Heart of the Matter
Posted: March 25th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 74 Comments »
“There’s no stat yet that measures heart.”
– Nomar Garciaparra
You hear stuff like this all the time, and often from very good ex-ballplayers like Nomar Garciaparra. Baseball stats are lacking. They don’t quantify what’s inside. They can’t tell you what’s really going on. They don’t reveal a players leadership, his commitment, his consistency, his poise under pressure. Stats cannot measure the heart.
This, of course, is true … or at least it’s sort of true. There are so many things that baseball statistics do not even attempt to count — pep talks given, bits of helpful advice doled out, small favors done, dinners bought to make a rookie feel welcome, jokes cracked at the batting cage, routine grounders run out, hustle plays that hold a hitter to a single, interviews given when no one else really feels like talking. And so on.
Nobody, I would hope, would suggest that all of baseball is encrypted in the numbers. This is not yet The Matrix where you can plug the stats in the back of your head and see Chase Utley’s quick swing or Mariano RIvera’s cutter break another left-hander’s bat or Frankie Gutierrez chase down a fly ball hit deep into the gap.
Still … I do wonder sometimes what these “you can’t measure heart” people think statistics DO measure. I mean, let’s take a moment and ask the question: What is heart? I don’t know that the baseball definition of heart is easily put into words. The closest definition in Merriam Webster is the third: “Courage or enthusiasm.” I suspect the baseball definition of heart slashes between those two words … Courage/Enthusiasm. That slash mark in the middle represents baseball heart — it is something more than enthusiasm and something less than courage.
But beyond grand words … what is baseball heart? And, more to the point, how does heart help a team win? Does heart point to an ability to come through when the team needs you most? Does heart point to the skill of pitching out of a jam or getting the big hit with two outs or doing small things like taking out a shortstop at second base to prevent the double play or going first to third on a single or getting first pitch strikes?
Because if heart doesn’t reflect in tangible contribution, then why do you need it?
And if heart DOES reflect tangible contribution, then why can’t you see it in the stats?
My sense is that stats that DO measure heart … depending on how you define heart. There are stats that DO measure baseball intelligence … depending no how you define baseball intelligence. There are stats that DO measure how effectively you run the bases, how often you make the plays on balls hit near you, how many times you swing at pitches out of the strike zone, how hard you throw and how well you locate in important situations, there are statistics counting just about everything a baseball fan can imagine, and baseball fans spend a lot of time imagining.
If you believe that hitters should be clutch … there are clutch hitting statistics.
If you believe that tough pitchers won’t let their teams lose … there are win statistics.
If you believe that a hitters’ job is to get on base … there is on-base percentage.
And on and on and on and on and on. The “There are no statistics that measure X” business is shrinking fast.
But I have this theory … that when players and ex-players make statements like “There is no stat that measures heart,” they are really speaking to something else.
Here you go: Baseball is probably the most intensely recorded game in the world. And, beyond that, baseball might be the most intensely recorded activity in the world. I suspect we have more deeply detailed statistics on baseball than we do on crime or cancer or the real estate market. Maybe I’m wrong … but for more than 100 years people have been dedicated to marking down every detail they could think of from every Major League game ever played.
That makes it fun for fans like me who enjoy looking at baseball history. I want to right now find out what player had the most four-hit games, and I can go to Baseball Reference and find it in six clicks — at least going back to 1920:
1. Pete Rose, 73
2. Paul Molitor, 62
(tie) Wade Boggs, 62
4. George Brett, 61
5. Al Simmons, 60
6. Heinie Manush, 59
7. Rod Carew, 58
8. Paul Waner, 57
9. George Sisler 54
(tie) Sam Rice, 54
(tie) Charlie Gehringer, 54
Fascinating. Now, what does that measure? Skill? Determination? Heart? You can decide that. That point is that it is there, in the open, black and white, for everyone to see. Rod Carew had 58 four-hit games. He had 3,053 hits. He hit .310 with two outs and runners in scoring position. He struck out 10 more times than he walked. He hit .383 in more than 400 plate appearances in Cleveland Municipal Stadium. He hit .328 in day games and .328 in night games. And you can go on like this for days, weeks, months if you want.
Baseball simply reveals in ways that other walks of life do not. Do you have someone at your work who makes you think: “What does that person actually do?” Have you ever had a boss who was so incompetent you wondered how they kept their job? Do you have a friend who you think is really good at what he/she does but for whatever reason can’t get ahead? Is that friend really you? Real life is just so much more vague, good work can be harder to see, bad work harder to define.
Major League Baseball strips away much of that chaos and haziness. Did Ted Sizemore have a good day? Hell no, he went zero-for-four. Did Larry Gura pitch well? Yeah, he threw 7 innings and gave up 2 earned runs. Did Sixto Lezcano deliver when the team needed him? No, he struck out with the bases loaded in the seventh. Did Sid Monge close the door in the ninth? Yes, but he loaded the bases and got lucky with a line drive double play.
