A Thought On Day 14 Of The 2011 MLB Playoffs

Ever since I discovered Fangraphs and BABIP I can’t help but think about how lucky it was when someone’s weak grounder squeaks through a tiny hole in the infield. It actually kind of makes watching baseball slightly less enjoyable because I’m always thinking along the lines of “did that liner deserve to be a hit?” Or trying to calculate what the BABIP of a specific fliner to the gap might be. And then I say to myself “no that wasn’t lucky, he just maximized his chances and came out on top this time.” And then I say “damn, all anything in life is is maximizing your chances.” It’s kind of a scary train of thought.

Ok, let’s say that the position and velocity of the bat (combined with same for ball, etc.) determine a flight path of the hit ball.

But we can imagine minimally disturbing both position and velocity to get a sample of “similarly hit” balls. This in turn would produce a distribution over potential flight paths of the hit ball.

For, say, a deep homerun, we can say that all/most similarly hit balls would also be homeruns. For an infield pop-up, almost all similarly hit balls would be infield pop-ups. The result is locally invariant.

However, for a warning-track fly-ball, some similarly hit balls would be home runs. For a grounder that sneaks through a hole, some similarly hit balls would be snagged by the infielder. The result varies over this local distribution of similarly hit balls.

If, say, 1/3 of the local distribution results in a hit and 2/3 in an out, we can (with some hand-waving that may make any theoretical statisticians uncomfortable, particularly any Bayesians, but which will seem fairly normal to most applied folks) say a ball hit like the one in question has a 1/3 probability of being a hit.

Now, let’s stipulate that a ground ball down the third-base line with a good defensive 3B in place to make the play only results in a hit if it hits the bag and takes a weird hop. If we determine that ball hit like Cabrera’s has a low probability of doing so (and a high probability of resulting in a ground out), then it doesn’t seem weird at all to call it a “lucky” outcome (where “lucky” means “low probability but beneficial”).

Luck is pretty generic, both in individual meaning and application. Players do try to hit balls in certain places, for example, the hit and run with the ball being hit to the right side, but I’ve never heard of a player trying to hit a bag.

A ball hit into the hole depends also on the skill of the shortstop, where some balls better shortstops get to. For a ball that hits a bag, like Cabrera’s, the skill level of the 3rd baseman makes no difference.

Luck is just random occurrence with a personal attachment.

We accept that a certain number of grounders will be hit within the range of the fielders and a certain number will be put in holes. The former are outs, the latter are hits. Both groups are identifiable (within a certain degree of accuracy) within an instant of the ball leaving the bat.

An instant after this ball left the bat, the ball was easily identifiable as being in the latter group. It ended up a hit nonetheless.

I think the fact that a hitter generally can’t control whether a grounder will be in a hole or not doesn’t really matter because they are just playing the percentages within the accepted distribution of grounders. This is playing with those percentages, losing, and still getting a hit.

First off, I know next to nothing about physics. But it seems to me that in either scenario, where the ball ends up is not a matter of luck (= randomness), it’s a matter of physics. If a pitch thrown at arm angle A with velocity B and rotation C is struck by a bat held at angle D with force E and elevation F, it’s pretty inevitable where the ball will end up. It will travel to the spot where those factors combine to send it.

The “lucky” part (again using luck to mean randomness), it seems to me, is in the outcome of the batted ball — the safe or out of it. Consider two teams: One has nine fielders made up of Easter Island statues, the other is made up of nine superheroes (with Superman, the Flash and Spider-Man in the outfield). One team, the Metropolis Superheroes, has virtually eliminated the possibility any struck ball will fall for a hit; the other, the Stonehands, has virtually guaranteed they all will. All baseball teams fall somewhere in between these extremes, obviously.

Now where we get into trouble is when we use “luck” in the mystical sense (as IMO many fans do) and try to ascribe a moral angle to the random results of a ball in play, i.e. “good” luck and “bad” luck. Because if you believe in lucky bounces, then the outcome of every play is a matter of luck, and it’s neither good nor bad, because of course one man’s bad luck is another man’s good positioning. So the outcome of all balls in play — not just the bouncer that hits the third-base bag and caroms into the corner, but also the infield popup and the medium fly ball and the double-play grounder — ALL of them must be ascribed to luck, since the batter has little control over where the ball actually ends up. The outcome for ALL balls in play (with the possible exception of home runs) is either luck or not. And I don’t believe in the mystical aspect at all.

Because to get back to our hypothetical teams, please note that you can buy luck. How is it you can purchase something as unquantifiable as “good luck”? Well, I’m a Pirates fan. If you believe in the mystical, perhaps you think we’ve just had a 19-year run of bad luck, rather than that we just suck all the time. But what of the Yankees? Why is it the Yankees (generally) seem to have nothing but good luck? Could it have anything to do with the fact the Yankees can afford to field the best team in baseball and the Pirates can’t? Can it be that the Yankees can buy much better defenders, thereby neutralizing “luck,” than the Pirates can?

When fans speak of bad luck, what they really mean is, “Our players really aren’t very good. Our third baseman can’t get to that ball down the line. Our shortstop can’t field that ball in the hole. The ball in the gap falls in between our outfielders.” It’s not a matter of luck, good or bad, it’s a matter of talent.

So I’ll grant “luck” in the sense of the randomness of outcomes, but I’ll really be thinking the outcome is due to good or bad “talent.” And I’ll give no credence whatsoever to “luck” in the mystical sense, except in the cases of injuries and Steve Bartman.