[knockahoma]

Thank you, Ron. And thank you Curtis for the nice thought.

I'm one of those guys who loves reading philosophy. I've read a fair amount of that stuff. Also dig the quantum physics, what I can grasp of it. So, I come to sabermetrics looking through those lenses. I'd love to launch off into how I see those disciplines affect sabermetrics. I fear I'd bore the hell out of everybody.

I'll try to follow through on this studies, if I can find the adjusted BABIPs.

Someone asked my background in studies. Mostly looking at media ratings and marketing data, which also contains a fair amount of white noise. If you got through my example of the "Jukebox Effect" in radio, you know what I mean. You approach statistics like you do a snake when farming its venom. Very good things and very bad things can happen. Careful!

So, I'm trying to articulate my concern with chaos theory and the butterfly effect in baseball. My concern with mass player studies is that each player has a butterfly, or two, in his stats. And so, there's a danger that what we call one big butterfly is really thousands of little butterflies. I know you guys who do the math already know this.

But, eventually, you have to check on Messersmith and see what specific butterflies he had around him. Sometimes, in MY experience with media stuff, mass studies are treated as if they are fractals-- A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales. Too often, I see studies stop at the mass scale and template that onto all individuals.

Someone asked why former baseball players struggle with sabermetrics. I'm not sure they struggle. I think they're close enough to see the swarm of butterflies that math struggles to see. Yogi's 90% butterfly is especially worth noting. The human eye makes a lot of mistakes. But, even the deepest math owes its birth to human observation.

I was encouraged by Ron's numbers. I'll explain why on my next post, probably tomorrow. In the meantime, I've taken the ideas given to my engineer who has a very good math background, and together we'll try to get those numbers requested.

Couple of quick "Traditionalist" thoughts on why pitchers changing teams in mid-season did well.

*better defense
*change of scenery, better mental make-up
* A coach who found a way to make the player's pitches effective again.

But, when it's all said and done, I feel like I'll be right back where I started, with Messersmith. What butterflies were floating around him?

I probably come off as sounding pompous, or something with all that philosophy yada yada. In fact, the reverse is true. It's my deep respect for James' "unseen Monster" butterflies that humbles me as I try to examine all this.