There’s not much hiding room there. The stats — if that’s what you want to call them — more or less expose the situation. And the stats are getting more complete, which makes it even more revealing and more difficult. When a hitter said, “Oh, there’s a lot more to hititng than batting average,” he was right. When a hitter said, “Oh, there’s a lot more to hitting than on-base percentage,” he was a little less right. When a hitter said, “Oh there’s a lot more to hitting than runs created,” well, it gets dicier. When a hitter said, “Oh, there’s a lot more to hitting than Win Probability Added,” well, now you’re going to have to tell me what “more” you are talking about because this is a statistic that literally measures every single at bat and the contribution you made, even if that contribution was just moving a runner over.
And now, there are statistics to measure defense. For a long time, at least, players could say: “Well, maybe I’m not hitting, but I’m a terrific defensive player and I’m contributing that way.” Now, advanced stats might say: “No, you’re not really that good defensively either.” For now, the defensive stats are iffy and controversial enough that people can fight back against them … but as the defensive statistics get better and better, that will be yet another way in which players are simply exposed to the world.
Of course, I don’t think the “Stats can’t measure the heart” players are saying all that. I think what they are really trying to say is that what they do is hard. And it IS hard — it’s insanely hard to play baseball at the highest level. It is insanely hard to make a living hitting 95 mph fastballs and diving sliders. It is insanely hard to make a living throwing a baseball over a 17-inch plate while the most talented and combative hitters in the world stand at the ready. It is hard because failure means public humiliation and, perhaps, instant demotion. It is hard because from the stands it does not look very hard.
Because it’s hard, and because these statistics tend to expose your weaknesses for all to see, I think it’s the most human thing in the world to say that the statistics don’t tell the whole story. Sure, I’m hitting .254, but I’ve hit into a lot of bad luck. Yes, I have a 5.19 ERA, but it’s really only because of a couple of bad outings. OK, my UZR is lousy, but UZR isn’t a reliable statistic — just ask my teammates how well I play defense.
These aren’t excuses. They’re TRUE. Or, at the very least, they FEEL TRUE. There has never been a stat created, there could never be a stat created, that could explain all of the things that go into becoming a big league baseball player, all the preparation, all the playing through pain, all the extra batting practice, all the people who doubted you, all the tough times, all the dreams you refused to give up on, all the talented people you outdistanced because, hell, you just WANTED IT MORE. Seems to me that what’s inside many ballplayers is this voice saying:
Every little boy in America wanted to be a big league ballplayer, and I made it. I made it because of who I am, how hard I tried, and the spirit inside. Don’t tell me that I have a negative VORP. I don’t even know what that means. Don’t break down my life into Defense Independent ERA. That’s not who I am. I’m here, alive, confident, playing ball with everything I’ve got. That’s heart, buddy.
And there’s no damn stat in the world that can measure it.
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Circle me David Eckstein!
Circle me Rudy!
One thing i always thought the “heart” statement measured, according to players, is how hard they work to improve. For instance you are correct that stats are getting close to measuring everything, but the reasons for improvement are usually harder to quantify, and therefore players attribute their progress as determined by “heart”.
Gosh, Joe. Sometimes I think you majored in psychology and fell into writing. As a three or four year reader of this blog, this may be my favorite post. Very insightful. Thanks for your time.
Right on Joe
The problem is that no one wants to be defined by numbers, and will always argue that the number isn’t good enough. The problem isn’t that the stats aren’t good enough. The problem is that stats are numbers and no one wants to be a number
Another problem is one that you have written about before. Stats can say almost anything you want them to say if you look at only a few of them, or don’t look at a few of them. Stats, if recorded 100% correctly, calculated 100% correctly, and viewed in totality, will give an extremely good picture of a player’s contributions. But stats that only record some contributions and not others will always exist, and will be used by people all over the place.
When stats are used as blanket statements, you run the risk that your stat has overlooked some element of the game, and is not meant to be a blanket stat. For example, on this fangraphs post (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/17131/) Chipper Jones gives some good insight on why he swings at the first pitch in some cases. The stats simply showed that he swings too often at first pitches. He responded that he has very good reasons for swinging at them. Stats were then used to verify that he was right, but other stats were also used initially to tell him he was wrong. If you want to define a player by stats, you better be sure your stats are all-inclusive. Too many players have been defined by a single stat line for good or for bad, and they know that there is more to it than that.
Not disagreeing, just saying that stats are extremely easy to misuse, and extremely hard to use perfectly, even for stat geniuses, which I am not.
“heart” is about useless a discussion as how good or bad a guy is “in the clubhouse.”
I find the arguments that proponents of statistics have with the anti-stats crowd bears many similarities to the disagreements between those that believe in evolution and creationists.
“I have done thousands of autopsies, and I had noticed differences in heart size in horses before we did Secretariat,” Swerczek said. “I had picked up the difference in the male and female hearts and noticed that some were bigger than others.
“But I didn’t pay much attention until Secretariat came along. He was completely out of everybody else’s league. Looking back at what he had done, it was easy to put a connection to it. The heart was what made him able to do what he did. It explained how he was able to do what he did in the Belmont Stakes – a mile and a half race (Secretariat won by 31 lengths in track-record time). You would have to have a large heart to do what he did. It would be impossible for a horse with a small heart to do that.”
Recalling the moment Secretariat’s heart was uncovered, Swerczek said, “We just stood there in stunned silence. We couldn’t believe it. The heart was perfect. There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine.”
So, apparently, you can measure heart.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by JPosnanski: Some thoughts on Nomar and other players mean when they say “stats can’t measure heart.” http://bit.ly/anKOZU...
