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Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Consistency value
Will asked me about the value of consistency.
He gave me an extreme situation, and I responded that from a pitching standpoint, you’d rather have the guy who gives up 0, 20, 0, 20, 0, 20 runs rather than 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10. The inconsistent pitcher will win .500, while the consistent one will be close to .000, even though both gave up 10 runs per game. The hitting is the exact opposite, so the preference would be on a consistent hitter.
So, technically, yes, consistency matters: you want it in hitters, and don’t want it in pitchers (all else being equal). Practically though, players are not like that. You’re not going to get anything close to an extreme situation that it’ll matter. That is, first you have to be able to identify a consistent/inconsistent player, and then you have to establish the degree to which he’s like that. To then put a value on that, and I’d be shocked if we’re talking about more than 0.1 wins for a player. Basically, I called it a rounding error.