March 3, 2010

Francis Larson Blogs About the Anteaters' Baseball Season

March 3, 2010

 

Francis Larson Blogs about the 2010 Season

May 3
The Congratulation-Rationalization Effect

Politicians, like athletes, play to win. But instead of fancy trophies and division championships, politicians vie for votes. And when the voting scale tips over 50% their way, they reap the spoils of being elected to office. Competition for votes is fierce--and politicians in modern America spend a major portion of their time seeking election or reelection.

With all the time spent on campaigning, etc., who actually wins an election, comes down to a group of voters. Politicians, however shrewd, must at some point sit back and watch the votes come tallying in. When election results are finalized, however, something interesting happens: the winners seem to congratulate themselves and the losers seem to rationalize their loss on forces outside their control.

Political scientists call this phenomenon: the "congratulation-rationalization" effect. The point is simple. When a politician succeeds, he seems to think that his success results from his good campaigning skills, persuasion, etc. In other words, he won the election on his own merit, fair and square. When a politician loses, on the other hand, he seems to conclude his loss came from national voting swings, economic conditions, etc. The winner praises himself and the loser rationalizes his loss to external forces. The main thing is that it usually turns out they're both a little wrong. 

If the congratulation-rationalization effect actually occurs is a matter of empirical testing. Yet whether it happens or not, we can somewhat easily connect the phenomenon to baseball. I think the best example comes in a close game. On Sunday against Bakersfield, the score got to even in the top of the 9th. Bakersfield got the bases loaded with nobody out. There is almost nothing more difficult for a defense than to get out of a bases-loaded jam with nobody out without giving up at least one run. Needless to say, it was a big situation. Ruben comes in the game and gets a ground ball out. Summers then comes in the game and gets two strikeouts to end the inning. We went on to win the game in the bottom half.

Summers' strikeouts, however, were tough. The last guy to strikeout had gotten the count to 3-2 and fouled off a couple fastballs. At this point, the score was tied and the bases were still loaded. So when 3 and 2 came, everybody was running. Anything less than an out would be at least one run for the bad guys. But Summers threw a fastball down the middle to strike the guy out. The feat was huge.

But let's say the umpire called the strike a ball.

Well, besides being livid, we probably wouldn't tip our hat to the guy who drew the walk. And I wonder how much the guy would congratulate himself. Whatever the case, one side might praise the guy more than he deserves and the other side might not praise the guy enough.

Now, I'm not saying that Summers got lucky. He threw the perfect pitch when we needed him to and got the job done. What I am saying, however, is that sports analysis after-the-fact isn't always right. In the end, it doesn't matter how you won---whether by a shimp hit in the 9th or whatever---it just matters that you won.

Apr. 26

Self-fulfilling Prophecies

If you spend enough time around sports people you'll find that sports people dabble in the business of predicting the future. You'll hear prophetic phrases like: "Mark my words, the Yankees will win the world series!" or "My Gators will beat your Tigers!" Sports people love to say what's going to happen next.

And it's not just the fans making all the noise. If you spend enough time around athletes, they'll bear their predictive powers as well. They'll say things like: "I'll beat you!" or "I'm gonna take your cheese deep!" Coaches, players, and fans all love the passion. And who can blame them? Whether you call it "talkin' smack" or fortune-telling, predicting future victories is good, old-fashioned fun.

But while I love fun-fueled sport prophecy as much as the next guy, I have to wonder: does everyone believe what they say? Do they really think they'll win, regardless of all the pleasant uncertainties the natural universe can unveil?

I sure hope not. At the very least, the future depends on many factors out of a person's hands. You can't know what other people will do with certainty. Predicting the future is risky--really risky. And although I think most sports people would agree with this, they will continue to confidently proclaim future successes. Are we all insane hypocrites?

Maybe.

Or maybe the entire sports world believes in "self-fulfilling prophecies". Wikipedia will back me up on this: A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that causes the prediction to actually happen. For example, a person believes he will fall if he climbs a mountain. Although he is a good climber, he focuses so much on the fall that he misses a subtle step, causing him to fall. His prediction of falling, then, contributed to his fall. So, his prophecy was "self-fulfilling."

From the looks of it, it seems like the members of the sports community feel their attitudes, mindsets, or whatever, actually affect the outcome of games. If they think they'll win, they have a better chance to win. If they think they'll lose, they'll probably prove themselves right. Now, I am not too quick to accept this sort of stuff. But from what I've seen on the baseball diamond, a team that thinks they'll win actually plays better.

