I think the point here, which is obscured by Eben's comment, is that baseball is an extremely conservative institution that concocts reasons to resist change and preserve inaccuracies or idiotic statistics. Everytime the Baseball Writers give the Cy Young to the league leader in wins (but less deserving pitcher) or Derek Jeter wins a gold glove I cringe. But, I would also argue that accuracy is not the ultimate goal of baseball--selling seats and keeping a strong fan base is. The fact is that people have come to know and love baseball as it is now and have a strong status quo bias. Handing the game over to machines would certainly hurt MLB's bottom line.

I agree that in some areas and systems we should aspire to minimize human error and bias--I'm just not sure baseball is one of those systems. Baseball is not about fairness or efficiency--it is just a game trying to produce enjoyment (not accurate criminal justice). Getting calls wrong and seeing Lou Pinella ejected is part of the enjoyment. In some institutions, inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and waste persist because they produce greater human happiness than their rational utility maximizing opposites simply because humans aren't rational maximizers to begin with. -MatthewZorn

First, although not particularly important in the larger discussion, I do think that wins are a very significant statistic for pitchers. ERA gets overvalued in modern baseball. Winning and losing is about how you perform in game situations. I don't care if my pitcher gives up 4 runs if my team has an 8-0 lead, but if we have a 1-0 lead then allowing 2 runs is incredibly significant. There are also ballpark and day of game condition factors that weigh significantly on ERA. Obviously wins are affected by a team's offensive output. It's not a perfect statistic, but I believe the most relevant of the statistics generally used to evaluate pitchers.

Moving on to the more relevant points.

I do think there is something to be said about baseball being a conservative institution, although I'm not sure if it's more conservative than comparative institutions and frankly I'm not even sure which institutions I would compare it with. The other professional sports leagues in the US are relative infants compared to Major League Baseball. In at least some areas I think baseball has embraced change. The general impression I get is that baseball was on the forefront of racial integration in this country, although I'm not an expert in that area.

This leads me to the next point, Matt's argument about baseball not being about fairness and instead being about enjoyment, selling seats and keeping a fan base. I believe the game of baseball has a special relationship with the US. Like it or not the game has a tremendous impact of the youth of America and striving for some degree of fairness should be a goal of baseball as well as other professional sports (and probably most professions). I'll focus my attention particularly on race.

Catering to the fans and trying to maximize profits and enjoyment can lead to devastating consequences in professional sports. The majority of fans of most American sports leagues are white and we've seen sports leagues try to cater to that by artificially making white athletes appear more successful. The NBA has been desperately seeking white superstars, even resorting to desperate measures like voting Steve Nash MVP two years in a row and drafting Joe Alexander with the 8th pick in the NBA Draft. We've also seen what the boxing world has done to try and get a white superstar. I admit I haven't seen the movie The Great White Hope, but the basic idea in boxing is that white athletes are built up to seem much better than they are to get viewers to watch their fights.

I would even question in baseball whether certain white pitchers have been undeserving of their great careers out of the desire to see white superstars. I won't name names, but most baseball fans are familiar with certain white pitchers who don't throw particularly fast and have had incredible careers due to what is deemed their "great control." Could the same thing happen to a Dominican born player? I can't think of many black pitchers who've made careers out of "great control" the way certain white pitchers have.

If MLB is solely trying to maximize ticket sales and please their fan base then shouldn't they then stealthy discriminate in a way that creates white superstars in order to maximize ticket sales? I think baseball has to be about more than maximizing ticket sales and creating a large fan base. Baseball has also been the game of immigrants, representative to some extent of the American dream.

One other area where profits should take a back seat to fairness is in the area of Performance Enhancing Drugs. We all know that "Chicks Dig the Long Ball" and in order to maximize fan enjoyment the best decision would be not only to allow, but virtually mandate steroid use among players. Bulking up monster athletes who would all die at age 40 would get the best ratings and attendance for baseball, but I think the game has a greater social responsibility.

All of this is getting me to the point that baseball should to some degree be about fairness. The idea that any little kid can start playing in little league or on a rock covered field in a third world country and make his way up to the big leagues based on talent alone is an important part of the game and is connected in many ways to an ideal we would like to see in other professions as well. Just imagine if Cravath started a program in the Dominican Republic to train poor children who showed potential to some day become great lawyers. That is what we have today with the Yankees (and virtually every other major league team) going in and training and developing talent. Sports provide a framework for rewarding talent above all else and I wouldn't want to see that change.

MLB isn't the WWE and I wouldn't want to see it become that. Selling tickets and maintaining a fan base are important for MLB, but it must be mindful of the price those things may come at.

-- JoshLerner - 13 May 2010