Picture credit score: © Chris Tilley-Imagn Photos
Within the sweltering Jupiter, FL warmth someday throughout the low season, I had the pleasure of taking in a backfield sport with my boss’s boss, then-Marlins GM Kim Ng. Regardless of the “winter” months, the aluminum grandstand was so scorching I needed to tuck my black Thinkpad into the shadow of the overhang to maintain the keyboard from scorching my fingers. We watched the sport, and Kim requested me offhand:
“Why do you suppose we have been so dangerous in one-run video games?”
An amazing query. As a result of, boy, we have been dangerous. Two years prior, we went 21-29 (.420 profitable share) in one-run video games. And the earlier season, 2022, we have been an abysmal 24-40 (.375).
However I wasn’t positive why we had been so dangerous. I supplied the usual sabermetric truism, that randomness governs one-run data and regression finally balances issues out. It’s nice to say such issues from a chilly distance, however sitting within the coronary heart of the storm, the steaming scorching wrestle of each day mire, it’s troublesome to imagine them. It’s arduous to look again on two years of struggles and say, “It’ll steadiness out.” After which say it many times after every successive loss.
And even when we will maintain the religion in regression, that doesn’t clarify the composition of one-run video games. How does a group find yourself in them? Did they blow a late lead or battle by means of a pitcher’s duel? Are they disproportionately shedding 1-run video games in high-scoring affairs or in extra-inning nail-nibblers? I didn’t have the solutions to those questions, and I felt they have been value exploring.
