I think sabermetricians have to first come to grips with this concept -- that certain sporting activities trust to luck, much more than others do -- for the conversation to move forward smoothly. As it is, the operating assumption :- ) seems to be that every athletic task should inherently involve the same degree of luck.
Experience should lead us to expect that every athletic task requires a different, sometimes much different, element of luck.
Pascal's Triangle comes strongly into play when soccer and hockey players are shooting at goal -- and very strongly into play when batted ground balls leave the hitter's bat.
..................
I could be wrong. Presented strong enough evidence, I'll change my position. But experience tells me that in baseball, individual defense involves very little luck. Find a guy in cleats who will tell you that his defense involves much, if any, luck? :- )
Or, explain to me in what sense Pascal's Triangle caused Raul Ibanez' -20 UZR in Seattle and +0 UZR in Philadelphia.
..................
Certainly as mathemeticians, we understand that in a given year, x% of balls into a certain zone might be reachable. There is *some* luck in UZR, because of the way UZR is calculated (not because of the way fielders play).
I question to what extent Raul Ibanez got balls "in the fringes" of his Seattle LF zone, to the tune of a -20 runs UZR -- and then got a lot of BIP's dead-center into his LF zone once he reached Philadelphia, to the tune of an above-average UZR rating. I assert that this hypothetical "UZR luck" factor is probably not a strong one.
I assert that we should listen to Raul Ibanez' observation of the phenomenon: that in Seattle, the Mariners did a lousy job of positioning him.
In any case, the problem remains. In my view, and present company excepted, sabermetricians should keep this self-evident principle in mind. Some athletic tasks involve more Chaos Theory than others do. And there is no harm in asking the athletes which those are.
.
Voros McCracken realized, a few years ago, that the balls coming off of hitters' bats were, to a remarkable degree, producing a Pascal's Triangle of results.
Sabemetricians found this concept compelling... no, not compelling: hypnotic. The idea that you could simply apply Probability Theory to understand so much of what was going on in baseball, mesmerized analysts.
It mesmerized them so much, that it seems they didn't stop to realize that very few activities in sports can be charted along a Gaussian curve as smoothly as BIPs are. There just aren't many things in sports that are as non-skill-driven as is the direction of a baseball coming off a hitter's bat. :- )
Cheers,
Dr D
Printer-friendly version