Umpires Disproportionately Eject Non-White Players

by
April 30, 2018

Anthony Rendon was ejected from a game earlier this month for … not contesting the strike zone. He flipped his bat down, faced away from the umpire, and did not visibly open his mouth. He was tossed by Marty Foster, for, what crew chief Joe West described incorrectly as ‘throwing equipment.’ (The pathologization of a non-white player’s actions after the fact to justify an ejection by a white ump is the subject of an entirely different set of analyses.)

After the game, Rendon actually went on record to say that umpires, like players, should be held to specific standards and demoted if they fail to meet those standards. This statement is remarkable for a couple of reasons. One, as most Nats fans know, getting Rendon to say anything, particularly anything of substance, to the media is pretty tough. He is, to forgive the pun, a pretty close-mouthed guy. For another, he points out that umpires, like players, are now doing their jobs in the Statcast era – we know, to a pretty refined degree, how well or not well they’re performing.

Players can be subject to replays that will tell them if their hand left the bag for the fraction of a fraction of a second, such as what happened to Jose Lobaton for the last out in the 8th in 2017 NLDS Game 5 (stay salty, my friends). But a home plate umpire’s word, particularly about the strike zone, is law. I understand ball vs. strike calls not being subject to replay. Even as someone who thinks most of the league’s pace-of-play ‘innovations’ are utter nonsense, I can’t see a good system in which every pitch could be subject to review. (Though, if the manager could make it one of their challenges, that’d be a start.) Umpires, therefore, should be held to the same standards, including performance reviews, as the players whose games they call.

The other thing that makes Rendon’s statement noticeable is that he’ll be facing the same umpiring crew in the final game against the Mets of this series and is likely to face them again this season. Saying that an umpire isn’t, in effect, doing their job commensurate with how Rendon is doing his is putting a pretty wide target on his own, and his team’s, back.

But beyond this instance, Rendon’s relatively mild approach to being struck out looking was disproportionately punished. He was ejected for not doing a whole heck of a lot, a punishment that seems incredibly disproportionate to a ‘crime’ that didn’t seem to go against MLB rules, written or unwritten.

I quickly tweeted out asking for an analysis of non-white versus white players in similar circumstances, because I had a hard time picturing a white player (like, say, Kris Bryant) being tossed for the same thing. Since no analysis existed, I did my own.

My analysis of available player ejection data from 2015-2017 led to the unmistakable conclusion: Non-white players, and Latino players in particular, are tossed at rates completely disproportionate to their representation in the league.

Methodology

Here’s a spreadsheet of data I compiled, mostly using Umpire Ejection Fantasy League data. I decided to limit it to 2015-7, in part because of use of Statcast and relatively consistent replay rules.

I also came at this analysis assuming any particular non-white and Latino player was as likely as any white, non-Latino player to be ejected, and so compared player ejections with league representation percentages for particular ethnicities. However, in doing analysis on position players only – that is, excluding pitchers – I didn’t have the league representation percentages adjusted for position players.

A major limitation in my data is having to hand-assign players as being white or non-white, and Latino or non-Latino. This was done using country of origin and knowledge of US-born players, and therefore is limited by my personal knowledge, particularly for US-born players. For instance, Marcus Stroman’s mother is from Puerto Rico and he was offered the chance to pitch for Team PR in the WBC. For the purposes of this analysis, he was classified as ‘nonwhite’ and ‘Latino.’

I also don’t know how players self-identify; I’m assuming Anthony Rendon, whose family is from Mexico and who was offered the opportunity to play for Team Mexico, self-identifies as Latino, but I don’t know if he’s stated that specifically. For non-US-born players, I also classified all players born in Latin American countries as Latino, but again, that’s not the same as asking for someone’s self-identification and that’s not the same as how any particular umpire perceives any particular player. For example, Francisco Cervelli, who is Italian and Venezuelan, was classified as non-white and Latino for this analysis.

I also classified Latino players as ‘non-white’ for the purposes of this analysis. While many Latinos self-identify as white, the Racial and Gender Report Card for Major League Baseball, where I got the league demographic data, identifies them as non-white and calculates them in the total of ‘players of color.’ So I maintained this classification for the purposes of this analysis. Any mistakes are unintentional; I welcome comments with suggestions for re-categorization.

Lastly, the umpiring corps has, as far as I know, not changed dramatically year to year. It’s a notoriously narrow pipeline and one almost entirely composed of white men. Analysis showed that some umpires toss players more than others, but this hasn’t been controlled for brawls. Additionally, the numbers of players tossed is a reflection of the number of games worked, which I haven’t controlled for.

