from Amazon
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Streakiness
I’m just waiting for part 2. So far, all we’ve seen is that David Wright’s 2010 season was streaky, but we still don’t know if he just happens to be one of the extreme point (i.e., SOMEONE has to be streaky, just by luck), or if the number of streaky players is larger than expected by random.
I’ll bet we’ll only see a bit (not much, but some) of streakiness, for the following reasons:
1. you see the same pitcher in 3 or 4 PA
2. same park
3. same weather
4. same health
By re-ordering the PA as the author is doing, he is removing all this. So, just by virtue that a player is going to be the same guy in the same day facing the same pitcher on 3 or 4 occasions, we expect SOME persistence, over and above any “streaky” factor innate to him as a player. Once you factor all that out, I would say the streakiness factor will be close to zero.