BBWAA: The Bias Bunch

The BBWAA has had their share of biased decisions over the course of their voting for the Major League Baseball awards and Hall of Fame candidates. Their slights, specifically in regards to the Boston Red Sox has drawn the ire of fans across New England. Red Sox fans however,  are not the only fan base that have suffered as a result of the pathetic, high school-esque popularity contest that the BBWAA runs on a yearly basis. In addition to the fans, player incentives are often not reached due to their decisions. I’m not sure there is anything that could make a person angrier than hitting them in the pocket just because you don’t like the way he conducts an interview.

Below we will take a look at some of the BBWAA’s most egregious of snubs. I will also make an attempt at providing an idea to help fix the way these writers are rewarded with the privilege of voting because I feel simply writing about the sport for ten years is not cutting it.

Let’s start with this season’s AL Manager of the Year voting. As a Red Sox fan, in no way am I upset that John Farrell was beat out for the award. I could certainly make solid cases for Bob Melvin, Terry Francona and Joe Girardi, but leaving Farrell off of the ballot completely, such as Asuka Brown did is absurd. Christina Kahrl of Chicago also made the decision to leave Farrell out of her ballot in favor of Joe Maddon. Joe Maddon? Really? Look, I get that he manages a team that has a low payroll and has done a superb job over the years but the last time I checked the Rays were picked to win the American League East this year by more prognosticators than any other team with the Toronto Blue Jays being a possible exception. How does not reaching the potential of a speculation based group you are a part of warrant a Manager of the Year vote?  If you haven’t already had the pleasure of hearing Asuka Brown’s explanation CLICK HERE for the WEEI audio recording of it. I’m sure you’ll find it enlightening.

Of course there have been other downright awful decisions in the past by the BBWAA, most notably regarding the MVP award voting. For example, the 1947 AL MVP race between Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams. DiMaggio did have a solid season finishing with a .322 average, 20 HRs and 97 RBI. He also happened to be on a pennant winning team while Williams played left field for the third place Boston Red Sox. However, the only category that DiMaggio led that season was in fielding percentage at .997. Teddy Ballgame on the other hand, led on several significant offensive categories. He hit .343 had 32 HRs and 114 RBI. He had 181 hits to DiMaggio’s 168. He had an OBP of .499 and an OPS of 1.133 plus he won the Triple Crown and now holds two of the four seasons in which a Triple Crown winner did not win the MVP award.

For those of you interested in the WAR stat, Williams had a WAR of 10.1 that year compared to a 5.5 for DiMaggio. That’s right Teddy Ballgame was twice the player that DiMaggio was according to the numbers.

The Philly Phanatic is even perplexed by the BBWAA

Rumor has it that Williams was completely left off a ballot which cost him the MVP award by one vote, however DiMaggio was also left off of 3 ballots. The egregious nature of this vote comes into effect when you realize that two writers gave first place votes to a .206 hitting shortstop for the A’s named Eddie Joost. Joost also made 38 errors ranking second to last among AL shortstops that season.  Why the winner,  DiMaggio and the runner up in Williams were both left off ballots so the writers could write in a joke vote is easily the least funny baseball story anyone has ever told. The Philly Phanatic doesn’t even laugh at this joke.

The bias here is the archaic view that being on a winning team makes a player more valuable than another. How is it possible that a player on a first place team surrounded by All-Stars was more valuable than a player on a team with aging veterans and no pitching who does everything in his power to help them contend? Beats me.

Williams was also snubbed in 1942 when Yankees second baseman, Joe “Flash” Gordon won the award. Gordon, like DiMaggio five years later, had a fine season with a .322 AVG, 18 HRs, 103 RBI and an OPS of .900. As was always the case in that era, the Yankees beat out the Red Sox for the pennant finishing 9 games ahead of Boston that season. In that season, Williams led thirteen offensive categories. Thirteen !?! He led the league with a .356 AVG, 142 runs, 36 HRs, 137 RBI and had an OPS of 1.147. In fact he was so dominant that season that he reached base 335 times which was 66 times more than the next closest player. Williams lost again being slighted due to his less than kind relationship with the writers who were seemingly upset that Williams wanted to stay and play baseball because he was the only means of support for his mother in a time of War. The writers and fans hated Williams so much that Austin Lake once wrote..

“When Ted’s name is announced, the sound is like an autumn wind moaning through an apple orchard”

 

Pedro Martinez was yet another Red Sox player slighted by the writers in 1999 and again in 2000. There is a faction of fans and writers out there who believe that only a position player deserves the MVP and while you can argue the merit behind those beliefs,  can’t we at least show some consistency? In 1992 Dennis Eckersley , who wasn’t even a starter, won the award over Frank Thomas in yet another snub of epic proportions. Following that year no pitcher won the award again until Justin Verlander in 2011. The part that baffles me here is when a voter leaves a pitcher off one year and then votes for Tim Hudson the following year when Hudson didn’t even pitch half as well as Pedro Martinez, who was also on the 2000 ballot.