This analysis isn’t meant to ascribe ejecting non-white and Latino players to any particular bad actor within the umpiring corps but to show a pattern of behavior.

 

The data:

2015 2016 2017 Grand Total
Non-white 50 52 29 131
Latino 39 42 22 103
Non-Latino 11 10 7 28
White 50 38 44 132
Non-Latino 50 38 44 132
Grand Total 100 90 73 263

 

Non-white players being ejected accounts for almost 50 percent of total ejections, despite players of color never being more than 42.5 percent of the league. Latino player ejections account for 38 percent of ejections, despite Latinos never being more than 31.9 percent of the league. Non-white, non-Latino players (of whom most are African-American), accounted for about 11 percent of ejections, fitting with representation in the league, except that no Asian players were ejected in this time period, and Asian players made up between 1.2 and 1.9 percent of the league. So, non-white, non-Latino, non-Asian players make up about 9-10 percent of the league and 11 percent of the ejections.

2017 is, therefore, a bit of a fluke. Of total players, nonwhite and Latino players were actually not tossed any more often (relative to their representation in the league) than their white peers.

 

Percentage of Total Ejections 2017        Percentage of the League
Non-white players ejections 39.7% 42.5%
Latino players ejections 30.1% 31.9%
Non-white, non-Latino players

ejections

 9.6% 10.7%
White players ejections 60.3% 57.5%

 

I then controlled for two things:  pitcher ejections and ejections by non-home plate umpires, figuring that most pitcher ejections were as a result of beaning batters (which, yep, keep tossing them), and non-HP ejections might result from ejections during brawls, arguing slide calls, or in circumstances dissimilar to Rendon’s.

 

2015 2016 2017 Grand Total
Nonwhite 31 36 26 93
Latino 23 26 19 68
Non-Latino 8 10 7 25
White 26 26 32 84
Non-Latino 26 26 32 84
Grand Total 57 62 58 177

A few things became noticeable. One, overall ejections seem to be dropping, but non-pitcher, HP umpire ejections are holding pretty steady. Two, in 2015 and 2016, non-white position players comprised the majority of ejected players. Not only were non-white position players being ejected at a rate disproportionate to their representation in the league, they were being ejected more often than their white peers.

Latino position players were also being ejected by home plate umpires at rates disproportionate to league representation in 2015 and 2016 – 40 percent of ejections in 2015, despite Latino players being 29 percent of the league, and 42 percent of ejections in 2016, despite being 28.5 percent of the league.

For 2017, non-white and Latino players were ejected slightly more frequently than representation would account for.

Percentage of Total Ejections 2017 Percentage of the League
Non-white players ejections 44.8       42.5
Latino players ejections 32.8 31.9
Non-white, non-Latino players

ejections

 12.1 10.7
White players ejections 55.2 57.5

So, is 2017  a step in the right direction or a flukey year or something else? No idea, and with the 2018 season being nascent, it’s hard to say. If there have been interventions on the part of the MLB or the umpire’s union, fantastic, but those interventions have not, as far as I’m aware, been made public.

I also know we won’t know for a while about 2018 ejections because ejections aren’t all timed equally. One of the weird things about this data is that white players tend to be ejected in early months, and non-white and Latino players make up the majority (or at least a disproportionate percentage) of ejections after May.

April    May   June   July   August Sept. October Grand Total
Nonwhite 14 17 27 24 22 25 2 131
White 18 37 16 15 19 24 3 132
Grand Total 32 54 43 39 41 49 5 263
April May June July August Sept. October Grand Total
Latino 10 14 18 20 18 21 2 103
Non – Latino 22 40 25 19 23 28 3 160
Grand Total 32 54 43 39 41 49 5 263

What this means is that the early ‘eye test’ for white and non-white players being ejected at similar rates won’t bear out in later months.

What if they deserve it?

None of this has addressed a fundamental question in considering ejections: Some guys have it coming. I tried to control for this in considering repeat offenders – that is, if there are certain players who, by virtue of reputation and absent any racial dynamics, just get tossed a lot.

Of the guys who’ve been tossed more than three times, the results are … very unsurprising:

Ian Kinsler    4    
Josh Donaldson    4
Mike Napoli    4
Matt Kemp    5
Yunel Escobar    5
Bryce Harper    7

Of these repeat offenders, Escobar and Kemp are non-white, and the former is Latino. The rest are the kind of love-’em-or-love-to-hate-’em white guys you might expect to make up such a list. So again, the eye test of ‘Bryce gets tossed too,’ doesn’t bear out when you look at the number of different players tossed total.