@ Mr. Ed #8 -
I first came across that “Pure Heart” Secretariat article in “Greatest American Sports Writing nineteen-whatever (’91?)” and it’s still one of my all-time favorite pieces of sports journalism. Thanks for the great reminder!
Joe,
theres a bundle of stats I would like to propose that I believe measure heart for hitters. I want 7,8,9 inning stats. There are many ways it can be bundled. The data is there. I’d like to know the guys 9th inning avg , obp and all kinds of stats for the 9th inning and final third of the game.
If they already have it , I cant find it.
I couldnt even find stats on 2009 GWRBI — the game winner. When the Yanks traded Cabrera I wasnt pleased. Cabrera had a handful of walkoffs and I wanted to see how many games his bat won. I couldnt find it. Anyway, Cabrera is an example of a player with heart. While his avg wasnt great , he seemed to play better late. Do the numbers back that up? I dont know , there arent any.
I was able to find a list of historical GWRBI leaders and the list is a whose who of guys who played with heart — Joe Torre and Keith Hernandez among them.
I dont know why Nomar is complaining about statistics , if he didnt hit around 350 that year he’d be more than a few dollars shy. Nomar wasnt even the biggest star on the Trenton Thunder. That was Pork Chop. So I dont know how he turned into such a diva. Nomar is the last guy who should be talking about heart. They ran him out of Boston for not playing every day. Does he have a ring?
Back to the heart…Nomars an idiot…Stats do measure heart. For pinch hitters and relievers. Now I need the rest of it, starting with the reinstatement of the GWRBI as a stat.
Heart, in my opinion, is playing/working through stretches where your confidence has left you…for whatever reason. It’s also playing/working through times when things are just not breaking your way, when luck really seems to be against you.
I think heart is unquantifiable, in a statistical sense. Some people have it and some people don’t.
I found a statistic for heart.
When a team trades you — on the trading deadline — and then goes on to win the World Series — then your heart statistic stinks.
If Nomar had the bleepin heart to play his tail off that day Derek Jeter went face first into the stands then epstein would never be able to make that deal.
On second thought, thinking of Nomar got me so upset I dont even want any stats for heart. Heart should be deduced. Heart is what we are looking for when we study the stats.
Nomar is an idiot.
While marvelous writing, the Secretariat story seems more to be a “you see what you want to see” sort of urban legend kinda deal to me.
My screen name is, more or less, a reference to heart…or perhaps laziness. Let me explain.
I was a wrestler of some distinction in a time long gone. I was at my best in the 3rd period. I took great pride in leading the team in 3rd period points–something akin to clutch hitting.
Now my detractors (including me) might point out that truly dominant wrestlers never see the 3rd period of many matches. They would pin or technical fall the opponent post haste. I, however, mastered the art of the comeback.
I like to think that as a match would progress, it would become increasingly clear what was required in order to emerge victorious. I understand that this makes no logical sense. Apparently, I need to look defeat in the face in order to forge a path to victory.
I realize the character flaws my clutchiness exposes. It’s just how I’m wired. I neither believe nor disbelieve in “clutch” on a broad scale, but I know that I was, often, clutch.
My screen name is a reminder to myself that all things are not quantifiable. That it ain’t over til it’s over. That laziness and clutch are intertwined. That the ineffable is the sublime.
I feel this exact same way about school. I tend to get marks, around 75-80 %, but I know, that I am very smart. It’s not because I don’t try, it’s because I run into bad luck. It’s almost as though school marks are also illegitimate statistics. I’ve never made the honour roll but I’ve had a large number of people tell me that I’m the smartest person they have ever met. They don’t believe me when I say I’ve never made honour roll.
And yes, it’s honour with a “u”.
Because I am Canadian.
e@9: you must not have looked very hard:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=cabreme01&year=2009&t=b
Your memory is actually right, at least in regards to the 9th inning, Melky hit .435/.480/.630. He wasn’t so great in the 7th or 8th though. According to “Clutch & Late” (which I believe measures 7th inning & on in games that are within 3 runs), he hit .304/.349/.405.
They’ve also developed “leverage” stats, which measure how a player hit in high leverage, medium leverage, and low leverage situations according to WPA. Melky hit .276/.321/.429 in high leverage situations – which is almost identical to his overall stat line. Basically, he didn’t raise his game or shrink in the most important spots, he stayed Melky Cabrera. Which ends up being true for most players in MLB, over a long enough period of time.
WyoRev: No, the Secretariat story is a medical fact. His heart was literally larger than any other horse heart any doctor had ever seen or weighed.
What’s interesting is that the Secretariat “heart” story is exactly the opposite of what Nomar is trying to infer
Also, GWRBI is an almost entirely useless stat. You get exactly the same GWRBI for driving in a go-ahead run in the first inning of an opening day game your team wins 17-0 as you do for hitting a 2-strike grand slam off Mariano Rivera with your team down 3 runs with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th on the last day of the season with a playoff spot on the line.
I hate the celebration of “clutchiness” (they perform better than their normal in pareticular circumstances). All it means is that in normal circumstances they’re not putting in. Consistancy means they go hard all the time and that’s heroic – and it’s probably a fair measure of “heart”.
