DDDWTF for 5/17: ANOTHER intentional walk??

Reimold wOBA of .292
Atkins wOBA of ..258

Don’t like wOBA? How about wRC?
  
Reimold wRC of 8.6
Atkins wRC of 6.9

It isn’t even very close.

Here are the numbers

educate yourself, I beg you.

players are not stats. they’re players. there are all kinds of non-random factors affecting an AB. we just can’t measure them all.

I might – MIGHT – be swayed in the Atkins case if the same pitcher were in the game for his fourth AB as was his first three. Or perhaps if it were a player like Luke who has documented history of supreme hot and cold stretches. But outside those kinds of things, I don’t ever believe that Atkins is more likely to get a hit on a day when he’s 2-3 than on a day when he’s 0-3.

Here is one example of an academic paper on the subject (PDF warning!).

But that said, we can measure some things. The data on “hot hands” has been measured, and largely found fictional, just like “clutch hitting”.

As for the other things, we can measure them. We can measure how hitters do against particular pitchers and in particular parks, how they do in day games and night games, etc. We often have sample size problems, but they can be measured.

But like you said, there are also things we don’t know how to measure yet. And those things also factor in to outcomes. But our inability to measure them makes us, in my opinion, unable to base decisions on them.

Why would managers prefer a lefty/righty matchup over a lefty/lefty matchup if hits are based off nothing other than randomness and chance?

This is a straw man. He’s not arguing this at all, perferring a certain match up based on handedness is based on years of accumulated data, not a single nights performance.

you might have a leg to stand on. But Garrett Atkins is downright putrid. He never sees the ball well, he’s never comfortable at the plate, and he’s never likely to get a hit. I don’t remember his specific hits that night but if I were a betting lady I’d say that at least one of them was a bloop and/or lucky. Because that’s how awful Garrett Atkins is.

You count the hits you make, right? Not the balls that you hit well but right at a fielder, or the home runs that were stolen by a great over the fence catch, but the hits. Including the crappy infield hits that you beat out or the Texas leaguers.

But as a player you also know that the results don’t truly reflect the process, right? That sometimes you hit the ball perfectly and got screwed, and sometimes you luck out and that pitch you never should have swung at got through the infield.

You are right on one point though – there is a measurable penalty to a player’s true talent when coming in as a pinch hitter. So even if Hughes is the better hitter in that situation than Atkins in a pure sense, you have to subtract the pinch hitting penalty from his chances of getting a hit.

I just was shocked at his expression as he looked back and forth between home, second, and finally to first. After fielding the ball he was standing on the IF grass, so I was pretty shocked he didn’t at least attempt the play at home.