(iStockphoto)
Our paper on discrimination in baseball has finally been published (the June issue of the American Economic Review). While it received a lot of media and scholarly comment in draft, the final version contained a whole new section. The general idea is that those discriminated against will alter their behavior to mitigate the impacts of discrimination on themselves. But while reducing the impacts, these changes are not costless. For example, if you’re an Hispanic pitcher and think that the white umpire is against you, you’ll change your pitches. Where will you throw? How will you throw?
The paper shows that the pitcher will avoid giving the umpire a chance to use his discretion in judging a pitch. More pitches go into the strike zone, more are clearly balls. More are fastballs, fewer curves and change-ups. A rational response, but by avoiding the umpire’s discrimination the pitcher makes it easier for the batter to hit the ball or to walk. Here’s the abstract:
Major League Baseball umpires express their racial/ethnic preferences when they evaluate pitchers. Strikes are called less often if the umpire and pitcher do not match race/ethnicity, but mainly where there is little scrutiny of umpires. Pitchers understand the incentives and throw pitches that allow umpires less subjective judgment (e.g., fastballs over home plate) when they anticipate bias. These direct and indirect effects bias performance measures of minorities downward. The results suggest how discrimination alters discriminated groups’ behavior generally. They imply that biases in measured productivity must be accounted for in generating measures of wage discrimination.
And here’s a graph showing called strikes by distance from home-plate center. Data from 2007-2008 (N=144,990)
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Cue all the posters who will insist that racism doesn’t exist.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Umm what serious person claims it doesn’t exist?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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…That your thumb up:thumb down ratio shows more about public opinion on this than any subsequent comment. ^_^
…That your thumb up:thumb down ratio shows more about public opinion on this than any subsequent comment. ^_^
In what years was this study conducted?
“…those discriminated against will alter their behavior…” EXACTLY! and as in baseball, so is it in life, and at what cost? A pitcher loses his unpredictable approach, his off balance pitches, his full arsenal & uniqueness…what does a person in society lose? Great study.
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I love this, hits the mark. This relates to ones existential reality, and the ability of the majority to make of people what they want, not allowing them to be what they are. Ultimately with race and racism the denial reflect the oppressors’ internal conflicts and secrets, more than that of the oppressed. So in order to seem fair, the other is treated as thought they are rightly feared.
There aren’t that many black pitchers in the MLB right now compared to Hispanic, white and oriental. This makes the group as a whole prone to skewing from outliers like Edwin Jackson who throws alot of innings and alot of balls. This is just seems like another study that fails the causation/correlation test.
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…oriental…?
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…..yes?
Haven’t had time to read through the whole study yet, but a couple things stand out to me at the start. First, the ballparks where the QuesTec was installed are those of the Anaheim Angels, Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics, Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, New York Mets, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Chicago White Sox, and New York Yankees. Based on their rosters from a couple years ago, this group of teams would have, on average, better pitching than the league as a whole, or the non-QuesTec teams. Second, teams that have better attendance also have, in general, better pitching. Seems like that would skew the data toward seeing more called strikes at these ballparks, not necessarily because the umpire is more conscious of monitoring, but because the pitchers simply have better control and the ability to fool batters into not swinging at strikes.
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But why would that matter? We’re not comparing big teams to little teams (or QuesTec vs non QuesTec), we’re comparing racial makeup of pitchers and umpires.
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What about the batter’s race? The pitcher isn’t the only player either advantaged or disadvantaged by the ump’s call on a close pitch. I think if the data showed any pitch was as likely to be called a strike when the pitcher and batter were of the same race as when the batter and the umpire shared a race different than the pitchers, that would tend to negate the researchers’ theory that discrimination plays a role in the way these games are called. I’d tend to give the home plate umps the benefit of the doubt, considering the volume of calls they’re required to make in a given game/series/season.
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Maybe foreign-born Hispanics pitchers just have more cajones than U.S.-born White pitchers. Take Carlos Zambrano of the Cubs for example, a very in-your-face sort of guy. Foreign-born Hispanics have less to fall back upon than White players with a college education. A timid Hispanic guy probably doesn’t get a contract if he has the exact same skill set as a White player.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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What this study doesn’t take into account is that while grouping hispanics as a whole it is not taking into account the differences between guys from Puerto Rico, Venezuela, República Dominicana, Cuba and México. There is a lot of envy/jealousy between hispanics. Puertoricans see the rest of hispanics as inferiors because they are considered US citizens, while Cubans will always think they are the best race to ever play baseball. Jealousy between mexicans its also obvious for those mexicans born in the US towards mexicans who come from México (in México you are a mexican independently of where you were born if one or both of your parents is a mexican citizen or was born in México).
In that regard, i am mexican, but also consider Márquez as the worst umpire right now, he has shown a propensity to call balls/strikes as he sees fit, specially if a pitcher has a no-hitter, he will expand the strike zone and reduce the strike zone to the visiting team.
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