The right thing for the wrong reason?

Keith Law is a smart cookie, and today on his personal blog, he made a pretty sharp observation in connection with being admitted to the BBWAA:

I am still unclear on why, exactly, I might need to be a member; after conversations with probably a dozen current members, I think the opposite is true – the BBRAA needed people like me, Rob, etc. as members, to try to boost their credibility as an organization in a time when they receive so much criticism for the backwardness and outright hostility towards intelligent analysis (statistical or scouting) displayed in so much mainstream writing, to say nothing of the RBI/wins fetish in BBRAA voting.

I think that’s right. I also think that doing the right thing for cynical reasons still counts as doing the right thing, so let’s call it a wash.