re bases loaded walk gives reds win in in article apr cs cornell edu tedward cs cornell edu edward ted fischer writes 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 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 i really don t want to get into a didso didnot debate with you but this is somewhat at the heart of our disagreement i did not say nor did i imply that i could predict the future you have inferred that my comments meant this and you have based your rebuttal of my comments on the fact that statistical studies have demonstrated that there is no reasonable basis for predicting future performance in regard to clutch hitting 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 that is your opinion that sabo is clearly a better hitter than samuel the above data is for a year period ending last season last season samuel batted while sabo hit not park adjusted this season they are both hitting below albeit sabo with more at bats i will agree that over his career sabo has been a better hitter than samuel but i will also remind you that samuel has been a better hitter in certain situations than sabo i did not predict that sabo would choke nor that samuel would get a hit i expressed my opinion that had i been the reds manager or even a reds fan that i would prefer to have samuel hit in that situation than sabo 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 ah properly yes i see 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 please help me what exactly is everything else that pointed to sabo 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 must say i was not aware of the publication can you email me the information regarding its availability and i guess i must apologize to all of those who have done extensive study on say supply side economics i didn t mean to insult you but i never did believe you were on the right path i m sorry for my contrary opinion position i also regret that i don t have the ability to prove that you are wrong but you are 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 it is what it says it is 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 the second is your statement not mine 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 well actually i haven t yet but i m not finished looking that is i haven t yet found someone who hit significantly below his overall batting average in clutch situations for the years and then reversed that relationship in 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 nope sorry but if you were interested in a reason why i expect chris sabo s ability to hit in the clutch to correlate from one year to the next i think i could if you were interested in a reason why i expect joe carter s ability to hit in the clutch to correlate from one year to the next i think i could but you re not interested in that because you think that those conclusions could only be valid if they could be extrapolated over the entire baseball population and they can t be 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 the problem here is that i do believe you i accept your work i believe that trying to predict future clutch performance based on prior clutch history is meaningless no better than a coin toss i actually do accept your work as it happens i also have an opinion that in certain situations for certain players a history of superior or inferior ability to hit in the clutch might suggest a reason what such history could be valid in projecting future player performance for that player and chris sabo is one such player so tell me does the term fit or do you have an open mind well since i defer to your statistical wisdom i think i must have an open mind now we have to pose the same question to you the beastmaster mark singer mss netcom com
