The case of Fox Sports’ published-then-deleted post about the Kansas City Royals illustrates multiple potential perils in online journalism. The post briefly existed Thursday night with the headline “Royals are one of the worst AL teams to win the World Series since 2000,” was written by “Fox Sports Staff,” didn’t make its case (only presenting team batting averages) and has since been deleted without any explanation. Here’s a screengrab of it, from Deadspin‘s Samer Kalaf:
This article in this form never should have gone up on Fox’s website, for a multitude of reasons. First, it doesn’t actually prove what the headline claims it does; the Royals’ .269 batting average was tied with the Blue Jays for second-best in all of baseball in 2015, and only a point behind the Tigers (who also would have been second-worst by batting average on this list). Thus, the table of team batting averages they do include is more a reflection of how the game has changed over the last 15 years, with other elements such as on-base percentage, slugging percentage and defense emphasized at the expense of raw batting average. For what it’s worth, the Yankees who top this list were also second in the league that year in batting average, so relatively speaking the two teams are more equals than anything. It’s not a particularly good indictment of the Royals at all.
It’s possible to make the argument that the 2015 Royals weren’t a great offensive team, but batting average sure isn’t the way to go considering their standing relative to the rest of MLB and the case that they might have been one of the best contact-hitting teams ever. Their team on-base percentage (.322, 11th in MLB) is a bit of a better argument, or their slugging percentage (.412, also 11th). Neither’s really that low, though, and while they had a negative team offensive component of Fangraphs WAR (-5.4), that was still 10th-best in MLB (and combined with their defense, gave them the fifth-best overall WAR, so arguing that they were a bad team is silly.) Thus, the whole premise here is pretty flawed.
Beyond that, another issue is the headline hyperbole. This headline doesn’t at all represent the data included in the piece. A factual headline based on just this data would be “2015 Royals had second-lowest batting average of AL World Series champs since 2000” (which isn’t all that newsworthy, but that’s a different issue). A better headline and piece would talk about the diminishing importance of batting average, and would pull in more data than just the batting averages of eight AL World Series champions. Instead, this headline went for shock value, and failed to deliver it.
There’s also the question of accountability. Why is this piece attributed to “Fox Sports Staff” rather than a specific writer? Why was it pulled with no explanation? (Kalaf writes that he asked Fox for comment Friday and didn’t receive a response.) Why was it commissioned and posted in the first place? All are valuable questions, as is how a piece like this wound up on a major network’s website, especially one that just shut down their top baseball blog, Just A Bit Outside.
Here’s hoping Fox thinks a little more carefully before posting their next “statistical analysis” piece.
