This FG commenter is absolutely savage:
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Jeff, the Travis/Craig/Nathaniel series is just awful, a really bad turn for fangraphs.
It is so repetitive and anti-factual. Nearly every fangraphs reader, of course, supports the players & staff over ownership. Nearly every reader supports reduced cost control, minimum wage for minor leaguers, limits on ownership take, higher major league minimum, and just about every other truly progressive change to MLB CBA.
What I’m sick of is these disingenuous articles that peddle Boras/CAA talking points and a refusal to have a serious discussion.
The data that Nathaniel cited for his “38% player revenue share” figure comes from a defunct website Bizofbaseball. That’s just lazy and poor writing- to continue to spread this figure as fact is far short of fangraphs’ typical quality.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-mlbpa-has-a-problem/
Travis’ article ‘JD Martinez is Worth the price’ is some of the worst sports empiricism I’ve ever seen. He ignored both defense and baserunning, set arbitrary filters to find a handful of similar batters, excluded catchers from the sample so that the average hitting statistics would improve (even though the catchers otherwise qualified), and then projected a “WAR” based only on a 10-person sample size which was carried by two caught PED users (Giambi and Ortiz). This convoluted method projected Martinez 1.0 WAR higher than Steamer or Depth Charts. It’s fine to have varying projections, but it’s just poor writing to bend over backwards with needlessly poor empiricism to give a bias projection to suit a boring agenda. There is 0% chance that Travis is going to use such shoddy methodology to give a Boras client a worse projection than Steamer- as that would undermine Travis’ nonstop headline, ‘Boras/CAA client ______ is worth it, teams should spend big in FA, it’s the new market inefficiency.”
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/j-d-martinez-is-worth-the-price/
Craig’s articles are similarly agenda driven. When he’s not regurgitating Travis and Nathaniel article-types, he’s using poor empiricism to push the same talking points. His recent ‘MLB Payroll Might Decline’ article is a good example. Serious empiricism would use a model to project the free agent signings and contract extentions that will be given out over the next few months, and then make a comparison between ‘expected 2018 opening day payroll’ and 2017 opening day payroll. But Craig doesn’t do that- infact, there is very little evidence of empirical competence from this new wave of fangraphs talking-points merchants. Absurdly, the data in his article compares ‘February 2nd 2018 spend data’ to 2017 opening day data. The article fails to estimate how much more money will be spent this offseason, so it fails to make a relevant comparison.
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mlb-payroll-might-decrease-for-first-time-in-long-time/
The uniformity of the bias, talking points, and shoddy methods in these articles reek of planning and coordination. It’s clear that the authors are invested in these talking points- Nathaniel probably professionally so. This isn’t objective sports journalism. These articles are no better than Buster Olney’s recent article bashing Tony Clark while taking CAA/Boras quotes at face value. This is not clever commentary or information-rich insight, it’s boring and poor quality, ESPN style agenda campaigning.
Further, the same material is just recycled and recycled. Nathaniel Grow’s last article on the Curt Flood Act is just his recycled Uni paper from a decade ago.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1373063
Recycled talking points passed off as articles are simply boring and poor quality. The self referential nature of the Craig/Travis/Nathaniel articles makes it worse- why don’t the authors be honest and cite the defunct ‘Bizofbaseball.com’ website when arguing that the players’ share has decreased, instead of misleading citations to Nathaniel’s article- as if Nathaniel’s article proved anything?
This style of referencing fangraphs articles that are poorly done creates a circular reference of nonsense- Sadtrombone and others have pointed out how work on the supposed ‘January discount’ is being misread by Travis. William has pointed out Nathaniel’s mistakes, I have pointed out Craig’s mistakes.
This article’s first line is the closet any author has gotten to engaging with the criticism. No one I’ve read is sick of the topic- but rather sick of the bias, sick of the lazy writing, sick of the anti-factual talking points, the bad/zero math, the tone deaf anti-progressive suggestions (fire Clark, increase FA spend, calling Boras FAs the ‘middle class,’ disband the union).
Surely fangraphs readers would give huge support to a slightly different agent- one that focuses on reducing cost control, increases the major league minimum, helps minor leaguers achieve fair work conditions, ends discrimination against foreigners, and otherwise promotes the interests of lower earners.
But that is not at all what we are getting- we are getting recycled ESPN style talking points.
Now compare these endless Travis/Craig/Nathaniel ‘spend FA money!!’ articles to your recent ‘Ripe to buy a prospect’ article- they are night and day. The T/C/N series is just Buster Olney fluff plus some laughably poor math and a refusal to seriously discuss the points- readers can get that anywhere. Your article- about a clever, modern NBA-style trade to get an under-the-radar possible-stud SP- had nothing in common with ESPN style hit pieces on Tony Clark. If we want to read cheerleading for every name FA, we have Jim Bowden.
I cannot wait for Travis, Craig and Nathaniel to start writing articles with serious empirical approaches that assess player performance in a manner that isn’t agenda driven- instead of ‘well, I made a sample of late starters who hit almost exact the same as JD Martinez, threw out the ones who aged the worst, and ignored defense and baserunning- to come up with a 10 man sample from the steroid era to project Martinez’s performance.’ That poor quality methodology is so stupid it insults the readers.
