In my opinion, if someone has terrible internet reliability, and they lose connection on a very regular basis, that *should* be reflected in their leave stat.
If I'm depending on you as the captain, and you disconnect, it doesn't really matter if it was because you are a terrible sport, or because Grandma picked up the phone line while you were dialed into AOL yet again.
If you leave in the middle of a match, it negatively affects your crew. If this is something that happened due to extreme circumstances, thats fine. If it's something that happens on a regular basis, I'd like to know.
I think part of the problem is that the leave count couldn't be grandfathered in. This leads to players, like myself, with ~3000 games completed, and 0 recorded leaves. I fully admit that I, much as everyone else who plays this game, have left matches due to disconnects. With this stat in place now, eventually my leave count will reflect that. And I'm OK with that.
The problem is, new players are seeing older accounts, such as mine, and thinking there's some expectation to make it to several thousand matches without a single leave.
There's not.