re bases loaded walk gives reds win in in article mssc y d netcom com mss netcom com mark singer writes in article apr cs cornell edu tedward cs cornell edu edward ted fischer writes sigh here we go again you started it for predicting the future it has been entirely meaningless at least if it has meaning we don t know how to find it i did not say i could predict the future you most certainly did non clutch clutch ab h ba ab h ba sabo samuel sabo is clearly a better hitter than samuel yet you would pinch hit samuel because you predict that samuel will be a clutch hitter and sabo will be a choke hitter right i d call that predicting the future if you were to have been the reds manager at that time i assume you would have had some basis for letting sabo hit rather than pinch hitting samuel i m sure some of that basis would have utilized prior performance you just wouldn t have used this particular aspect of prior performance is this not correct right i would have used aspects of prior performance which have been shown to be consistent in the past overall performance l r splits even matching hitting pitching styles all of these will give me some advantage if used properly even if all else were equal there would be no advantage gained by looking at past clutch performance and in this case everything else pointed to sabo one more time i did not claim to be able to predict the future i said that i accept the above data as an indication that samuel would have had a better chance for success in that situation than sabo that comes down to the same thing when perez left sabo in he was predicting the future the next ab he was predicting that sabo was more likely to get a hit than samuel by supporting the swap you are predicting the opposite and i am not dismissing your work i m stating my opinion you are saying that your work renders any opinion to the contrary invalid so that the retention of that opinion is some kind of insult to your work well yes you are aware of its existance you claim to be incapable of understanding it though i suspect you are simply unwilling yet you rather forcefully state the opposite you don t seem to think the work is worth reading yet you obviously feel the topic is important i d say this is insulting i did not say that it is a consistent skill i have said that it is an indicator of performance under a certain set of circumstances right this is the beef it has not proven to be an indicator of future performance under any circumstances at least none that we ve been able to come up with if you know of some where it is an indicator of future performance please let us in on your secret it is nice however to see that you will consider the possibility that you actually could have some preconceived biases most certainly as i have repeatedly stated if you can come up with a study which even hints at a consistent clutch ability i would love it however the straightforward attempts at such a study have all failed miserably yeah hindsight is always doesn t that make you bright this is a stupid argument and you know it ah i knew we could get to the name calling and there s that word you like so much well it was a stupid argument are you honestly debating that sure we know sabo didn t get a hit we have no idea whether samuel would have done any better or not one ab most certainly doesn t prove anything i believe that by season s end that chris sabo s batting average in clutch situations will be significantly lower than his batting average in non clutch situations i can t prove that it will happen so i guess we ll just have to wait and see is this simply a prediction for chris sabo for this year or is this a prediction for all batters who have over the past few years hit xxx amount worse in the clutch than overall if you mean the first then as you say we ll just have to wait and see but the second is a much stronger statement in fact it suggests a rule we can then test this rule on past data to see if it worked for recent years i think you will agree that if the rule didn t work last year or the year before that it is unlikely to do any better this year right here s another one for you in joe carter s batting average in clutch situations was significantly below his batting average in non clutch situations each year i presume you think this is random i m not going to get into case analysis sure you can find somebody who hit poorly from and then hit poorly in as well you can also find those who hit poorly from and then hit well in no this doesn t prove any overall statistical trend that can be used to predict future performance across the breadth of major league ballplayers it just makes me think that in joe carter s batting average in the clutch is not going to be as high as his ba in non clutch situations gambler s fallacy unless there is reason to expect consistency a run proves nothing can you give us a reason to expect clutch ba to correlate from one year to the next i ve seen a detailed study of why i shouldn t expect it to correlate stupid total idiot my my such hostility the stupid was in reference to a statement which was stupid and i don t see how you can deny it as for total idiot yes if you prove yourself unwilling to even consider evidence that might suggest that you are wrong i would say the term fits nicely so tell me does the term fit or do you have an open mind valentine
