Justin Verlander is one of baseball’s greatest all time pitchers— currently 41 years old and still pitching, he is one of the only active MLB players that is essentially guaranteed a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Shockingly enough, he has never made a sociopolitical commentary on the theory of the Borda Count. If he were to, however, I think he would be able to point out some of its major flaws.
In 2016 Verlander had an amazing year and was the prime candidate to win the American League Cy Young award, given to the most outstanding pitcher in a season. The award is decided by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, where 30 writers pencil in their votes by way of the Borda Count. When the award was announced after the 2016 season, Verlander received the most first place votes (46%), and somehow lost. Two of the writers had completely left Verlander off of their ballot, resulting in Verlander losing by only 5 points (137-132), the closest race since 1970.
This race exemplifies the prime flaw of the Borda Count which Mueller discusses; strategic voting. While Verlander was not unanimously the best pitcher in 2016, he objectively was a top 5 pitcher in the league. Knowing this, a writer who strongly wants somebody else to win the award would be incentivized to leave Verlander off their vote entirely even if it does not represent their true preferences.
1 comment:
This post hurts as a Tigers fan. How could the Tampa Bay writers leave JV off the ballot? Maybe Hotelling's location model and Johnson's rational ignorance can explain.
In one of the writer's explanations, he claims to been fixated on an Oriole and Red Sox pitcher. This checks out, as those are Tampa Bay's divisional buddies. So, in a basic location model, he is closer to those pitchers (by proximity or playing those teams more) than JV. And there was no abstention, so even the slightest preference toward that division would do the trick.
And on rational ignorance---the odds that the writer would change the outcome is still extremely small. There are 30 voters, and almost all elections were decided by more than 10 points. In all, the incentives weren't there for him to do an in-depth review of JV's statistics.
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