baseball playoffs

[chaddurbin]

Originally Posted by MCoxon

But in baseball, especially short series, there is:
1) Underlying skill
2) Mental aspect ("clutch" or not)
3) Randomness
4) Luck

All 4 exist. Sabre-matricians want it to be #1 only. Historicals and qualitatives want it to be heavly weighted on #2. But #3 and #4 come into play a lot as well.

And, I don't think it's knowable how much is #1 vs. #2 vs. #3 vs. #4, either in any single series or in all series in the history of baseball.

this is probably wrong, i mean analytics is all about most of these things...ie the cubs' defensive positioning to suppress #3 and #4 of babip avg, the dodgers stacking 15 left-handed hitters against a rhp. these are meant to combat against some of the luck and randomness. don't know if you can ever quantify "clutch"...but there are stats about players' performance after the 7th in a game where run deficit is 2 or less, we're kind of getting there?

what computers can't analyze is the emotional impact of a hostile crowd in the brightest october lights and our physiological reaction to these stressors. in some of arod's postseason abs you can just tell he'd have no chance, or me personally with yasiel puig judging by his body language he's just gonna flail at 3 pitches with the bases juiced bottom of the 8th trailing 4-2...like he'd rather be in jamaica right then.

and this is where the analytics fanboy in me gets confused sometimes...by the number of course you'd rather have arod in there than slappy mcslap david eckstein or angel pagan...but just going by the eye test at least those guys won't shrink up and battle thru the at bat. that's where the great divide is atm and the 2 sides of grit/attitude vs. computer/analytics can't reconcile.