For ‘three-peaters’ – guys tossed 3 times in the past three seasons – of the 13 tossed three times, only two, Joey Votto and Justin Turner, aren’t Latino. And for players tossed once or twice – so not for having a rep as a showboat or arguer or ‘disrespectful’, 57 Latino and 115 non-Latino players have been tossed in 3 years. So, 33 percent of ejections have been for Latino players, despite the fact that Latinos averaged at 30 percent of the league’s players during this time. For non-white players, 76 non-white and 96 white players were ejected once or twice, meaning 44 percent of players ejected once or twice weren’t white, with the league averaging 41.5 percent non-white players during this time.

In totality, 36 percent of the players being tossed are Latino, and 46.5 percent of the players being tossed are non-white, both higher than their representation in the league.

If ejections are the league’s way of dealing with argumentation at the plate, we should consider that Latino players and non-white players are already disproportionately disciplined by their fellow players – and brawls are more likely to break out between players of different ethnicities.

We should also consider why players are perceived to ‘have it coming’ to them for arguing, ‘showboating,’ or other displays of either enthusiasm or disrespect, depending on your perspective, and why Latino and non-white players are dinged for it so more than their white peers for what are likely similar behaviors.

Umpiring by largely white umpires on increasingly non-white players is a cross-cultural conversation, one that’s monitored by 40,000 fans, TV viewers, and the ever-watchful eye of Statcast. The league has a vested interest in solidifying its presence in Latin American countries and in trying to encourage African-American players – who are a decreasing percentage of players overall – to continue with the game.

I don’t pretend to know what’s in an umpire’s heart (I assume pine tar and certificates for failed eye exams). I didn’t do this analysis to say that any particular umpire is actively thinking that they should eject a non-white or Latino player because they are non-white or Latino. What I discovered in doing all of this is that there is a very clear pattern of behavior among umpires when it comes to player ejections when the Statcast era is taken in its totality. An action may cause harm – in this case, an ump being more likely to throw out a non-white player – without any specific racist intent.

Additionally, the idea that umpires are enforcing ‘respect’ (and Joe West said that was Foster’s intent in tossing Rendon – “You have to do something or he loses all respect from the players.”) on non-white and Latino players is particularly galling. If non-white and Latino players are disproportionately perceived as ‘disrespectful’ of the game for similar actions as their white peers, such as tossing a bat after a strikeout, then the issue is perceptions and not players.

This, of course, is a societal issue beyond baseball. Analyses of behavioral perception by white teachers show that they tend to ascribe disrespectful, aggressive behaviors to non-white students at higher rates than they do to white students or than black teachers do with black students. Analysis of school punishments shows that black and Latino students are suspended and expelled at much higher rate than their white peers without any evidence they’re misbehaving more. So this is not a problem unique to player-umpire dynamics, but instead is one indicative of broader structural societal dynamics.

To work on addressing this as a structural issue, the league can change how it handles ejections. A few proposals:

  • All plays over which a player is ejected are automatically reviewable, including balls vs. strikes. If an umpire ejects a player on a strike call that, on review, is revealed to be a ball, the player isn’t ejected. If a player makes contact with an umpire, they should be ejected but if players see that there is a clear and objective appeals process to an ejection, my guess is that they’re more likely to calmly walk off than explode.
  • All ejections should be reviewed as part of a rigorous rating process for umpires. Umpires who repeatedly eject players for calls that, on review, they should not have made (such as a bad ball vs. strike call) should experience some form of penalty – by being demoted, retrained, or fined.
  • Umpires’ ability to call balls vs. strikes compared with what Statcast determines is in or out of the zone should be made publicly available. If an umpire is consistently below a certain percentage of accuracy, they should be demoted or retrained.
  • Player strikeout rates should be adjusted for umpire accuracy the way player defense is adjusted for particular ballparks.
  • Diversify the umpire corps. Currently, umpires are generally older white men who feel tasked with enforcing ‘respect’ from young, increasingly non-white players. I’m not saying that simply hiring more people of color (including women of color) is a cure-all for these kinds of issues, but diverse perspectives may mean a decrease in unintended slights between players and umpires, and a general change in player-umpire dynamics.
  • Radically, I would also like strike calls to be reviewable. They would cost a manager a challenge if incorrect like any other play. If a manager challenges – and is correct in challenging – strike calls repeatedly, then the umpire, and not the player or manager, should be held at fault.

If this sounds like we can replace a home plate umpire with Statcast for calling balls vs. strikes, then I’m for it. As the cliche goes, I didn’t watch the game for the umpiring, and if a computer can do what the umpires are doing in a fashion that doesn’t disproportionately penalize players of color, then I don’t see a downside.