After finishing 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts, Martinez got eight first-place votes, but his name was not to be found on several ballots and he subsequently finished second in the voting to Ivan Rodriguez. Pudge was probably the league’s fourth or fifth best position player that season, never mind being an MVP. Martinez was even better the following year in 2000, when he went 18-6 with a 1.74 ERA. He finished fifth on the ballot.  The 2000 season for Martinez is arguably the single greatest season a pitcher has recorded in the history of the game, yet somehow it was only the fifth best performance of that season according to a group of writers who couldn’t pitch a tent with directions attached to them. When you look at the gaudy offensive stats of the hitters surrounding Pedro Martinez in the 1999 vote you can see why he should of stood out as the clear cut winner if not for the inconsistent bias against pitchers winning the award.

Below is a table showing the voting results and stats for the hitters followed by a separate table below that of Pedro’s pitching stats that season. When you are putting up all time pitching stats while the hitters in your league are posting the greatest statistical seasons across the league doesn’t logic tell you that the best player in the league is Pedro Martinez? Hmmm, if only the BBWAA applied logic to their voting system.

The additional snubs that warrant mentioning without getting deep into their details include Gehrig and Ruth being snubbed in 1928,  not on a bias but due to a rule not allowing a player to win multiple MVPs. It appears the BBWAA started off on the wrong foot right from the get go. Lou Gehrig was once again snubbed for not being on a better team than the Detroit Tigers in 1934 with the award going to the less deserving Mickey Cochrane. Stan Musial in 1944 was beat out by his teammate Marty Marion who hit .267 but played stellar defense all year. Andrew Dawson in 1987 is widely regarded as an ill advised decision by the voters.

The Hall of Fame candidacies of Jack Morris, Jim Kaat and Dwight Evans are also considered questionable but at least they can be debated on either side of the coin.

To this day, the BBWAA has held bias against pitcher’s for MVP’s, managers with high payrolls for the Manager of the Year award, players on teams that miss the playoffs and even designated hitters in the Hall of Fame. I think it’s time we pulled back all of their votes and award them based on passing a test.

My suggestion would be to take all of the writers currently involved in the BBWAA and much like Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Back to School, sit them down in front of a table of four highly regarded baseball panelists to take a test. Each panelist will test them based on the history of the game so they can properly measure players from a live ball era versus the merits of players from the dead ball eras. I want them tested on how to use statistics properly to measure a true players value, what it takes to pitch in the big leagues, how to throw a curveball or how to hit with two strikes. They should be well versed on how to manage using all of the tools available to a manager these days and what it takes to change a team’s losing culture into a winning culture. How to go about handling a bullpen or platoons. These are just some examples of the baseball knowledge that each writer needs to prove they have embedded into their biased little brains.

If they score an 85% on the History portion of the game they earn a Hall of Fame vote. Ken Burns would be the panelist and in charge of creating the most difficult of questions. If you can’ t explain to Ken what barnstorming was during Babe Ruth‘s career you are immediately kicked out of the testing for a Hall of Fame vote.

If they score an 85% on the pitching attributes of the test they earn a Cy Young vote. Greg Maddux would be in charge of posing questions such as how to tell the difference between a splitter and a circle change. How much pitching in the stretch changes your game plan and so on and so forth.

Brian Kenny of the MLB Network would administer the statistics portion of the test to see how well these writers understand the metrics used to measure an MVP caliber season. We’ll follow the same 85% pass rate here. Do these writers understand Park Factors? Do they look at the quality of pitching faced inside a hitters division or vice versa? Do they measure the quality of a team’s defense to accurately differentiate between two ground ball pitchers with unequal defenses behind them? Is a hitter benefitting in the RBI category thus increasing his MVP candidacy because he has better hitters in front of him than his competitors.

SAY IT, SAY IT, SAY IT!!!

Tony LaRussa, who used a combination of gut feelings and percentages to make managerial decisions, would break down the coaching questions and grade accordingly. While taking the test, Jack Morris would be roaming the room heckling the writers so they understand how hard it is to do their job when people are screaming verbal darts in their faces as if he were Sam Kinison. After all Morris has been subject to the BBWAA bias during his Hall of Fame candidacy so why not afford him the right to make things extra difficult on these swill quill warriors.

Any person who has covered the game from the broadcast booth, an online website or a newspaper is eligible to take the test. The testers can then be placed in a round robin elimination tournament based on the already existing regional chapters to determine the final 30 voters for each award and the top 200 receive Hall of Fame voting privileges. The test could be called V.A.T. for voter aptitude test or B.A.T for baseball aptitude test, whichever you prefer.

We can even allow Major League Baseball to air a TV show on the MLB Network hosted by Bob Costas done in Jeopardy format for the testers. The Show can be called Voter Up or Vatter Up for all I care. Just get the people who actually have a combination of real baseball knowledge and objectivity in the system and leave the Asuka Browns of the world out in the cold. The worst case scenario created by such a system would be an atmosphere of baseball learning that no journalism degree could ever provide. If nothing else at least we might have some respect for their opinions.

Do you agree with this idea or have an idea of your own to share? Please leave them below in the comments area. I’d love to hear them all

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