I am a Bill James devotee. James is the world's foremost contributor to and expositor of Sabermetrics, which is defined as the logical approach to baseball analysis. If you read James' Historical Baseball Abstract Volumes I and II, you learn not only how to think specifically about sports, but also how to think generally about comparative analysis. I can't recommend those books enough.

In Volume II, published last year, James writes about how baseball talent evaluators sometimes fall into the trap of making decisions based on what a player can not do, rather than what he can do. So, for instance (I don't recall what example James uses, but this hypothetical will do for now), a team might trade a third baseman because he is not good at charging a bunt -- never mind that his defense is otherwise solid and he is a good hitter.

I think at times all sports fans and critics are guilty of what James warns against -- we evaluate based on what someone is not rather than what he is. Certainly I have done that with Sharmba Mitchell.

Going into his clash with fellow junior welterweight contender "Cool" Vince Phillips, Mitchell figured to look good, and Phillips figured to look every one of his 39 years against a fast southpaw like Mitchell. So when Mitchell dominated Phillips over 10 rounds it was no shock. Styles make fights. But it got me to thinking...

Sharmba Mitchell is a very good fighter, and he has been a very good fighter for half a decade now. He is a fast southpaw with good boxing skills and a lot of world class experience. He has enough punching power to keep would-be attackers honest and enough gumption to offset the timing of some of the best 140-pounders in the world.

I wanted to write those things -- the things Mitchell does well -- before writing what he does not do well. I want to make clear that we should see him for what he is rather than what he is not.

But Sharmba keeps bringing up the Kostya Tszyu fight, a fight where a win would have been the first strong piece of evidence that he is more than a very good fighter. If we go back and review the way Mitchell lost to Tszyu, we see an illustration of what Mitchell is not -- namely, a great fighter.

As Mitchell said after beating Phillips, he was either even with or slightly ahead of Tszyu when his corner would not allow him to continue. That is true. But Mitchell went on to insist, just as he did immediately after the Tszyu fight, that the only reason he did not answer the bell for the eighth round was that his corner would not let him.

In fact, watching the fight on television, Mitchell could be clearly heard complaining about his knee between rounds, while his corner encouraged him to suck it up and continue fighting. Finally, after Mitchell did everything but explicitly tell his corner to stop the fight, his corner got the message and stopped it.

This is not a criticism of Mitchell as a fighter. It is very impressive that he was able to fight Tszyu the way he did considering that he was clearly handicapped by a bad injury. It would be hard for anyone to convince me that if they were in Mitchell's place, they wouldn't also have hinted to their corner that they did not want to keep fighting. We shouldn't criticize Mitchell for not being great in the moment of truth. Greatness is so rare because it requires enormous courage under desperate circumstances. Greatness in boxing often requires a willingness to put life and limb on the line. Mitchell is a very good fighter, and should not be attacked for falling short of greatness.

But he should be attacked for blaming it on his corner. This is not to say that his corner couldn't have been better. Indeed, it could have been much better. When Muhammad Ali's eyes started to burn going into the fifth round in his title shot against Sonny Liston, he wanted to quit. Angelo Dundee had to literally push Ali out of the corner, seconds before they were going to declare Liston the winner. Mitchell's corner should have either: a) done a better job of motivating him to fight, or b)gotten the hint earlier and spared their fighter the embarrassment of quitting.

Mitchell should really leave the whole topic of the ending of the Tszyu fight alone, and concentrate instead on his career right now. Vince Phillips is still good enough to easily beat a solid, undefeated fighter like Nick Acevedo -- which Phillips did several months ago on Friday Night Fights. And Mitchell beat Phillips by a wide margin, despite the ridiculous closeness of the fight on the official judges scorecards.

Sharmba Mitchell is a leading contender in the deepest division in boxing. And he is a very good fighter.

Max Kellerman is a studio analyst for ESPN2's Friday Night Fights and the host of the new show Around The Horn.