If you can take your eyes off the debates for a moment, ponder these baseball connections to our current political discourse – one from each branch of government.
The Gold Glove and Donald Trump: In his 2001 Historical Baseball Abstract, legendary sabermetrician Bill James strongly criticized the voting process for selecting Gold Glove winners. His specific lament was the selection of Rafael Palmeiro as the Gold Glove winner for being the best defensive first baseman in the American League in 1999. Palmeiro had played only 28 games at first base, prompting James to say the Palmeiro was not even the best defensive first baseman on his own team, much less the league. Palmeiro’s other 128 games were as the DH. The coaches and managers voted on this and apparently split the vote so widely among all players that it took only a few votes to win. Palmeiro had won the award when playing first base full time in 1997 and 1998 and so there may have been some (lazy) reputation votes. Bill James found fault with the system, and I encourage you to read his words closely:
“The larger point, it seems to me, is that a badly designed voting system will fail sometimes, no matter who votes. The Gold Glove is decided by what could be called an unconstitutional plurality, meaning: 1. A voter can vote for anybody. 2. If the top vote-getter gets 15% of the vote, he wins, the same as if he had received 80%.
A voting structure like this is an open invitation to an eccentric outcome. If the United States were to use a system like this to elect the President, the absolutely certain result would be that, within a few elections, someone like David Duke, Donald Trump, or Warren Beatty would be elected President. If you can win an election with 15% of the vote, sooner or later somebody will. An unconstrained plurality vote gives an opening to someone or something who has a strong appeal to a limited number of people.”
To repeat myself: Bill James wrote this 15 years ago. David Duke and Donald Trump in the same sentence about plurality voting and the Presidency. It’s uncanny. Fast forward to 2016, and it’s surreal.
For the presidential primary voting process, I turn to Nate Silver, the sabermetrician who invented the baseball projection system PECOTA. You remember, the system that projected the Royals to win 72 games last year. Silver sold PECOTA years ago and moved on to the metrics of political forecasting. He tweeted this on the primaries that had been held before this week’s Super Tuesday balloting:
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Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) |
| 2/28/16, 1:18 PM
Share of voting-eligible population to have voted Trump: |
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I find all of this fascinating, but in the interest of keeping a mostly non-partisan baseball stance with my Hot Stove readers, it is time to move to another subject.
Royals, Yankees and Jail Sentencing: In a Supreme Court case decided earlier this week, without the need for Justice Scalia or his replacement to vote, both the majority and dissenting opinions discussed how the Yankees might raid the Royals for players. Here is my summary of the case:
On March 1, 2016, the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Lockhart v. United States. Mr. Lockhart was convicted for possessing child pornography. He also had a prior conviction for sexual abuse of his adult girlfriend. The legal issue was whether or not his sentence should be enhanced by 10 years under a repeat offender law that applied for prior crimes “relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.” Lockhart argued that the “minor or ward” was a limitation on all three offenses in the list and so did not apply to his prior conviction of “adult” abuse.
Justice Sotomayor, writing for a 6-2 majority, ruled against Lockhart, saying “minor or ward” modified only the last item in the series. Her 15-page opinion was full of legal case citations related to statutory interpretation, but she also added a baseball example to make her point:
“For example, imagine you are the general manager for the Yankees and you are rounding out your 2016 roster. You tell your scouts to find a defensive catcher, a quick-footed shortstop, or a pitcher from last year’s World Champion Kansas City Royals. It would be natural for your scouts to confine their search for a pitcher to last year’s championship team, but to look more broadly for catchers and shortstops.”
Under the majority analysis, Lockhart is the catcher or shortstop in that scenario and will get a compulsory 10-year extension of his contract.
Justice Kagan, joined by Justice Breyer in dissent, wrote that the baseball example only reads this way because the three items are not parallel. “The words ‘catcher’ and ‘shortstop,’ but not ‘pitcher,’ are qualified separate and apart from the modifying clause at the end of the sentence” (i.e. the “defensive” and “quick-footed). Justice Kagan suggested two revised versions of how the Yankee scouting report might have read:
Either refer (i) to a “defensive catcher, quick-footed shortstop, or hard-throwing pitcher from the Kansas City Royals” or (ii) to a “catcher, shortstop, or pitcher from the Kansas City Royals.”
“Either way, all three players must come from the Royals – because the three terms (unlike in the majority’s sentence) are a parallel series with a modifying clause at the end.”
Under the dissenting opinion, Lockhart would be a free agent after his unenhanced pornography jail term.
The Buck O’Neil Bridge: Now for a feel good story and one where Hot Stove readers would all vote yes if they were a Missouri senator or representative. Kansas City area State Senators Ryan Silvey (R) and Jason Holsman (D) are sponsoring a bill to rename the Broadway Bridge the Buck O’Neil Bridge. Hopefully with this bipartisan support, this will become a reality. Go Buck!
If you would like to put a 7-minute smile on your face sometime this weekend, watch (or re-watch) Buck’s Hall of Fame speech that is full of wonderful lines and ends with all in the Cooperstown crowd holding hands and singing “The greatest thing in all my life is loving you…”. Click here.