I love it…”Damn those actual ballplayers for having an opinion on what makes an actual ballplayer — we have proof they’re wrong! Actual ballplayers don’t know what makes themselves good! Stats guys do. They have very specific stats, which can be used with or without context. In fact, they’re used (and re-used) even in face of contrary evidence. Until they’re proven wrong. Oh, hey, a quick tweek here, an adjustment there…OK, now they’re right! All right, now we know that what we said previously was pretty much wrong…but these really smart guys pretty much sold me on this stat, so I’m really surprised that it was actually pretty subjective, and kind of didn’t quite measure what we thought it did. Damn outliers! The guys we say suck, suck! Don’t you understand?!”
I love it…”Damn those clergymen for having an opinion on what makes an actual moral human being — we have proof they’re wrong! Moralists and proselytizers don’t know right from wrong. Scientists and philosophers do. They have very specific cost/benefit analysis which can be used with or without context. In fact, they’re used (and re-used) even in the face of contrary evidence. Until they’re proven wrong….yada, yada, yada…but J.S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham…blah, blah, blah, rhetorical trick after rhetorical trick. The guys we say suck, suck! Don’t you understand?!
@6 Chris, I totally agree with you. 25 Barry Bonds(any era) would drub 25 Ecksteins by a score of 935-0….and it would end only because team Bonds got bored. I’m from the firejoemorgan.com school of grit. The only people who tout their intangibles are those who can’t tout anything tangible.
Thanks for this, Joe, I really enjoyed it. I’m working on a doctorate in clinical psychology, which includes a lot of work with research and statistics, but which also includes a lot of talking to people and trying to understand who they are and how you might be able to help them. Sometimes you can bridge these two areas, but often not. In fact, there’s some serious tension between “researchers” and “practitioners,” and although everyone’s always talking about “bridging the gap,” that gap is never going away.
There are lots of reasons why, but I think the essence of it is that people love stories, things that capture the emotion of an experience. Sometimes numbers do that for us– WOW! Twenty strikeouts! But that only happens when we are familiar enough with the number and its meaning that we can actually attach a story to it. We know what 20 strikeouts means, we can imagine the excitement building and the crowd screaming, one defeated hitter after another being sent back to the dugout.
But lots of statistics– especially the complex, non-intuitive ones– are very far from the actual experiences of a baseball game. Unless you know the stat well, there’s no emotional reaction to a great VORP or UZR.
Yes, numbers can be more reliable, in some ways. They can show us lots of important things that we misinterpret or overlook or forget. But people like stories, and next a good story, even a great number can seem a little hollow.
When a player says “you can’t measure heart,” I think what they are talking about is the use of God-given skill.
Every baseball player who gets to A-ball has talent. But certainly, most of them don’t make it to the majors? So what separates those guys who languished at the lowest levels versus those who excelled? Heart. Everyone has skill. But that determination, that singular focus that got Nomar, et al, to the majors, perhaps that’s what they mean by “heart.”
I don’t agree with it, necessarily, or think I’m correct, just putting that out there as food for thought. Perhaps “heart” is just slang for making the most out of one’s abilities… as in, David Eckstein has heart because it seems like he shouldn’t even be playing baseball but he’s a World Series MVP, while JD Drew lacks said heart because he has such a sweet, natural swing that he should be mentioned among the all-time greats yet is simply a good major league player.
Audiences, at least some, aren’t interested just about winning and losing ballgames. Being a baseball fan – being a sports fan – is more complicated than that.
We want to see some of our values (aesthetic and otherwise) reflected in the games. Even if we have to project some of those values where they don’t really exist. Even if we see grit where there is really just luck etc.
I’ve always thought that comments about ‘heart’ are much more an expression of our values, maybe even a normative expression, than a serious comment about contributes to winning ballgames.
I also figure I’m hopelessly optimistic about the intelligence of most ballplayers.
growing up in connecticut in the 70s and 80s i always knew the red pox needed an organ transplant; i believed it was a brain–turns out it was a heart…
Players I think of when I think of “heart”:
Pete Rose
George Brett
Carlton Fisk
Mike Singletary
Brett Favre
Larry Bird
Kobe Bryant
And Frank Martin and the K-State Wildcats.
What about grittyness? Surely we must be able to measure that.
Mark @25 has a very good point. We can’t measure how much raw talent a player has versus how much they use that raw talent.
Secondly, there are times that a player plays hurt. Sometimes this a detriment to the team because the player plays worse than who would replace him, but not always. Given a situation where a 10 WAR player (when unhurt) plays a larger percentage of the season at 50%, so he only puts up 7.5 WAR he still helped his team, if the replacement player would have produced less. The star player could have gone to the disabled list or rested so that his stats would have been better. Some guys just won’t play through pain. We don’t measure this.
Lastly, there is something else that might or might not exist in baseball. I’ll term it the “Dave Duncan” effect. We measure each players stats, true. We cannot measure how much impact player A has on player B. An easy example would be football. Player A is Reggie White, player B is Clyde Simmons. Clyde Simmons led the league is sacks in 1992 with 19. The next year he had 5. Was it coincidence that Reggie White was in Green Bay? Maybe Football outsiders accounts for Reggie White’s double teams in DVOA. They cannot account for a player “coaching” another player. Randy Johnson turned the corner from being good, but erratic to fantastic once he stopped walking so many players. How much of this is because of Nolan Ryan?
