Right or Wrong?

As the end of every baseball season draws near (as does the fantasy baseball season), I take a look back at all the decisions I made, and invariably, many of them are wrong. But there are also always a handful where the outcome was poor, but I was not wrong, per se. It's a distinction that many people don't grasp--at least it seems that way any time a football coach goes for 2 at the end of the game when down by 1, judging by the uproar.

But the thing is, it is not the outcome that makes a decision right or wrong, it's the reasoning. It's like standing on a 20 in blackjack and the dealer draws a 21. Yeah, you lost, but standing on 20 is absolutely the right decision given the information that you have. In the same way, if the expected value of going for two at the end of a game is higher than kicking a PAT, you should go for two, no matter what the monday morning quarterbacks will say.

So I don't feel bad not acquiring someone like David Price, whose numbers belie his true talent level (high, but not THAT high), or the similar Clay Buchholz. Their true talent levels (measured by xFIP) are closer to 4.00 than 2.00, and more often than not, that's how they'll perform. But the dealer drew a 21 on them. Bummer, but no sleep lost.

But I was clearly wrong on Jose Bautista. Wow. There's not a whole lot to say about that, but one interesting thing about him that most people don't know is that of his 48 home runs to date, he has pulled EVERY SINGLE ONE:



The plot is from the wonderful Hittracker. You'd think pitchers would just throw everything low and outside to him, but I guessed they missed 48 times. Or maybe hitting to all fields is overrated.