For those of you not down with classic '70s soul, the answer is "Haft!" As in Chris, as in the beat writer for sfgiants.com and a former daily newspaperman. The number of real news outlets is ever dwindling, as is the number of real, paid reporters competing for baseball news. Haft's role has become more important. Basically, there are only three people covering the Giants full-time: Baggs of the Merc, Hank of the Chron, and Haft.
Who's got the laptop -- click-click-clack
That's a sex machine to the orange and black?
Haft! You damn right!
So we rely on a shrinking pool of interrogators to get us important info about the Giants, and one of those interrogators works for the Giants' bosses, a problematic relationship -- though Haft is certainly better than his predecessor Rich Draper at sprinkling skepticism into his coverage. (That's not hard to do; Draper often tied himself in linguistic pretzels to plant wet kisses on the Giants' asses.)
I'm glad a former daily beat writer now has the job, because the job grants him access that few others have. For example, he interviewed Sabean for yesterday's article, in which Sabean made it clear Bengie Molina probably won't return unless he accepts a likely arbitration offer. He also quoted Sabean saying Brad Penny and Juan Uribe were asking too much at this point. Sabean downplayed the chance of trades, which as Haft noted, makes Dan Uggla less of a possibility.
All good stuff. Haft may be passing along what Sabean wants those players' agents to hear, but he's also creating a public record that we can go back and check and use to hold Sabean accountable. That's a large part of a reporter's job.
What concerned me and caught my eye recently, though, was Haft's recent mailbag and in particular, this question:
I was wondering why you stated that Bay is a better defensive left fielder then Holliday. Has anyone in the Giants organization told you that this is their opinion, or is this just your opinion? If this is your opinion, then are you aware that all defensive metrics that I am aware of strongly disagree? If this is the opinion of someone in the Giants organization, is he or she aware that the publicly available defensive metrics strongly disagree? Whoever's opinion this is, what is that person's opinion of publicly available defensive metrics, such as Ultimate Zone Rating found on fangraphs.com, which shows Holliday's defense to be about 25 runs per season better than Bay's?
-- Mark R., Folsom, Calif.
Here is Haft's response:
I suspect that you aren't Mark R. You're actually my ex-wife, who remains undefeated in arguments with me. This was among two or three e-mails Inbox received that pointed out the flaws in my conclusion, which I drew from chatting with a couple of scouts and having seen both Bay and Holliday play (not enough, obviously). Yes, I do find merit in zone ratings, and I'll strive to consult them the next time I undertake a project like comparing Johnny Bench to Eliezer Alfonzo.
Obviously the ex-wife comment is a joke, but as Dr. Freud would have us know, jokes are an excellent window into the subconscious.
He's a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman
Chris Haft!
In fact, Haft's next joke about comparing Johnny Bench to Eliezer Alfonzo just adds to my concern (aside from it not being funny). Haft apparently takes umbrage at being questioned in public (not a good trait for a reporter), and the questioner in question, Mark R., isn't even being snotty or rude. He's very straightforward: Are you stating your own opinions or passing along the Giants' opinions about defense? And what do you think of newfangled defensive metrics like UZR? Perfectly valid questions, particularly because we have doubts about the Giants ability or willingness to evaluate position players in new and interesting ways.
Haft shoots the guy down by first comparing him to an ex-wife (always an easy laugh when your audience is mainly adult male), then being smart-ass about the value of defensive metrics. I'll check them next time my head is so far up my ass I can't tell the difference between a hall of famer and a scrub. What's more, he can't resist another rabbit-punch in his next answer on a completely different topic: "That said, they'd be extremely reluctant to trade Wilson, who improved this year upon his All-Star season of 2008 (if you don't believe me, have Mark R. check the statistics for you)."
Take that, Mark R., you...you...you...statistics-checker!
So what gives? Haft could have ignored the question. It's his mailbag, after all. But he runs it then proceeds to make fun of Mark R., like the lead jock in high school who invites a nerd to football practice so he can break his glasses with a tight spiral. Bad form, Chris.
They say this cat Haft is a bad mother
[Shut your mouth!]
I'm talkin' 'bout Haft.
[Then we can dig it!]