I co-host Resting Pitch Face, a bi-weekly baseball podcast with a Nationals bias. I can be reached on Twitter at @sydrpfp.

 





 

Sydney's work can be found on twitter at @sydrpfp on Twitter and on the Resting Pitchface Podcast.

35 Comments
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TKDCmember
5 years ago

This is interesting, but I think we need better data. You are taking pitchers out, who are in my guestimation, the whiter half of players, but then using the overall percentage of white versus non-white players as a benchmark. Well, if you were just looking at the percentage of position players that were nonwhite, probably a higher number, it might very well line up with the number that are ejected.

Also, not all pitcher ejections are for beanings and also not all beanings result in ejections. Since you aren’t making value judgments on the merits of ejections, I think it would make sense to start with just a straight up analysis of all ejections. Don’t control for brawls, beanings, repeat offenders, or anything like that. I’m not saying that tinkering from there would be bad, but it seems you should start with just the raw data.

5
Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  TKDC

Thank you for your comment! Just to clarify, the data is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fsx9ilXIk37oxx5_OVfCqNOzkQnfMXh4UpImyXnM-hk/edit?usp=sharing and the initial analysis does include both pitchers and position players and is uncontrolled for ejection type, etc. My first set of numbers (under ‘the data’) includes all player ejections total. The way the link is displaying apparently doesn’t make it clear that there is a link.

I don’t know that a breakdown of players by ethnicity (or positions by ethnicity) exists, but if anyone else does, I’d love to take a look.

I mostly removed pitchers from the analysis because I wanted to remove being ejected for throwing at. I took a look at ejection by ejection type (not on this blog post – but will update on the RPFP site with it) and found that non-white players and Latino players are disproportionately ejected for arguing balls vs. strikes. Again, making no value judgment about the degree of arguing itself, but I wanted to remove players ejected for brawling, throwing at, and unsportsmanlike conduct too since I’m mostly interested in ejections for arguing balls and strikes, and checked swings, and not say, Hunter Strickland and Bryce Harper getting into it.

1
TKDCmember
5 years ago
Reply to  Sydney Bergman

The fact that throwing at hitters still requires a judgment from the umpire as to intent makes me wonder how it is any different? There could just as easily be implicit bias going on with those decisions. But my point is that you don’t actually have the percentage of players that are nonwhite, so you have no idea if the number of ejections is disproportionately high. You only know that it is disproportionately high IF the percentage of position players that are nonwhite tracks with the overall player population, a dubious proposition.

Side note: You have Lorenzo Cain as Latino; I believe he is African American.

Another side note: I want to say again that I think this is overall really good research and a really good idea.

5
Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  TKDC

Good catch on Cain. Thanks.

OK, just so I’m understanding this correctly, you’re asserting that since pitching is generally a ‘whiter’ position, combining ejection data from position players and pitchers in terms of ejections makes it difficult to know if non-white players are over-represented in being ejected because they tend to be over-represented in position players generally.

I did find demographic data here: https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseball-demographics-1947-2012 that has breakdowns in pitching and outfielders, and pitchers are generally a whiter position.

Let’s pick on 2016 – it looks like 73 percent or so of pitchers white, but 55 percent of ejected pitchers were white (11/20), with 9/20 ejectees being non-white and all Latino, so non-white and Latino pitchers were ejected disproportionate to their rep in the overall population of pitchers.

When you combine all years, of 67 pitcher ejections I tracked, non-white pitchers made up 37 percent of ejections – in keeping with league rep or below but above pitcher representation – but Latino pitchers were all but one of those ejections, so 36 percent, above league representation by about 5 percent and above pitcher representation by 10-15 percent.

I also do want to consider that in 2015, 54 percent of position players ejected were non-white, and in 2016, 58 percent of position player ejections were non-white. While I agree that pitchers skew whiter, I don’t agree that 54 or 58 percent of position players are non-white – that doesn’t match my observations or the outfielder data presented at the link above, which has white players at or above 50 percent for the years in question even at positions in which nonwhite players are disproportionately represented.

My next steps are to go and ask SABR for this data, since I am literally eyeballing these graphs so please take this all with a grain.

The other thing I’d like to control for is chance of ejection – I treated all chances the same, but starting players are obviously playing more than bench players, starting pitchers in the NL would have more opportunities to argue balls vs. strikes than say AL relievers, etc. So if there are demographic differences in role as well as position, which I suspect there are, this would factor into likelihood of ejection.

2
Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  Sydney Bergman

And ack, for 2016 pitchers it should be 50/50, not 55/45, which also shows that small sample sizes are small, since that was one ejection.

