from Amazon
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
If you win the lottery, are you a millionaire?
This blogger is asking the same basic question:
The question is simple: should the end-of-season awards be based on “true talent,” that season’s “performance” and results, or a combination of the two? If the latter, how much weight should go to the lucky components of that player’s performance?
To elaborate further: if Cliff Lee is on the mound when batters are moving runners over at an elevated rate, and he is on the mound when batters are making out with bases empty, are we going to necessarily link the performance of the batters to the identity of the pitcher? What if the pitcher had nothing to do with it (his fielders just were terrible with men on base)? Why would we necessarily make it a knock against Cliff Lee, if he did everything he was supposed to do?
So, we have two issues:
1. Did he actually perform worse in higher leverage situations?
2. If he actually performed the same, but worse results happened, either by luck or because his teammates performed worse, do we want to link those results to the pitcher?
Does it matter who actually bought the lottery ticket? And does it matter if it required any skill?
Or do we simply want to make a millionaire of the guy holding the ticket, regardless of the context?
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