(*) FANALYTICS: Beyond 42
Apr 20 2013
This is not a review of the new movie about Jackie Robinson. For one thing, I am not a movie reviewer. For another thing, I don't watch movies the way many other people watch movies. To wit, here was my takeaway from "42":
- I liked it.
- I blame a good measure of the Hollywoodization of the film on Mark Isham, who composed (and I assume, arranged) the overblown score.
- I particularly liked seeing some of my favorite TV character actors in key roles, like Chris Meloni (Law & Order), John C. McGinley (Scrubs) and Max Gail (Barney Miller).
- I miss Han Solo.
However, as a fantasy leaguer, there is a more intriguing takeaway from this film. If fantasy baseball existed in 1947, what would have been Jackie Robinson's projected draft value?
The question really is: How do you price an unknown commodity? This is a question we've had to ask quite often over the past two decades.
We first had to ask it about Hideo Nomo when he came over from Japan in 1995. Since then, more than four dozen Japanese players have seen time in the majors. While we've had access to an abundance of performance data for these players, projecting them hasn't gotten any easier. For every successful Hideki Matsui, there are far more unsuccessful Kaz Matsuis.
Major leaguers who defected from Cuba are even more troublesome. There have been about 40 of these players since the early 1990s and we've had virtually no performance data to go on. Calculating a projection for Yoenis Céspedes last year was no easier than projecting Rene Arocha back in 1991. Look:
Yoenis Céspedes
2012 Pre-Season Projections
AB HR RBI SB BA
Baseball HQ 463 18 81 13 .268
Baseball Prospectus 536 27 83 0 .267
CBS Sports 475 20 70 8 .267
ESPN 351 12 57 6 .265
MLB.com 495 19 70 12 .265
Rotowire 481 18 68 22 .272
ACTUAL 487 23 82 16 .292(This actually wasn't that bad of an effort by the group, all things considered, despite the span of 15 home runs and 22 steals.)
So imagine the challenge we would have had with Jackie Robinson in 1947. Similar to Cuba, performance data for the Negro Leagues was scarce. But beyond the statistics, there was one other variable that has proven to be at least as important in projecting performance of unknown foreign players.
There is the psychological aspect of moving to a new country, learning the culture and adjusting to life in the Major Leagues. Some players took a season or two to get adjusted; others hit the ground running. With the intense pressure placed on Robinson, odds are we would have projected some type of adjustment period.
And we would have been wrong. Robinson batted .297 with 12 HRs, 29 stolen bases and 125 runs scored in his rookie year.
It wasn't the same for other Negro League players though. Roy Campanella and Monte Irvin took a year to gain their footing in the Majors.
But this psychological adjustment period shouldn't be dismissed... especially in light of another piece of news that coincidentally hit on the same day that "42" was released.
Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. So do the other major sports. But the National Hockey League has gone one step further, announcing a formal partnership with an LGBT advocacy group. Some folks in the NHL say that their sport is ready if any of their players decide to come out as gay. Could baseball be far behind?
Tough to say. While our country is moving in the direction of acceptance, men's pro sports has an aura built on testosterone-driven machismo. Well, perception is 90% of reality, right? But about 10% of the population is gay, so that means there could already be upwards of 75 gay ballplayers on active rosters right now. If any of them were to come out, would that change our expectations for their performance?
It's not hard to imagine that they could be harassed as much as Robinson was. And we just don't know what the psychological impact could be on their numbers. One might conclude that the decision to come out, in and of itself, could represent a level of courage that trumps any psychological effect.
But as is noted in the movie, it all comes down to success on the field. It shouldn't matter the color of a person's skin, or their sexual orientation, or any other irrelevant variable. The only thing that matters is, can he hit a curve ball?
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