0
TKDCmember
5 years ago
Reply to  Sydney Bergman

Thank you, and this isn’t surprising. Thinking about it some more, I think intuitively there could be a greater chance of inherent bias playing a role in pitcher ejections for beanings, because the decision is based on the umpire deducing intent. Sure, if the pitcher says something like “that’s what you fucking get!” then that is clear, but usually that is not the case.

3
evo34
5 years ago

“Non-white players being ejected accounts for almost 50 percent of total ejections, despite players of color never being more than 42.5 percent of the league.”

Have you ever heard of a significance test? Your data fails horribly to support your conclusion.

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Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  evo34

*Looks at degree* Ayup, I have.

I deliberately avoided the language of inferential statistics – I don’t claim that ejections are significantly greater than what would be predicted by chance and chance alone; I claimed that they were not proportionate to league rep, which they aren’t. These are descriptive statistics, done with a lot of caveats that I specified.

11
Brad McKay
5 years ago
Reply to  Sydney Bergman

I don’t get the response to evo34; not Sydney’s, not the voters. So many commenters have asked about controlling for context, for umpire race, etc., yet when someone comments that the variability of the data was not accounted for, the most basic thing an analyst should do, this gets down-voted? I mean, sure, evo could have been nicer, but his point seems to be more pertinent than any other in this comment section. Sydney, why would you deliberately avoid the “language(?)” of inferential statistics? That decision needs more defending than “I didn’t claim to do that analysis.” You should have done that analysis. If you can’t tell me whether chance is a likely explanation of these data how do you expect me to interpret your findings? When you say the ejection rates are not proportionate to the league – that would have been true whether off by 0.00001% or by 100%. What most of us want to know is whether the ejection rates differed in a way that isn’t reasonably explained by chance.

6
Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  Brad McKay

I did chi-square it and it’s sig to .01 for 2016 and overall, (2015 is .1 to .05) as Alex did below. If you think this is really just an illustration of chance effect, all my data is on Google Drive.

Here’s my feeling: Significance testing on this data given the number of caveats I presented isn’t actually something I think it particularly appropriate or additive to the analysis given the uncontrolled-for factors. It’s interesting that both my second readers on this are science folks who are either doing grad work or PhD’d, both published, and no one said boo to a goose about significance testing, not because either of them are unfamiliar with it but because it’s OK to do prelim descriptive analysis and then see about factors you haven’t examined before going and saying, yes, these two things are in fact significantly different.

Several factors have come up in this comments section and I’ve tried to address those. I’ve tried to make myself available here to do further analysis, even after it became clear that the analysis being requested was for people who weren’t requesting it with seriousness or thoughtfulness. I also know that the linked USA Today article and other analysis I can dig up on demographics and baseball don’t do sig testing either, so what I’m presenting is commensurate with other work being done on this, which is something I considered before writing this up. That said, I don’t owe a rude person a serious response, but I think I’ve proven myself happy to answer any question that wasn’t rude.

I also want to note that if this weren’t about race, I do think the threshold of evidence required would be much different, considering there are examples up and down this section of the site with comparisons of the kind I made here (looking at percentages) and no calls for sig testing to really know if one is bigger than the other.

As I said to TKDC, I’m going to find a data set for player ethnicities and to control for a bunch of other factors – like pitcher vs. position player and starting vs. bench player – before getting into significance. My other plan is to do a deeper dive on appropriateness of test (chi square with repeaters isn’t great AFAIK) before making claims beyond what I’ve made in the main body of this. Hope this helps to clarify things. I’d be happy to take a look at whatever analysis you do with the above data as I asked to do via Twitter for Alex.

1
Brad McKay
5 years ago
Reply to  Sydney Bergman

You can present preliminary data and you can draw conclusions. You just can’t do both at the same time. In the future, I suggest being more cautious when interpreting data that hasn’t been properly analyzed. And don’t be surprised when people want solid evidence before accepting claims that there is a structural discrimination problem with the umpire core. People are going to set the bar higher for claims like that than they do for claims about a hitter’s April performance; as they should.

5
fleur
5 years ago

Err… Maybe ejections relate to conduct and not race?… Just a guess

-8
Tom Oltarzewski
5 years ago
Reply to  fleur

Fortunately, you can write your own whole article supporting that point if you like! Be sure to find data supporting your claim.

13
fleur
5 years ago
Reply to  Tom Oltarzewski

I don’t have the data … I am only saying that in order to approach this statistically you sort of need to grade the level of conduct leading to an ejection… I.e mean words are different than pushing an umpire…

0
weezymember
5 years ago

Thanks for the article, interesting stuff here.

