March 24, 2010

More on Greenberg

Via Rob Neyer, The Common Man makes a more complete study of Hank Greenberg’s 1938 season and finds plenty of flaws in Howard Megdal’s argument that pitchers conspired against Greenberg to keep him from breaking Ruth’s home run record.

However, there are significant problems with Megdal’s analysis. The first is that, according to The Common Man’s math, Greenberg didn’t walk in 15.9 percent of his plate appearances through the end of August in 1938. According to BaseballReference.com, Greenberg walked 91 times in 544 plate appearances from April through August. That works out to a walk rate of 16.7 percent. How this slipped past Megdal and the New York Times fact checkers is beyond The Common Man. Really, then, we’re talking about a difference of 3.7 percent between Greenberg’s non-September and September walk rates. Given the same number of plate appearances in September and October, we are talking about an actual difference of five walks between Greenberg’s September rate and the rest of his season. Five walks. That’s what Megdal’s argument comes down to. Five walks spread across 32 games. Statistical blip doesn’t even come close to describing how flimsy this data is.

He also notes:

What’s more, thanks to the work done by two intrepid bloggers at MLB Expert Analysis Blog back in February (which Megdal apparently never saw), it’s clear that, while Greenberg’s walk rate did rise in September, it had been even higher in April and May. Indeed, September and October represent the third highest BB% for Greenberg in 1938. Did pitchers presciently begin pitching around Greenberg in April and May because they knew he would break the mark? Of course not. Again, what you’re seeing is a statistical blip.

Right. Remember, anything can happen in 100 at bats, or 100 plate appearances, and that’s about what you get in a month.

1 thought on “More on Greenberg

  1. rbj

    Wait, the NY Times has fact checkers?

    (don’t mean to go political on a baseball blog, but couldn’t resist that.)

    5 extra walks in a month? Yawn, utter nonsense.

    ReplyReply

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