You say that you were saying that the slumping A's would turn it around...well then, how come you were saying that we'd be lucky to finish above last place just a few weeks ago?

Your act is tired, and its not because this site is unfair.  It's the way you talk, the arrogance you give off, etc etc etc.  And calling out Nico and BBG is just silly...what, you haven't made comments about other posters before?

I'm sure that there will be 5 posters on here defending you, because they feel bad for you after this diary.  But seriously, man...you've got plenty of good insights.  Just start posting them without the arrogance and combative attitude.

Act like one!

If Scoot were battering .200 for a period of 2 months (just making up the #s), and he was a lifetime .240 batter, I wouldn't be surprised if

a) he hits .280 for 2 months, .240 for 2 months
or
b) hits slightly above .240 for the rest of the year to balance out the .200 for 2 months.

both of which would lead to a .240 average for the year, fitting in with the career #s.

however, it could be quite possible that
c) he just hits almost .240 for the rest of the year, thus yielding a .225/.230ish avg for the year.

From what I can tell, a) and b) are not exactly examples of RTM and c) is (correct me if I'm wrong).

In any case, it sounds as if Oaktoon is arguing for a/b ... whereas much of AN is arguing that
1) that's not RTM
or
2) he has no basis for thinking that a/b are likely to happen.

Unfortunately, only the season-ending stats will prove if a, b, or c happened.

So please folks...can we at least keep it adult?  Oaktoon... try and avoid sounding persecuted?  Even if you feel you are???? Please????  Just say your piece, and debate it on its merits; and try to do it galantly.  Smugness does nothing but fame the flames, and feed your own feelings of being picked on.  And oh by the way, you should THANK these people for taking the time to read your posts, and  analyzing them.

Last, but not least, I'd like to say that posting on someone's blog is a privilege, not a right.  And there are MANY blogs out there with far more draconian standards.  The feeling of community for all of us is pretty important.  Especially for me, living away from my beloved A's.  So lets keep in mind the community guidelines, avoid the ad hominem attacks, and just hopes the boys take it all the way, ok?

All I can say is:

toon- I would hate to know you in real life. And that is not something very common with allot of the posters on here.

BBGirl- keep fighting the good fight- and where are the quotes of the month? An actual fun diary on AN, who would have thunk it?

The fact of the matter is that the mathematical branch called statistics is defined as "the mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data."  Unlike other branches of mathematics, which deal with exact numbers and assume total accuracy, statistics is, in a sense, a reverse-engineered science.  You take a seemingly-random collection of information, and attempt to create a model or algorithm that describes how and why that data behaves the way it does.

Randomness is inherent in the study of statistics.  Period.  Once you say stuff like:

Now.... does anyone also challenge the view that players are not automatons? That sometimes in their careers-- like we in our jobs, or our personal lives-- they perform better or worse than their norm-- not mainly because of some mathematical theory or pure luck-- but because they are simply better or worse then.

Or:

That doesn't mean randomenss, standard deviation, or any other statistical factor doesn't play a role. Of course it does. But you can't take human performance out of the equation.

...then it becomes hard for people who have actually taken the time to study the discipline to take you seriously.  I'm sorry.  I know you think what you're saying makes sense.  And in a way, it does.  But it's completely wrong.

Please, please don't take this personally.  I'm not saying you're an idiot, or that you are stupid, or that everyone has been correct in the way they pile on you and attempt to destroy your self-esteem.  All I'm saying is that, in this case, it's patently obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about.  If you take this as an insult, then I'm sorry.  It's true.  It's the same thing as telling someone who believes that Creationism is a science that they are completely wrong.  I'm not saying their religious beliefs are invalid or that they are untrue.  I'm just saying that it's not a valid scientific theory.

There are two senses of the word "random".  One is the common sense notion, best summed up by the phrase, "Shit happens."  Sometimes things seem to go your way.  Sometimes everything that can go wrong will go wrong.  You don't know why, but that's how it works.  In fact, you probably believe that having stuff happen one way or the other how just how the universe "works".  Every action you can undertake has such a "random" component - where something unforseen might occur.  