Looking at this information and watching baseball for a long time, if one believes that there is no racial component to how umpires and players interact, I feel like we haven’t been watching the same game (or even living on the same planet).

5
sportsfreak2744
5 years ago

Did you control for the ethnicity of the umpire?

5
Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  sportsfreak2744

I did look at ejections by individual umpires, but 1) because of brawls, 2) because of number games worked and 3) because there are so few non-white and Latino umps was not to able to really see any kind of patterns in ejections. (Google Sheets needs to start supporting slicers in its pivot tables – I can recapitulate what I did in Excel on the linked spreadsheet if you’d like to take a look.)

2
Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  sportsfreak2744

Here’s a link to a spreadsheet just looking at umps: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1guU9VFnMrGe7yyyv3hFoPtAMFDgzHlgC

Caveats that I have above apply doubly so – I know less about various umpires’ ethnicities than I do specific players, my hand assigning may be incorrect and I welcome corrections. That said, again, there are very few discernible patterns when you look at an ump by number of ejections, because of brawls, tenure as an ump, etc. It does appear that non-white and Latino umps eject fewer players, relative to their rep in the umpiring corps, than their white peers but I think it’s all noise and not much signal. Same with comparing ump and ejected player ethnicity.

Data is taken from http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/umpires/roster.jsp and Google. I converted pivot tables to plain text just to make them viewable in Gdrive.

2
Dougmember
5 years ago
Reply to  sportsfreak2744

There are so few non-white umpires (and one of those is Angel Hernandez) that it’s probably hard to statistically separate out ethnicity from Hernandez being an idiot.

1
Michael Augustine
5 years ago

How do you account for the context under which the ejection was warranted? How often to non-white players argue calls versus white players? How long did they keep it up and what did they say? Limiting ejection data to just 3 years makes me invoke the principles of the bias-variance tradeoff.

There isn’t a black or white (excuse the pun) process to tossing a player. That is completely up to the umpire and their tolerance level. Two players reacting to a call the same way, one would be unacceptable to one umpire, tolerable to the next. “…tossing a player under similar circumstances” again, you present a subjective question

You did some great research here, and excuse me for saying so, but can’t help but feel an imposed a level of race-baiting (“….because I had a hard time picturing a white player (like, say, Kris Bryant) being tossed for the same thing.”). Again, personal bias.

I’m by no means indicating that racism in sports does not exist. But to formulate a claim that the decision to toss a player comes down to the color of their skin without knowing the thought process of the deciding body, and without incorporating your own personal agenda, makes it hard for me to accept your argument.

6
Tom Oltarzewski
5 years ago
Reply to  Michael Augustine

This idea of race-baiting doesn’t really make sense to me here. The author had a hypothesis (A white player wouldn’t have been tossed), and looked for data to either confirm or disprove the hypothesis. That’s different than, say, a comment above claiming that ejections have only to do with conduct, but presenting no data to support that claim. If we could never use science to test a hypothesis, it would take away the core of the scientific method.

That’s not to say the conclusions of this article are 100% rock solid fact, but it seems like a perfect first look at the issue. Now, there’s an opportunity to study the data in greater sample sizes and see if those conclusions support the initial result. Science!

3
Michael Augustine
5 years ago
Reply to  Tom Oltarzewski

The problem with that is it’s not a hypothesis (and the example you cite is one of several that occur in this piece) because the author isn’t asking a question in the abstract, they are making a statement; it’s not “ARE Umpires Disproportionately Ejecting Non-White Players?”. The actual title is as good as an assertation. If I’m misunderstanding the premise, then that’s my fault but I go by what I see.

And I’m sorry but when you base a premise on race and then make comments about how one race isn’t susceptible to the same treatment without concrete proof IS race-baiting (I say this as a Latino-Italian).

Overall fair points, but agree to disagree. And thank you for avoiding personal attacks on a sensitive subject

4
sabrTooth
5 years ago
Reply to  Michael Augustine

BOOM.

The article needs to be recognized for what it is. While race-bating may be a bit of hyperbole, the title is a clear indication of what the writer wanted to say. And if that’s not the case, they should have been more careful with what they titled it as. I think that’s were some of the naysayers are getting lost in.

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Tom Oltarzewski
5 years ago
Reply to  Michael Augustine

TBH I feel like this is more a quibble with the title.

Let’s say I watch Giancarlo Stanton take some ugly swings and say “huh, I think Stanton is striking out more,” and go look at his stats to find out if he is. If the evidence agrees that he is striking out more, I might write an article titled “Giancarlo Stanton is striking out more”

I don’t think anybody would argue that I should have chosen the title “Is Stanton striking out more?,” because part of my article would include the data proving that the title is right.