Did Nomar help his teammates play better by telling them “hey lay off the slider today, it isn’t in the zone.” If his teammates did and they played better, we measure how they performed, but we do not attribute that to Nomar. How large is this effect? Probably not very much in reality. Some players will not recognize the slider anyway. However, just as in business when a company does well management takes the credit (even if it really is just an economic swing and the company is growing at 10%/year, while similar companies are growing at 12%/year). When the economy turns over and the company performance tanks, management blames the economy. However, as with Nomar the psychology is take the additional credit (or overemphasize it).
WyoRev. They breed horses for this enlarged heart. It is not “see what you want to see.” They actually trace it to Eclipse.
@ 24: Melody
You’re right that non-intuitive stats aren’t able to tell a story as clearly as things like strikeouts. However, if you were to measure, say, someone’s excellent defensive contribution to a game (a state that would surely be difficult to grasp when compared to, say, hits) and then write a newspaper article lauding that player’s amazing glove work, the same story is getting told – the stats and the prose agree. I guess the problems start when the two things disagree: the prose response “but I have heart!” doesn’t match up with the stat “but you kinda suck”.
What I think Joe’s article gets at is that the prose response “but I have heart” is actually corresponding to a different stat: the difficulty of playing ball.
Same thing with self esteem (shiverr). You cannot measure it and you can talk about it until we are all snoring. All I care about is your behavior. Whether you feel good or bad about yourself because of your behavior is worthless navel gazing.
There was a wonderful 2009 NY Times Magazine profile on Shane Battier (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=battier&st=nyt) that I think does a good deal to explain how stats can uncover the sort of heart you describe in the second paragraph here. You have to look at the small stats, the hidden stats, the stats too subtle for most commentators. The stats that concern team and opponent performance in key situations. Personal stats don’t do a good job of expressing how one player can make those around him better, and his opponents worse. But there are stats that do.
Heart is difficult to measure because it doesn’t matter most of the time. In the grand scheme of things, the heart of Carlos Pena is irrelevant to how the Rays performed last season.
But heart, if it exists, would be the type of thing that would help sway the team one way or the other at critical times. The example I’m thinking of is Kevin Millar in 2004. You can argue that the Red Sox would have been an excellent team with or without Millar (and his 0.89 WPA that year). You can argue that the Red Sox would never have fallen behind the Yankees 0-3 if they had Albert Pujols playing 1st instead of Millar. But when the Red Sox, in all their cursed glory, were down 0-3 to the Yankees, Kevin Millar’s value was much higher than that 0.89 WPA would suggest.
Totally, 100% agree with the observation that the “you can’t measure” school is like the evolution vs. creationism debate. In fact, I’d argue it’s identical.
Look, here’s the thing: science (and statistics = science) is about describing the observable world. Observe, make a hypothesis, experiment, observe some more. Science is NOT about whether there are (purely) unobservable phenomena. It’s mute — there may be, there may not be. Science doesn’t care.
This is why atheism, correctly understood, is truly a belief system separate from science: it’s the belief that there are no unobservable phenomena. Folks with different opinions — those who want to claim that there are purely unobservable phenomena (an Intelligent Designer, heart, etc.) — are free to do so without any intrusion from science. Vaya con dios, so to speak.
The problem comes when proponents of unobservable phenomena want to ALSO claim that their unobservable phenomenon of choice HAS an observable effect. Intelligent Design proponents don’t just believe in an Intelligent Designer, they believe he directly impacts the (observable) world. Nomar doesn’t just believe that there’s some ineffable quality called “heart” — he believes it makes you a better player.
Which is why Nomar’s comment is bogus (see also: below). If he meant “heart” in the way Joe describes above, then he would have just said “I had a lot of heart” or “My career was all about my heart” or some such thing. And that would be fine — you were filled with courage / enthusiasm while you played. Fine. So why mention statistics at all?
Saying “statistics don’t measure heart” is like saying “You can’t see the Intelligent Designer through a telescope.” If you mean it literally, then it’s so blatantly obvious that there would be no point in saying it (“Planes fly in the air,” or “Water feels wet.”). It’s only when you mean it as an oblique argument against science that it takes on the intended (but unspoken) meaning — namely, that science is BS.
Which would be fine, except science works. It’s made the world an awesome place — medicine, plentiful food, OPS+, Playstation 3. Calling it BS while consuming those things is just confused thinking.
Sorry, Nomar. You may or may not have had heart (again, see below), but your stats are what they are.
**
PS: The supreme irony in all this — even if you believe in unobservable/observable heart, Nomar was the absolute antithesis of it. When the Sox got rid of him in ’04, they won the Series. Case closed.
If there were a stat that measured heart, maybe Gaines Adams would still be alive today. Hmm, too offensive. Let’s try this again. Nomar Garciaparra once led the league in E.K.G.
Less offensive, but no longer funny. I’ll keep trying.
