Bellhorn04
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Everything posted by Bellhorn04
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LOL...the original Expos. They also had a player named Charles 'Boots' Day. He was only ever called Boots Day and that how he's listed in Baseball-Reference.
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Good one.
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Kimbrel had an off-season for sure. Welcome to Boston-itis? Seems to be a lot of that with pitchers. From 2011 to 2014 he was probably the best in the game. Can't really fault DD for targeting him...the cost is another matter.
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No question about that. Their acquisition costs reflected a hefty Domestic Incident Discount.
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Is it really just fans who love closers? Theo Epstein was certainly willing to pay a hefty price for a rental of Chapman.
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I went back and re-read the Bill James article a couple of times. In my opinion, James is not actually saying the hot hand doesn't exist. He certainly doesn't say those exact words. In my opinion what he's saying is that it's largely an illusion. That I can certainly live with.
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Things that happen 1% to 5% of the time do exist.
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What exactly does this mean? How would the other factors 'show up'?
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'Mostly' due to randomness. This is the problem. It's a fuzzy statement. You're allowing for the possibility of other factors and yet by categorically denying the existence of the hot hand, you're dismissing the other factors. That's the way it reads to me, anyway.
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The conflict starts from this black-and-white statement: There really is no such thing as a 'hot hand' or a 'cold hand'.
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Definition time again - how are you defining 'very small range'?
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That's just a 'general rule' though, with tons of exceptions. Many players have rather large fluctuations in their numbers between years. Hanley Ramirez for example.
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To me the term randomness should be confined to pure luck and eliminate all the human factors. My whole contention is that the human factors are also there. Guys feel better and perform better at different times, as a result of physiological factors and mechanical factors. I don't see how that can be denied.
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Right. It's physiological.
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I'd also like to know how the pro-randomness people define randomness.
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With pitchers the game-to-game differences in their performances are much easier to identify. You can see differences in the average speed of their pitches, differences in how often they use a particular pitch, whether they're able to get their breaking pitches over for strikes etc. It illustrates that they have different capabilities on different days.
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Let me bring in that great quote from Mike Mussina. Out of 32 starts you're going to have 8 starts where everything is working, 8 starts where nothing is working and 16 starts where something is working. Mussina had his own randomness down to a precise mathematical distribution. And isn't he clearly attributing the randomness to the ups and downs of himself?
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But you've also conceded that streaks aren't necessarily a function of randomness alone.
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I don't understand - how can intangible reasons be identified by the data?
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But you did say that the hot hand doesn't exist.
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Trading Lackey straight up for Kelly wouldn't have been so bad.
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There is no one explanation that's satisfactory. There's external randomness, there's the ups and downs of the human body and mind, there's the differences between Detroit pitchers and St. Louis pitchers and game plans etc. The correct answer would probably be 'no one knows'.
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That 2013 World Series for Papi really was something. He came to the plate 25 times. They got him out 6 times.
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I certainly agree that luck plays a big part in hitting. The game of baseball is designed to be quirky. Balls can be smoked 400 feet and caught. Balls can be nubbed and blooped for hits. The luck part is beyond question.
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As notin said in another thread, we need to sign some scrap heap guys.
