the circumstances demanded it. He was so concerned over this possibility that when the seemingly inevitable split-second play occurred, he was more ready, more willing, to make the unpopular “safe” call, even in error.

The easiest thing in the world would have been to call the 27th and final out on any close play – even if replay proved him wrong, nobody would have complained too loudly. But in his desire to make the correct call, in any situation, he was willing to risk taking away a perfect game from a 28 year old journeyman pitcher, to take away the historic moment of glory from a pitcher who would be demoted and then traded away for two minor leaguers in the offseason. Jim Joyce bucked the inherent bias; he did not swallow his whistle.