For me, stats measure how successful or unsuccessful one is at whatever it is that they are doing. I don’t think heart is limited to success. Success grabs our attention, but heart? Is heart how much we give of ourselves to the game and the preparation? The difference between hitting .250 and .270? Diving for a ball or letting it bounce? Someone who can’t hit lefties, does he have heart? Is it reflected in errors or miscues? How many players had the heart but not the talent? How many players have both? Are we capable of looking into a player, a team to see if they are doing the best that they can? Can we see it? Measure it? I suppose at the very least, we have to watch the game and how the players play it and not just rely on box scores and stat sheets.
don’t know about the correlation between heart and talent. some players have all the talent in the world and no heart. see ramirez, manny
Albert Pujols has a gigantic liver which has been proven to be the source of his otherworldly hitting skills.
And Joe Mauer? Lungs the size of a 6 person tent.
Don’t even get me started on Tim Lincecums ridiculous pancreas.
he only thing that list tells me is who had the most “4″ hit games. Baseball statistics can be manipulating to tell you any number of things.
What, a player with 3 home runs in a game has less “heart” than a player with 4 singles in a game??
A player with 3 doubles and 2 walks in a game has less “determination” than a player with 4 singles in a game?
A player with 4 hits in a game in Colorado in 2000 has more “focus” than a player with 2 HR and a double and a walk in the Astrodome in 1968?
First off, Rice, Sisler, and Manush are among the most overrated players in baseball history.
Rice, Sisler, Manush, Gehringer, Waner and Simmons have a decided advantage with a list like this because of the era they played in.
Rose has a decided advantage in that he had nearly 16,000 plate appearances and played in good hitter’s parks and rarely walked and batted lead-off.
Carew was a singles hitter who played in a hitter’s park and rarely walked.
Players like Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, and Mickey Mantle are at a disadvantage because they walked too often.
Lead-off hitters like Boggs are at an advantage because they get more plate appearances in a game.
I agree 100% with Joe’s views on stats here. But I also understand why some players focus so much on “heart” and other intangibles. Consider a for-profit office environment. Shareholders would want to have the most productive people employed. But if you work there, you might be just as, if not more, concerned about how easy a guy is to work with, and might overlook a lack of production for harmony in the clubhouse – er, I mean office.
Fans shouldn’t really bother with that stuff too much – they mostly want a team that wins (and so do players). But don’t be surprised when players, even if they embrace stats, still bring up “heart.” Remember, they have to work with these guys every day, even traveling together. I’m not saying a team should sign an unproductive player just because other teammates like him or he busts his ass every day. But you shouldn’t be surprised that players care about that stuff.
After all, don’t you care about the personalities and motivations of your co-workers?
[...] bad there’s not a metric for measuring Ryan Theriot’s heart. (HT: John) Like the one they used to measure the Grinch’s [...]
[...] Joe Posnanski: The Heart of the Matter [...]
Thank you for an interesting and thought-provoking read.
This space is quite often the highlight of my day.
>>I’ve always thought that comments about ‘heart’ are much more an expression of our values, maybe even a normative expression, than a serious comment about contributions to winning ballgames. <<
I think this is pretty close to the truth, and doubly so for the players involved. There's so much failure in baseball that they really must find value in all parts of the game, especially the parts that didn't work. I fouled off a lot of pitches before striking out. I wasn't ever going to hit this guy but I managed a grounder to first to move the runner to third. I was out by a mile but I broke up the DP. I failed again but I found a way to contribute. When a guy without talent says it he's mocked as if this can substitute for actual performance. When an old guy says it people say he's just compensating for lost skills.
This blog post seemingly dismisses the idea of “heart” as contributing at all in baseball. But then, in the very next blog post about the K-State/Xavier game, Joe writes:
“Kansas State and Xavier players played so hard — these are two good programs trying to prove something. There was always this wonderful touch of desperation in the air — Kansas State had not been to an Elite Eight in more than 20 years, and Xavier had lost in the Elite Eight twice since 2004. Both teams, you could sense, could feel this was the year.”
What is that? It appears there was something other than field goal percentage or turnovers that was contributing to the outcome of this game. Sounds like these teams had “heart” to me.
Here might be some of the stats which could be used to actually get closer to measuring “heart.”
Games played per season: sure, lower-talent players will have fewer games, but great players with heart (great PWH) will play through minor injuries and aches.
“Clutch” play: not in the sense of suddenly becoming good, but in staying about the same as in non-clutch play.
Hit by pitch for batters.
We could probably look at % of breaking up double-plays without much extra effort.
I think consistency is a factor–Henry Aaron just kept putting up great seasons because he didn’t let anything bring him down.
What else?
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Heart of the Matter [...]
Of course statistics measure heart. They just don’t isolate it. Even if we could define it, which we can’t, we can’t have an ISOH stat. But it is there in the stats. The guy who works harder than everyone, it’s in his stats. The guy who plays injured, it’s in his stats. The guy who’s content with his money and being good enough to stick around, it’s in the stats.
It’s in there. It’s just not isolated.
Hey Joe, why doesn’t FanGraphs have OPS+ on their site? I really like the way that site is set up, but I love OPS+. Could you write them a letter? Just tell them who you are and they’ll get right on fixing this predicament.
@#21 — that was, quite possibly, one of the best takedowns of the “holier than thou” stats community I’ve seen.
And, of course, zero responses, and a lot of ignoring..