I feel like centering concern on the title is really a concern about a researcher forcing data to fit the conclusion they want to see, and that’s a real concern, but with such a clear-cut result (see Alex Chamberlain’s comment below), I don’t think we’re looking at a case where the data is somehow presented misleadingly. And in any case, I think we’re missing the point that this article was presumably written up AFTER doing the statistical work. The author didn’t write a bunch of sentences presuming non-white players are ejected more, and THEN do a study, they did a study, and then wrote an article presenting the results, which confirmed that those players are ejected more.

I really feel like the “race-baiting” is more just a few sentences that can be misinterpreted as putting the conclusion before the study, and if we accept that the study was certainly done first, there’s nothing wrong with stating the results of it outright. Just like, in my hypothetical Stanton article, it would be perfectly acceptable to state the premise “Stanton is striking out more” in the opening paragraph, followed by several paragraphs outlining the results that back up that statement. I get that race is an issue that inspires passion and there’s nothing wrong with that (I’m a trans person and have a TON of passion about any study on gender and trans-ness), but it feels to me like in this case, that’s clouding the waters on what is at it’s core a pretty simple study and article, that neatly back up the hypothesis first presented.

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Tom Oltarzewski
5 years ago

A few folks are claiming that we can’t claim to know an umpire’s intent when tossing a player, but reading this article, I think it’s not actually relevant. The author isn’t claiming to know intent, simply looking at the proportions of players who have been ejected to see if there’s a pattern there (and found signs of a pattern). TO me that’s similar to, for example, a study on beanballs. We can’t know exactly which hit-by-pitches were intentional and accidental, but we can look at the data set to see if there are patterns in terms of what types of players get hit, in what situations, how those numbers compare to average, etc. Obviously the next step would be a larger study encompassing big sample sizes, but I think this is a great first step into this area!

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Alex Chamberlainmember
5 years ago

The initial hypothesis here is brilliant. Kudos. I’m jealous I didn’t think of it. And, acknowledging the limitations of the data, the results — primarily for non-pitcher ejections by the home plate umpire — are pretty resounding (for the dorks concerned with statistical significance, a two-proportion Z-test confirms this is significant at 99% confidence when compared to the racial makeup of Opening Day rosters).

Considering how whiteness dictates the unspoken rules of baseball — stoicism over celebration, with guys like Puig, Gomez, etc. shamed for their expressiveness — these results are wholly unsurprising.

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Alex Chamberlainmember
5 years ago
Reply to  Alex Chamberlain

I’m not actually sure if a z-test is more appropriate to use her than a chi-squared test, but that would also be statistically significant at 99% confidence… I’m about half a decade removed from doing anything meaningful with my education so I’m a bit rusty.

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TKDCmember
5 years ago
Reply to  Alex Chamberlain

I don’t think the whole “have fun v. have a stick in your ass” thing really relates all that closely with ejections. I’ve actually never seen a player ejected for exuberant celebration.

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sportsfreak2744
5 years ago
Reply to  Alex Chamberlain

Ah yes, blaming whiteness for everything does qualify as brilliant in some circles.

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foxinsoxmember
5 years ago

Both hypothesis and (inconclusive) results are very interesting. My next question is whether incorrect ball/strike calls are biased. That would give you a large sample that could potentially support statistical significance tests…

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Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  foxinsox

That analysis has been done, albeit in 2011 – https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/09/umpires-show-ethnic-bias-in-ballstrike-callsunless-theyre-feeling-watched/ and here: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.101.4.1410 It’s pre-statcast, obviously, and they also take into account ump experience and crowd size, which I didn’t do for this analysis, as well as the effects of monitoring systems, which were being introduced then but are obvs. universal in MLB now. Still, an interesting read and one I probably should have cited.

I also don’t think the results were inconclusive – just descriptive – and I don’t claim they were otherwise.

