Well, that's a hypothetical and we can bet either way. Personally, I bet there would way less of that if it was an Aussie or a Kiwi or anybody else that comes from a population that we think of as being of mostly British extraction. But we won't know for sure unless it happens.I don't buy it. What you say would be true if people were basing that on a SSS of Oriole P's, but that's not what's going on. It is based on a SSS of only those Oriole P's with Asian names and facial features. That's what makes it prejudice every bit as much as if they were talking about the first couple black ballplayers the O's ever had.
You're assuming quite a bit, and while I tend to have generally low opinions of my fellow humankind, there is only so much we can assume without actively putting words in peoples mouths (or minds, in this case).
I just think that there is a simpler explanation. We don't have experience with players coming over from Japan other than the two-plus years of Uehara. Thus we take our experience with him and project that on a player that came from the same background.
Since the Orioles notably signed a player from New Zealand this offseason, let's say he makes it to the majors and acts in a particularly eccentric fashion, or has acclimation problems. If the Orioles end up with another player from New Zealand, especially in the short-term future, fans and media would project the same issues onto the second player because of their experience with the first.
Personally, I don't see how you can see a statistical error as being more ingrained in human nature than is prejudice. There's a near infinite set of examples of the later. The former, well, not sure how you can say that. SSS is not exactly an advanced concept, it's just a fancy sounding name for a pretty simple idea. For everybody who thinks a .400 BA in the first 2 weeks of the season means anything, there's about a zillion folks who know better even if they never heard of the idea of SSS. You don't need to be a baseball freak to grok the idea.
As for me putting thoughts in peoples' minds, I don't see where I'm doing that at all. I flat out said that this kind of prejudice is not the hateful kind, its the accidental kind. People don't mean anything by it. But they are nonetheless attributing diff's to people who have obvious racial differences from most Americans. If the players were Dutch or German or Scot or whatever, I bet there would not be more than a hint of it, and certainly not the kind of widespread comment we see folks making about Chen mainly because he looks kinda-sorta like Koji.