From the Wikipedia page for Phar Lap, the racehorse against whom every Australasian great is measured –
“Phar Lap’s heart was remarkable for its size, weighing 6.2 kg, compared with a normal horse’s heart at 3.2 kg. Now held at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, it is the object visitors most often request to see.”
Maybe in eighty years or so, people will be queuing up to see Garciaparra’s heart . . . or maybe not.
@52,
eh, not really. It’s a largely irrelevant argument. The ones that want to stand atop their towers and yell and scream and pout are the ones that want to fight the – necessary – evolution of a game that was largely run by uneducated people. The world isn’t flat anymore. This is the future, and the future is good. Deal with it.
Albert Pujols and Kevin Millar have heart. As do Jeter, Eckstein and Rizzuto. Heart is getting more out of your natural ability than you would with a normal amount of work. It’s pride. This is why it can’t be measured– you have to look at Rizzuto every day and see he’s 5-foot-nuthin’ and has no arm and no stick and has no business being in the big leagues, but he’s a team leader and an MVP and the only player on the team that could get on The Great Dimaggio. And the change in his stats can’t be measured because there is no ‘sans heart’ constant to compare to the ‘with heart’ stats. Stat heads will never accept that Rizzuto is a HOFer*, but his peers KNOW he is deserving. And his heart put him there. Some things you can measure, some things you can estimate, and some things you can underestimate. Don’t underestimate heart.
*These same S-heads will also lament the What if of Teddy or Willie’s missed war time, but they seem to forget that Scooter served too. Not that his numbers would have been huge, but he missed his 25-27 seasons after hitting over .307 at 23 and .284 at 24.
Was Rod Carew a clutch hitter? He would seem to be: he hit .310 with 2 outs and runners in scoring position. Not bad at all. On the other hand, .310 is 18 pts. less than his lifetime batting average, so he was a worse hitter than usual in those situations. So which was he, clutch or not?
[...] There’s no stat yet that measures heart [...]
Heart, both biological and emotional, is “why”, not “what”. Stats tell us what player X did, and to some degree, what they will likely do. Why they do it is irrelevant to the statistician. They would rather a 5.0 WAR player than a 3.0 WAR, no matter who has “heart” or not.
The only way that I have ever seen heart as demonstrative is in defense.
When D-Rob got out of bases loaded, no outs in the playoffs, was that because he had heart, or because the opposition choked? Was his stuff that good, or did the umps blow it? Or was it just dumb luck?
When Matsui golfed Pedro’s pitch into the stands, was that heart, or skill? Did Pedro make a mistake, or did Hideki get lucky and catch a strong tailwind?
When Damon did the double steal, was that heart, or smart baserunning that took advantage of an opponent’s blunder?
But when Jeter went diving into the stands, it was just him, charging hard for the ball. He could have held back. Had he stopped at the wall, no one would have thought twice. It is hard to argue that it wasn’t his heart that drove him.
The thing is, I can’t think of many players that have not hustled down a ball in a close game. I can’t imagine that a player makes it to the bigs, let alone sustain a career, without “heart”.
After I’ve read this post…hmmm…I’m not sure what to make of it. My first reaction is to say that Joe’s understanding of the concept is different from mine. Playing with heart, with enthusiasm and or courage, has no clear relationship to performance. Barry Sanders may never have liked playing Pro Football. To say he rarely showed emotion would be a huge understatement. And it didn’t hurt his performance. Maybe it helped him focus on his job. Playing with heart may help make someone a little better in a given scenario, but it also might make someone’s performance a little WORSE. Heart implies *emotion* and that can be a good and a bad thing. There are many examples and counter examples. Take your pick. SO what good is heart if it doesn’t always help? What it does is communicate to one’s fellow teammates how much it matters to the player that they play well, that they win. SO yeah, if your game is only average or worse, you better make darn sure your players know that you care.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say “Stats can’t measure heart.” It IS accurate to say “Radar guns can’t measure heart” or “Scouts can’t see heart.”
That is, I firmly believe a player’s mental and emotional makeup is important. For example, if you have two young pitchers who both have live arms and good control, I strongly believe that the one with complete, absolute, insane confidence will make a better relief pitcher. I’m convinced that top relievers need a kind of arrogant certainty that they’ll prevail.
That kind of confidence is an intangible. It’s something that’s impossible to measure or express in stats or on a scouting report. Even so, it’s an intangible I consider important.
BUT… that’s a far cry from saying “Stats don’t measure confidence.” Because IF I’m right, and IF supreme confidence really does make a relief pitcher successful… well, that success should be measurable. IF I’m right, the confident guy’s WHIP and ERA stats should be better than those of the less confident guy. IF I’m right, the confident guy should have fewer blown save opportunities than the not so confident guy.
Confidence is an intangible. Discipline is an intangible. Hard work and focus are intangibles. And I firmly believe in the value of intangibles.
But if a player really has those intangibles, and those intangibles really have any value, we ought to SEE the value of those intangibles reflected in the stats.
A bit more on intangibles.
Sometime players will point to, oh, second baseman Bobby Chuckles and tell you he’s valuable, even though he bats .220, isn’t particularly fast, and doesn’t field all that well. How is he valuable? Well, he’s a funny guy, who keeps the team in stitches, even during a losing streak. He keeps the team loose, which makes them better in the long run. To use the cliche, Bobby Chuckles is doing something that “doesn’t show up in the stats.”
