Weekend BP, 10/26-10/28/18

In a since deleted tweet, ESPN’s Pedro Gomez reported that a front office executive sent sent him a text that said, in part (it’s since deleted and these are all a Google search would turn up):”Players are living breathing humans ... There is a psychology to this with players.” Basically, that analytics are anti-human and ruining the game.

Gomez either than paraphrased or added to his made up texter (the deletion of the original tweet is suspicious!) with a follow-up that has not been deleted:

Pedro Gomez is a climate change denier. He and his “front office exec”, and all the people like them, including broadcaster-who-oughta-know-better Joe Buck:

Climate change deniers will, of course, believe an almanac because that’s merely a record of what happened (baseball card). Any projections — which simply factor in multiple bits of data that already happened — that predict the future ARE BAD.

It’s old man dummy pride logic. Projections give a sense of the unknown, which is and isn’t scary, except some people don’t like it when projections reflect badly on your abilities. Projections are a reminder that we all die — traditional baseball values and management suggest that we can get lucky and deny fate if we’re clever enough.

But remember, at the root of it all is just an incredibly dumb person.

There’s a nonzero chance the Dodgers could lose the World Series within the next 72 hours. There’s a projection that intentionally disregards the humanity of the players.