On Added Value

Gregg Easterbrook declares that Eli Manning is a better quarterback than Peyton Manning:

Eli Manning is now a better quarterback than Peyton Manning. At the current rate, his career achievements will at least match, and perhaps surpass, his big brother’s.

Four games into his fifth season, Eli is 44-30 as a starter and has a Super Bowl ring. At the same point in his career, Peyton was 35-35 and had not won a postseason game. In terms of passing stats, the two players are approximately the same.

Easterbrook is right that Eli currently has a higher passer rating than Peyton, although I wouldn’t necessarily bet that’ll be the case at the end of the year. It’s also true that passer rating isn’t the only metric of quarterback effectiveness. Nevertheless, Eli’s ratings in his first four complete seasons:

55.4
75.9
77
73.9.

Peyton’s:
71.2
90.7
94.7
84.1

The gap isn’t as large as I thought it would be, but it’s still there, and it’s still a more useful metric for evaluating player performance than win-loss record. Peyton Manning was a significantly better QB in his first four years than Eli Manning; it’s very difficult to argue otherwise.

The problem here isn’t that Easterbrook is an idiot, although he very clearly is. The problem is that Easterbrook exemplifies a particular kind of contrarian writing that is dismissive of statistics and of specialized knowledge altogether. The argument goes something like this: Sure, I could write a column making the obvious point that Peyton Manning was a better QB than Eli Manning in their respective first four years, but everyone already knows that; I need to produce something new! I certainly understand the contrarian impulse in writing, because after all a column or article must be about something, and simply noting that Manny Ramirez is a better hitter than Andruw Jones won’t put food at the table.

However, there’s an alternative to the Easterbrookian model; it involves learning a lot about a subject and writing competently for an audience that’s willing to learn. This is, for lack of a better term, the Baseball Prospectus model. The Baseball Prospectus folks write for an audience literate in baseball statistics, but they can also translate their insights into writing for a larger audience. More importantly, they make their audience smarter; read one column, and you’re better able to understand the next. In short, the don’t have contempt for their audience. Reading Easterbrook, whether in his sports, science, or entertainment modes, tends to make one dumber. This is by design; Easterbrook can’t be bothered to learn enough about a subject to add value to whatever basic analysis he’s making. As any reader of Fivethirtyeight will quickly grasp, a good writer with a wide and deep knowledge of his or her subject can add a lot to any basic analysis; it just depends on having a basic level of respect for your audience.