Thoughts on "calling a good game."

I am not a scientist, but I had a scientist friend one time try to explain this to me. Something about flying pink elephants, whether or not they exist, can you disprove it? I don’t remember. But I think there’s more probability that catchers can affect the quality of a pitcher’s performance than there are pink flying elephants.

I can accept this and also accept that statistics won’t be able to prove it.

And I’m pretty much in agreement with this, but extending my thoughts out – the question is how much of an effect does it have? if we really can’t find evidence of it (not saying it isn’t there, just that it isn’t there clearly enough for us to find it), should we really be committing resources and making decisions on it like it’s a big factor? How much money should we be willing to pay for it? I have a hard time even coming up with an argument to devote any significant amount of money (or making a PT decision) to something I can’t see has a substantial effect on winning. Use it as a tiebreaker? Why not? Heck, devote a little bit of money to it? Sure, it seems pretty likely it does something. But a lot? I just can’t do it. I’d rather spend the money on things I can see help us win. Plus, if we can’t measure the effect, how do we really even know who is a good game caller and who isn’t? For all we know, we’re spending that money on someone who doesn’t do it better than our other option.

Anyways, to get into game calling itself – it’s a lot like poker. Poker players try to randomize their strategy to keep from being predictable. There’s clearly a range of ability to do this, and even among the elite players, some of them (I think, I don’t know much about poker) seem to win consistently, so they probably show a better ability to do this than their elite peers. If there’s some range among them, it stands to reason there’s some range among MLB C’s, too.

Sure, close enough, I guess my whole point that started this conversation is I think people who don’t understand statistics say things like it “isn’t quantifiable”, thinking that the stats just don’t capture it, and that it shows statistics “aren’t everything” or “can’t be trusted” or whaever other ridiculous notions people who don’t have any statistical background seem to come up with. Not that I’m accusing Grant of doing so, just saying that’s how it starts – smart people say something like that, and the dumb masses take it and run with it and the next thing you know, statistics are voodoo witchcraft, when the reality is just by recording runs scored and runs allowed, we do include the effects of every possible thing that contributes to who wins….

that doesn’t mean the actual outcome is altered by that factor

Which is exactly the point, if the actual outcome is not altered, it had 0 effect on winning games. I understand the sample size point – it can exist without showing up in a small sample, but we have big enough samples to measure with (seasons and seasons of data for various teams), that if it doesn’t show up in those samples (like a whole season), then it’s not altering outcomes and having an effect on winning games over the course of entire seasons, so who cares about it?

Screed?

I agree with what you say about there being limitations inherent to any data set, but the battery is a fairly simple group to understand and I think their interactions are pretty well cataloged.

 Catcher calls a sign→ pitcher gets the sign→ the pitch (data point) → outcome (data point). The pitch implies the catcher’s call. I don’t really see what else there is.

God I’m all over the place with that. It’s not even that I get confused, I clearly know the difference….what’s my deal man.

Until we know, saying it is in the stats already is useless.

Exactly, it’s useless. We don’t know the effect is has, we don’t know who’s actually good at it and who isn’t….if we can’t find it (though again, assuming it exists, it IS somewhere), why bother making decisions on it? To a large degere statistics are an acknowlegement of what we don’t know, and a concession that we can only make decisions with the best information we do have and play the odds to the best of our ability. As of now, it doesn’t seem there’s much reason to put much stock into game calling ability.