Last week I felt the Anteaters played like they thought they would win. Our pitchers across the board, threw like they thought the hitter had no chance. On Saturday, par exemplar, when Bergman threw 26 outs in a row, he pitched as if the batters were non-factors. Bergman threw like it didn't matter what the Davis hitters would do; he blew it past Davis as if he believed they didn't have bats! And Davis isn't a lineup of outs; they have pretty good hitters. Bergman's feat aside, the rest of our pitchers threw with confidence, and I'm convinced that confidence helped "self-fulfill" the wins.

Self-fulfilling prophecies are tricky. On one hand you want to be confident. On the other, you don't want to be insane. At any rate, it seems the Anteaters are playing like they think they'll win. Not hoping to win. Not praying to win. Believing they'll win. >>

Apr. 19
I'm a philosophy major. And like one might expect, we philosophy majors are constantly wondering why on earth people do certain things like, say, morals. Philosophers are like five-year-old's. We prod subjects with a barrage of why's and how come's, never satisfied until someone tells us to shut up. Philosophers rarely come to resolution on anything and in many ways philosophy is a study of dead-ends. But it's still fun to speculate.

 

So for fun's sake, I feel I can apply some philosophy to baseball. Why on earth do we play baseball after all?

That's easy enough, right? Because it's fun.

Well, maybe, but for the sake of the drill, I'll dig deeper.

I think we play baseball for several reasons. I mean, for one, we play because we like the process of throwing and catching the ball. Our first love probably started in the backyard, playing catch.  I remember watching baseball on TV as young kid not being able to wait to go outside to test my throwing skills. For me, at least, I could care less about who won the games on TV. I just liked throwing and catching the ball.  There were no strike-zones, no ERA's, no batting averages---I just liked tossing this ball.

But, like many other childish ways, this soon comes to an end. Our days of catch with Dad are numbered like anything else. As we age, we find that baseball is not just about playing catch in the backyard. Baseball becomes a game about something else, something juicer, something more metaphysical-----we start playing in order to win.

And our new reason for playing isn't as easy to come by as playing catch. To win, you have to coordinate your actions with a bunch of other guys. And your coordinated action has to be better than the other team's coordinated action. Winning ends up being a serious business. It takes practice. It takes being thirsty; not in a metaphorical sense, but in a literal way. The business of practicing in order to win is just plain tiring. In the end, however, baseball players will admit that the seriousness is warranted given the reward of winning.

Difficulties of victory aside, our reasons for playing baseball remain two-fold. We don't play just because we want to play catch. Nor do we only play to win. We play because we like doing both. We like to play because we like to play catch and we like to win.

While I'm convinced most college baseball players will grant this answer, I don't think they always live it.

I mean, I think college baseball players will never forget how important winning is. There is a whole culture that reminds them what winning means. Heck, nobody will let us forget it!

Instead, I think college baseball players are in danger of forgetting their first love: playing catch. And you can tell when a team forgets this. Why? Because they're only happy after a win. This is what we in the sports world call "front-running."

Has our team done this? Not sure. But I know I have.

Apr. 13
What follows is my theory on why hitting stats usually don't matter.

First, some background.

Baseball is a game of statistics. Batting averages, Earned run averages, Runs batted in, Etc. are all meaningful in baseball and for good reason. One big reason is that the differences between players are small. The difference between an average hitter and a good hitter can be as small as 5%. The average hitter might get hits 25% of the time and the good one gets hits 30% of the time. So, stat minutiae matters.

One way to judge whether a team is better than another is to compare hitting and pitching statistics. In college baseball, if a team gets hits around 30% of the time, they are doing pretty well. Intuitively, the team with better stats should beat the team with worse stats. If a team with a 31% hitting success-rate plays a team with a 29% success-rate, you would think that one with better stats is a little better and should probably win.

But while this is easy enough, it doesn't work out like this.

Well, what gives?

The problem is that stats don't provide the whole story; they aren't sensitive to big siutations.

Even if a team is hitting .300, the average doesn't say where they get their hits. A team's 30% will never say whether they did it when the game was on the line or if they got their 30% in a blowout. The 30% doesn't necessarily spread out evenly.

The team hitting .310 might lose easily to the team hitting .290 because the .290-team might get hits when it counts. We call this difference being "clutch."

I think what separates good teams from OK teams is not just stats. It's where they get their 30%. Do they get it on Friday night when the score's tight or do they get it on a blowout Sunday afternoon against a less-formidable opponent? Are they succeeding when it counts or only when they're up by 7 in the 6th? The barometer for a good team is not just how well are they hitting, but how well they are hitting when it matters most. Sure, every game matters---but sports fans know the difference between a big situation and everything else.

Here's my point. Our team lost 3 of 4 games last week. And it wasn't that we faced teams that could just out-hit us. Instead, our 30% just didn't come when we needed it. Our 30% didn't come in the clutch.