I'm no stat-hound, as anyone who reads my half-assed analyses knows, in part because I don't have time to learn how a lot of them work, and in part because they often leave me befuddled. The ones I understand, though, I'm always happy to try to use. Hey, new tools! Fun! And if someone paid me a decent wage to do nothing but think and write about baseball, damn skippy I'd learn all the new stats, decide which ones worth using, and figure out ways to describe them to my readers without throwing alphabet soup in their faces. After all, baseball fans like stats. They love stats. They just need a reason to give the new ones a shot. Chris Haft's snide remarks aren't helping.
If one of the few remaining Giant beat writers is hostile to new ways of thinking about the game -- or worse, his attitude reflects that of the people who ultimately sign his paycheck -- then we the fans are the ones getting shafted.
Great post, as usual, ELM!
Good job pointing this out. I think this is more specifically an issue with the reporter than any connection with the Giants. Frankly, people who get into the writing biz tend to not be a math whiz, else they probably would have gotten into other professions. So they are not going to be very comfortable with numbers besides the time honored ones they grew up with, and particularly not, as you put it, with the alphabet soup that exists today.
In addition, and I say this as someone who is most probably in his age range, the vast majority of people from that time (the 70's) were not sabers because, well, Bill James didn't exist yet, at least not in the publishing world. So most people from that era are probably more scouting oriented than saber oriented.
From what I've read about the Giants stats guy, they do follow some sort of defensive statistical metric.
And as much as Sabean Naysayers like to rag on him about his lack of discussion of saber-topics, I'm sure the Giants do some fair amount of saber-oriented activities, based on the comments I've seen Felipe Alou and Bruce Bochy have said in the past. Some note his dismissive attitude towards Moneyball, but perhaps forgot that he acquired two of the better OBP hitters on the market when he signed Edgardo Alfonzo and Ray Durham. I think he's just dismissive of Billy Beane, if anything. And Moneyballers forget that Beane followed Sabean's lead in pursuing aging hitters who might have something left in the tank for a cheap price plus outbid Sabean for Loaiza (thank goodness, else we would have had him AND Morris). That's just the way you have to operate when you want to preserve the team you got but need to improve in certain areas, you go after free agents.
As Sabean is wont to do, as anyone can see in most of his conference calls, he don't open his kimono much, and as he noted when Neukom "outed" the Giants and mentioned that they had some stat guy internally for many years now, why give out our secrets?
Easy. Good grief, I think its called self-deprecating humor, I think Chris is pointing out with the ex-wife comments that he (Chris) missed something obvious. I appreciate the efforts of the 'beat writer' to interject a little personal humor into his writing.
As you say, he didn't have to include the note at all. He included the note from Mark R. to show that he's human and made a mistake.
Did I mention I love this column?
Mugwump here! (jfgi, fer chrissakes)
My sense is that Haft was just trying to be funny, but (like a lot of us) his future in standup is not so rosy.
That said, it's fair to call him out for piling on an e-mailer, because Haft is probably clueless as to how it came across and will (should?) benefit from the feedback.
Also, I'd rather have Bay; I can't get that image of Holliday clanking that fly ball out of my head.
Haft was asked a serious question about rating defense and the use of new stats like UZR, something that a lot of people who don't have time to investigate would love to know more about. He missed a golden chance to give a serious answer and educate people who read his work. It's not hard to be funny and enlightening; he could have done both. He chose to be dismissive and get a laugh out of the know-nothing crowd.
Ouch. Thanks buddy for calling me out about not knowing anything. Geez. Anyway, I'm tempted to defer to Mr. ELM, perhaps the most articulate person I read regularly, on the other hand, I would guess that Chris Haft is not a sabremetrician, and relies on his own personal observations as well as talking to scouts to form his opinions.
It seems to me that ELM would prefer professional baseball writers would peruse the stats a little more when forming opinions, especially the ones covering the Gigantes. Ok.
Lefty,
I think sometimes columnists have a bad day. Lord knows I do. Stuff doesn't come out as smooth and witty as one's mind imagines it. Your points are valid, but I wouldn't read too much into this brief bit of wordsmithing to derive Mr. Haft's attitudes or beliefs.
Great post. I was thinking the exact same thing when I read the mailbag earlier this week (although the Shaft theme did not come to mind). You can tell from Baggerly's posts that he reads various Giants blogs. Hopefully Haft does the same and will take this as constructive criticism.
Again, great post!