"If it's so overrated then how come you don't see more closers like Hoffman and Rivera?"
--ESPN.com "Featured Comment" in response to an article about baseball's "closer" being the most overrated position in sports.
My first reaction was like the duck in the insurance ads.
My second was to decide whether to bother to work out a concise explanation for why that comment is just so misguided.
We don't see "more closers like Hoffman and Rivera" PRECISELY BECAUSE so many people overrate the work output of that position, and so overrate a particular counting stat (saves) they it takes people too long to realize that Armando Benitez, Jorge Julio, Todd Jones, etc., etc., just aren't any good.
The commenter's question would be valid if we were perfect judges of player ability but terrible judges of which positions matter most -- that is, if we didn't understand comparative advantage, like for example if some baseball manager inexplicably thought the most important defensive position were first base and so always put his best defenders at first.
Posted by Matt Bruce at August 5, 2008 06:39 PM