Now, unlike many Posnanski or “Fire Joe Morgan” fans, I do NOT automatically discount the value of a guy who keeps the team loose. Baseball has a long season, there are BOUND to be rough patches, and a guy who keeps the team loose, happy and confident may very well be helping.
BUT… if he really is helping, shouldn’t we see that in his team’s stats?
If Bobby Chuckles’ whoopie cushions and hotfoots are REALLY helpful, shouldn’t the team be winning more? That would be quantifiable. If his wisecracks and practical jokes keep the team looser, shouldn’t we see that pitchers give up fewer hits when he’s on the roster? Shouldn’t we see that his teammates get on base more when he’s around?
In short, even if we allow for the possibility that his personality alone might make him an asset to the team, shouldn’t SOMEBODY’S numbers show that Chuckles is helping him play better?
@61 astorian. I think someone earlier made the point that the stats probably measure it somewhere, but they don’t “show” it – at the moment it can’t be isolated. I agree with you that it would show somewhere (dunno where though).
Question, is .220 from someone with “heart” more valuable than .290 from some who doesn’t give a damn?
I think what “heart” is is how a player performs relative to their talent. Some players have all the talent in the world, but never make it because they don’t work hard enough at it. Some players didn’t have the same talent as others, but they made it because they tried harder than everyone else.
Okay, I’ll respond to Jow Blow.
I don’t think Poz or anyone else except for a Straw man argues that ballplayers know nothing. The argument is that sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.
Stats generally are used in context when used properly. If the evidence is contrary, they are discarded.
For example, ballplayers and baseball guys will sometimes discount walks. Shawon Dunston, oddly now a coach although he never seemed to use his head as a ball-player, doesn’t want his guys to take walks. Yet it is very clear that walks are helpful. We know this, in part, from what some (but not all) of the insiders tell us. Ruth, Bonds, and Williams all come to mind.
But some of the insiders will tell us that walking is selfish or gutless. We use the stats in this case to stop it from being a “is to/is not” bickering and use our brains.
how many chicks did that basketball guy sleep with?
There’s no stat that measures marrying Mia Hamm. Fact.
There is a statistic for heart. There are lots of them. All the old ones (BA for example) and all the new ones (UZR, you name it). Heart is a component of performance. If you have heart you presumably play a little better and that gets reflected in cold hard numbers.
So heart exists and it can even be measured, albeit in an indirect way, because it directly influences statistics.
You just can’t isolate it. It is a part of the whole. Not a thing unto itself.
The point of saying someone has “heart” is to say that he is being more successful than his talent would suggest he should be. But how do you know that? Everyone assumes David Eckstein doesn’t have much “talent.” But he must have some–I, for example, could try as hard as possible, and I couldn’t play major league baseball. The point is, at the level of the major leagues, everyone has an immense amount of talent relative to the rest of the population (at least those who would like to play baseball) and they all have to have a lot of “heart” because they go through one of the most ruthless weeding out processes you can imagine. Everyone knows people that screw around and get nowhere in life because they don’t try, they drink or whatever. Those people aren’t going to be major league ballplayers in the first place.
At the same time, I don’t think we know if there are psychological differences between people at a given level that influence their performance. Is Albert Pujols mentally tougher than someone else? Are there other players who are mentally tougher than Pujols but don’t have the talent and, therefore, don’t put up the numbers? I don’t know. I think it would be interesting for psychologists to study.
This is not to defend the morons like those above that debunk statistics just because they don’t understand them (and I think the analogy to creationists is very apt). But I have to believe that, even at the major league level, there is psychological component (as there is in most every walk of life) that differentiates one player from another. They are human beings after all.
On your other article you said “Milton Bradley. No comment. Just Milton Bradley.”
Now, I just looked up Bradley’s stats, last year he was basically an average offensive player play an offensive heavy position. Not good, but hardly seems important enough to sink The Mariners. What gives?
David Ortiz last year had about equal production at plate, and I wouldn’t think he is a better defender/base runner than Bradley. There should be a sensible stat that explains why I haven’t see a “David Ortiz. No comment. Just David Ortiz.” line, right?
Joe,
I loved this! I am a blogger for Psychology Today and this amazing post inspired me to write a response to it taking your metaphor/ideas and applying it to graduate school and the GREs.
I link to this site from my blog so I am hoping some of my (few) readers join your (many) readers in discovering how great you are!
James
http://www.psychologytoday.com/node/40345– “There’s no stat yet that measures heart.” Or any test, either.
What struck me most about this is that I’ve always thought of Nomar as among the most heartless players in MLB. I will allow that I’m not from Boston and didn’t study his career, but in my mind, Nomar is not emblematic of a guy who showed outstanding determination and overachievement.
Does the heart meter rising translate to more victories? If so, let”s inform Dayton Moore he needs to cut Alex Gordon, Yuni Betancourt, Jose Guillen…
Or maybe it starts with ownership, in which case we’re screwed. I certainly question the Glass family heart as it relates to victories on the field.
Courage to Win is a riveting and inspiring story of America’s favorite pastime and the people who love it. It teaches us not to judge a humble boy by his exterior cover but, instead, to look to his gifts, his heart, and his “courage to win.”
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/CourageToWin.html