The second sense of the word is the statistical definition.  Randomness in this sense can be seen as a sort of objected outgrowth of the common-sense notion.  For something to be mathematically random, it has the property of appearing unpredictable.  However, the appearance of unpredictability and the actuality of unpredictability are two completely different things.  If I give you a piece of software called a Random Number Generator and it constantly pumps out numbers (say, between 1 and 10) in a manner that you can't predict what will come up next, then it has the appearance of unpredictability.  However, if you knew programming and looked at the code of the software, you could see exactly how the RNG works, and thus, every time you see a number pop out, the "apparent randomness", that is, the unpredictability, becomes completely null and void - you not only know exactly what will come out next, but you know how and why the next number occurs.

In this case, I think there is a fundamental schism between what you are claiming to be random, and what random actually is in terms of statistics.

When someone says that Milton Bradley is a career .270 hitter, what does that mean?  Does it mean that Bradley has exactly a .270 chance of getting a hit every time he walks up to the plate?  No.  It means that, according to our collection of data, Milton Bradley has shown that he can get a hit .270 of the time he is at the plate.  And, based on that data, one's best scientific assumption is that he will have a .270 chance to get a hit the next time he walks up to the plate.

Without getting too philosophical, I'll explain why I've phrased it the way I did. Let's say I give you a computer and say that every time you hit Enter, a number between 1 and 100 will show up.  You must guess the number that shows up.  If you don't, I'll kill you.  Yes, I'm a rat bastard like that.

Let's say I'm not feeling particularly friendly, and I only give you one test run before you must guess (that is, you get to hit Enter once without any penalty).  The number that shows up is 7.

What does 7 mean?  Not a whole freaking lot.  Is there anything in the data that suggests anything to you?  Nope.  It appears completely random.  You can't even rule out that 7 won't show up again, because you have no idea how the freaking thing works.

What if I was feeling particularly happy (let's say I just got home from a date with baseballgirl that went very well) and I gave you, oh, 5000 free strikes of the Enter key.  And every single time, the number 7 showed up.  How much better would you feel about guessing for your life now?  Probably a whole lot better, no?

Both the Milton Bradley batting average and the "Oh crap I'm gonna die if I don't guess the right number" scenario are exactly analagous when it comes to statistics.  In both cases, all you're doing is collecting data and trying to extract predictability from an apparently random situation.  That's it.

You're claiming that the statistics are somehow hard-wired to ignore so-called "human factors" (or even larger, "the rules of the universe").  There's all this "random" stuff happening that isn't being taken into account.  Not just the weird random "luck" that occurs, but stuff that we know can happen but we don't take into account - like an eye allergy or an arm injury or a bout with the flu.

That is entirely and completely false.

The data we have collected inherently contains such randomness within it.  If Milton Bradley never had an eye allergy, never had an arm injury, or never had a bout with the flu, then we wouldn't need statistics at all.  Assuming all the "random" factors stay the same, he'd have the exact same line every time he walked up to the plate.  It'd be so easy to predict that if I played the "oh crap I'm gonna die" game with you based on Milton Bradley's batting average, you'd laugh in my face and call me a moron for inventing such a boring game.

I have a nagging suspicion that, after all I've written you'll either glaze over this or not read it at all (or worse, not bother trying to figure out why we're saying you're wrong).  So I'll make it easy for you.  Based entirely on your diary, I'm going to give you your argument in logical form:

A) The fundamental factor that drives baseball performance is ability.

B) Players have different levels of ability at different times.

C) Variance in evidenced performance (e.g. batting average) is driven by changes in ability.

D) Players have "true levels" of ability which, barring other factors, would present a predictable outcome.

---------------------------
.: If a player has a performance which is skewed either above or below what his "true level" of ability would predict for at least two months or longer, then that person will follow up this skewed performance with a conversely skewed performance in the future (to offset his previously skewed performance).