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ryancc
5 years ago

So I wanted to see if some of these repeat “offenders” that seem to be driving up the ejection stats were the issue or if the umps were unfairly ejecting them. Looking at hte Latino players first, so far I’ve found Sean Rodriguez’s 3 ejections are all for fighting (fair). All of Yunel Escobars are for arguing Balls and Strikes (once while in the field). Looking at the replays I’d say 3 of those are definitely deserved, one is borderline, and the last not so much. Miguel Sano was ejected twice for arguing B/S and once fighting. While the 2 B/S calls were incorrect by the ump, Sano definitely deserved to get tossed for the arguing, it was well beyond what’s allowed. Miguel Cabrera was ejected for fighting (classic Yankees-Tigers brawl), arguing B/S, and for arguing a ball hit his shin. I’d say all ejections were warranted, as the B/S and fighting ejection were both correct calls by the umps and warranted being thrown out. The other one was a wrong call, and the HP Ump and CC let Miggy yell at them for a while, without throwing him out. It wasn’t until he started yelling at the 1B ump, who wasn’t involved at all, that he got thrown out. Marwin Gonzalez may have a case for 2/3 not being warranted. All were for arguing B/S and two of them he was walking to the dugout or already in it. The third (even though it may be the worst strike call of the group) he literally drew a line in the dirt to show up the ump. Bautista argued a B/S call loud enough you could hear it on the broadcast and took Odor’s fist to his face. Both warranted. His other ejection was for arguing about a pitcher’s balk. He was technically right, so I’m gonna give him that one. David Ortiz only deserved 1 of the 3 times he got thrown out (for throwing his bat to the ground and yelling at he 3B ump). The other two were pretty weak tosses.

There are more Latino’s tossed 3+ times, but so far I’ve found about 70% of the tosses were warranted. Now to look at the white players.

Ian Kinsler was tossed for B/S when I don’t think he said anything, just looked at Angel Hernandez wrong (reverse racial bias? just kidding, Angel Hernandez just sucks). Another time he was ejected after complaining about how the umps were managing a game in which he WAS HIT IN THE HELMET. Without any video I can’t see how he would deserve getting tossed. The other 2 B/S calls were probably justified. Votto deserved one of his ejections for sure, and a second was borderline. But he also got ejected in one of the fights Sean Rodriguez got ejected and I didn’t notice anything. In a 9 minute video he doesn’t seem to do anything, and even the announcers never realize he gets ejected. I’ll give him 2/3 deserved. Josh Donaldson was ejected 3 times for B/S definitely didn’t deserve one of the ejections (he was already back in a batting stance). Another one was deserved and the other not so much (can’t tell what he says, but it was short). The last ejection was part of the Bautista-Odor Brawl. So lets say 3/4 deserved to be safe. I didn’t want to keep going, but that’s about 65% of white player ejections being deserving.

So it appears the ejections player sets are getting are equally deserving. The question is whether umps let white people get away with more without ejections. Unfortunately I have no way of finding that out. But from the videos of the ejections I wouldn’t say players are treated differently based on race.

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Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  ryancc

Thank you for taking a look at this. One of the reasons I looked at the ejections of non-repeaters was that I don’t think they’re done on reputation.

I also think that it’s impossible to remove observer bias from this – what you and I might consider a warranted ejection is likely different from what Marty Foster thinks, and we can’t hear a lot of what batters say to umps. So I wasn’t as interested in seeing if the ejections were ‘warranted’ so much as just numbers, on the idea that perceptions of what’s warranted and what’s not – what’s anger, what’s disrespect, etc. – are incredibly cultural.

That said, I do have a spreadsheet of the causes of ejection that I’m going to dig more into as well, but here it is: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uqntuFGTkFesa5PGFvsV434ty5voTL4-D8gx9RNG0F4/edit?usp=sharing Nonwhite players made up almost 60 percent of ball vs. strike call ejections in 2016 and Latino players made up 41 percent.

“The question is whether umps let white people get away with more without ejections.” Basically, this, but it’s obviously difficult to tell via video review, since, say ‘Ryan Zimmerman tosses the bat down after strikeout’ doesn’t yield much in the way of video.

ETA: Sorry, I don’t think I sounded properly appreciative of your doing this. Thank you again and I’m glad this sparked some interesting conversation. It’ll be interesting to see if position, PAs, service time, or anything else are also predictors of ejections.

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eldurkomember
5 years ago

Based on the nature of the analysis, wouldn’t it be more prudent to assign the “% of the league” statistic based on plate appearances rather than number of players? The logic would be that a player does not have an “opportunity to be ejected” by virtue of being on the roster, but by being at the plate.

Curious if that changes anything, as bench players and utility players (and the entire NL!) may skew the results a bit.

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Sydney Bergman
5 years ago
Reply to  eldurko

I think it’s possible to control for PAs (and I’d like to look at ‘ejection opportunities – PAs and IPs’) for those who have been ejected, but it’s difficult to know how that compares to the league without knowing the ethnicity of every player in the league, which I could only do if there’s an existing data set. (There may be one, but I have to do some digging.) But the first analysis is something that’s part of my next steps. Thank you for reading and commenting!

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