For those who are panicking about the Tampa Bay Rays recent problem of not being able to win games (and for those of you who are still gloating over the three game sweep by the Blue Jays – you know who you are), I offer to you the fact that we should neither panic nor celebrate. It appears to me that the Rays luck had changed. Instead of bloop balls landing in right center, they are landing in the right fielder’s mitt. Instead of line drives clearing the outfield walls for homeruns, they are bouncing inches from the tops of the wall. Instead of balls bouncing around in the left or right field corners eluding the fielder’s grasp, they bounce into the stands halting on base progress at two bases. Instead of umpire’s calls going our way, they all seem to go against us.
Does luck really pay that much of a roll in baseball? Consider this quote from the fascinating 2003 book Moneyball: the Art of Winning and Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Seeking to explain the Oakland A’s failure to make it out of the first round of the 2002 playoffs, after having won 103 regular season games, Lewis makes this observation relative to short series:
“Pete Palmer, the sabermetrician [someone who analyzes baseball through statistics] and author of The Hidden Game of Baseball, once calculated that the average difference in baseball due to skill is about one run a game, while the average difference due to luck is about four runs a game. Over a long season the luck evens out [going the way of all teams equally], and the skill shines through. But in a series of three out of five, or even four out of seven, anything can happen.” (274)
The luck has gone against us recently. It will come back.
Interestingly, written five years ago, the above quote continues in this way:
“In a five-game series, the worst team in baseball will beat the best about 15 percent of the time; the Devil Rays have a prayer against the Yankees.”
Now we might say, “Even the Yankees have a prayer against the Rays.” How things change.
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