from Amazon
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Forecasting the past
Buster, wanting to forecast the past, must have talked to a dozen scouts, until a minority of two said what Buster was hypothesizing, and then presented the view of those 2 (and to the reader it’s 2 out of 2, as Buster is obviously not going to report on the 10 that disputes him ):
A couple of scouts say this: they saw wainwright’s arm angle dropping down the stretch last year, a sign of trouble.
This is called confirmation bias. But, this is 2011. And last year is 2010. The data is so easily available. And Jeff looked at it. And Mike looked at it. And they report that the data shows nothing of the sort.
Why not hypothesize that his speed was down, his break was less, his pitch selection less varied, and the time between pitches is longer (all of which are legitimate hypothesis), and then… ask a couple of scouts? Why would you need to ask scouts about counting numbers? You ask the number counters instead. You test your hypothesis. You don’t assert it with selectively sampling the scouts who happen to agree with you.
I love scouts. I’d hire at least 10 scouts for every one saber person. It’s guys like Buster Olney that gives scouts a bad name.