I don't quite know how to say this tactfully, so I'll just say it: this is completely and unequivocally wrong.  For starters, even in terms of pure logic (meaning assuming all your propositions are true) this argument makes no sense.  I managed to clean it up for you, but there are still gaps in the argument.  You make no claim as to what is driving this change in performance (does his ability somehow "switch" to become the exact opposite of what it was, thus driving this change?  does his ability stay the same but his performance somehow change?).  If you did, there's a good chance that you will find a contradiction, because if you wnat to say that the ability of a player changes, then you will discover that you can make absolutely no claims as to being able to predict future ability changes whatsoever (because you have laid no basis for why a skew in one direction will lead to a skew in another direction).  If you want to say that the ability stays the same but the performance changes, then you've completely thrown yourself into a contradiction, because ability is no longer driving performance (and furthermore, you will have shown that if there are other things beyond ability which affect performance, you have not accounted for why and when your specific situation will occur - in other words, how do you know if someone is skewed for three years or someone is being skewed for three months?  without an underlying "ability" as the main driving force, you can't make any substantive claims concerning performance).

Ignoring the logic, what you're saying makes no sense in statistical terms.  You're arguing the Gambler's Fallacy.  Maybe not in super-extreme terms (e.g. "I must win big because I've lost all my money so far" vs. "Milton Bradley will hit .340 for the rest of the season because for the first half he hit .250, and his true ability is at .290"), but it's the same thing nonetheless.

If you believe that the true measure of Milton Bradley's ability is at .290, then every time he steps up to the plate, your best bet is to give him a .290 chance to get a hit.  Period.  This includes "bad streaks" and "good streaks" because such data is included in the entire measurement of Milton Bradley's ability.  If Milton Bradley has been hitting .150 for two months (let's say he's had an arm injury), then there is absolutely nothing to suggest that once his arm heals, he will not only go back to hitting at his true ability of .290, but will exceed his true ability and will hit at .440 for the next two months.

You have absolutely no basis for making this argument.  I and others have tried to explain to you why this just doesn't make sense, with a variety of examples (everything from coin flips to dice rolls).  If you actually believe his true ability is at .290, then why do you think he will hit better than that?  Will his healed arm magically grow superpowers and become a superarm that will let him hit harder and swing faster?  Or are you just thinking that because he hit so poorly in the first portion, he must necessarily hit better than he normally would in order to "bring back balance"?  In the other thread, myself and others gave you several reasons why this made no sense.  Even in pure mathematical terms, there is no need for Milton Bradley to hit better-than-average in order to bring his average back to his "true level" - simply hitting at his true ability for a long period of time will do that.

The fact of the matter is that you have no rational basis for this argument beyond a common logical fallacy.  This is the same stuff that made people believe that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects.  It doesn't make them, or you, stupid.  It just makes you human, and subject to human faults.  Just like the rest of us.  

You keep saying that you'll bet money or ask Bill James or whatever other nonesense, but I have yet to see any of this come to pass.  If you want to prove your theory, then go ahead and prove it.  Instead of screaming bloody murder and making 50 posts about how we're persecuting you, go and do the work yourself.  We aren't the ones trying to prove something - you are.  So the burden of doing the work is entirely on your shoulders.

Retrosheet is a publicly available database of all major-league games for the past 30+ years.  That's plenty of data to look through.  Or, go ahead and do a quick and dirty ESPN run-through.  They sort data by the month for several seasons.  Grab 100 major-league players who have had at least 2 years of major-league service at random for 2005, look at their month-by-month data.  Any time someone is above or below his career average by 30 points for a period of two months, plot his average for the next two months.

If you're right, the data will prove itself.  If you're wrong, well, you probably won't stop arguing your case.  But at least you'll be gone for the few weeks it will take you to prove yourself wrong.

I think there is a lot of random chance and luck in baseball.