Are we doomed? Forever losing when it matters? No. I think we are discovering just how valuable it is to be clutch. I am under the belief that once we see this we'll be fine.

Apr. 5
I thought everyone played well this weekend against the Matadors.

Our hitters took advantage of a very offensive field. Hernandez got his first bomb. So did Olson. Several other guys had home runs as well. Many of our guys had productive weekends at the dish.

On defense we did a good job limiting runs from a team that could potentially be very dangerous. The three starters kept the ball down and threw strikes with their various pitches, trumping the relatively potent Northridge offense. Our position players also did a good job playing tight defense on a field not necessarily friendly to good fielding percentages.

All and all, it was a good weekend: the weather was nice, our guys played well, and the results went in our favor.

Mar. 29
I feel like the catcher might have the best seat in the house when it comes to a baseball game. During the game I'm literally a couple feet from the ball hitting the bat. So what, right. 

Well, with a pitching staff like ours, there aren't many balls hit hard. So for the most part the hitting scenery is kept to a minimum. I usually see bad swings and a ball ends up in my glove. Sometimes, though, the other team unloads on a ball. When this happens, I'm always surprised. Because when Danny throws a good, low outside pitch, it's hard to hit. I know because every fall I have to hit off the guy. 

It just so happened that the Reno team hit the ball pretty well. I mean, we probably could have thrown better pitches, but some days are better than others. Whatever the case, Nevada crushed some balls and scored some runs. The two-way pitcher, Stassi (perhaps sic.) hit every mistake hard. Maybe that's a testament to how good he is at hitting or maybe we made more mistakes than usual. In any event, we ended up losing the first two---the bad guys scored more than us. 

What's weird about baseball is that we come out Sunday and Reno has no business being on the same field as us. We won like we should have done on Friday and Saturday. But perhaps "should" is a bad term in sports. "Should" is lineup versus lineup. "Should" is about paper and heights and weights and stats. "Should" is one big unknown. Sports, on the other hand, are about what actually happens in real-time. So maybe I shouldn't say "should" at all. 

At any rate, conference starts this week. And even though we lost 2 of 3 in reno, I still feel like we are on an upswing.

Mar. 22
Motivation is a big industry. Every year there are dozens, if not hundreds, of relatively large motivational conferences where people can pay a fee to get exactly what you'd think: motivation. Turns out there is a great deal of money to be made in this area. And for good reason. There is a massive chunk of society that wants to get stuff done with their lives but lacks the will-power or the know-how to actually do it.

Now I might be dead wrong, but my guess is that the confidence-psychology circuit spends a great deal of time teaching people how to deal with failure. I imagine that by the end of the seminars the attendees can rattle off a substantial number of adversity-quotes.

"It's how a person deals with adversity that makes him great," par exemplar. 

Also, I suspect the motivational circuit doesn't focus too much on dealing with success. I mean, why would successful people pay to get advice on being successful anyways? Preaching to the choir makes more yawns than it does cash. So, while the topic might be touched upon, my inclination is that the perils of success get pushed to the wayside and adversity gets center stage.

I think there is something interesting here.

While some might think failure is the ultimate destroyer, I'm convinced success is a far greater threat. After all, it's hubris that gets the Greek hero in trouble, not humility. This is especially true in sports.

Man! What a downer topic after a perfect 4 and 0 week for the Anteaters!

And we really did play well, too. We held other teams to a relatively low run count, our hitting was on it, and we scored lots of runs.

So what gives?

Well, while winning is fun and success is what we necessarily want as athletes, I believe it's really important for us to keep the hungry drive in order to keep on winning. Too much elation can breed just as much trouble as depression. The former being all-the-more surprising.

The victory plague can hurt individuals, too.

I remember when one of the guys on the team told me, "When you're hitting good, everything seems better." And although he was right, the feel-good can also produce problems.

When you get four knocks on a night your team wins, you feel on top of the world. Food tastes better, people seem nicer, and even the cold, harsh world doesn't seem that bad! Sometimes this is all good and fine, but other times it's not. Sometimes guys feel so good they go 0-4 the day after a big night.

The same is true for a pitcher. Sometimes he feels so good it hurts him.

You see, we all want confident winners. But we don't want guys so confident they stop working. We want guys to be cocky, sure. But they gotta stay thirsty, too.

If we'll continue to succeed it will be because we stay thirsty as individuals and thirsty as a team.

Mar. 15
As the old adage goes, baseball is timeless.  The game has no clock, no buzzer to beat, no two minute warnings. Baseball, as many have said and will continue to say, is a game of innings. Or, if you like, baseball is a game of outs. Skip (Gillespie) has said on numerous occasions that baseball is unique because when a team has the lead, it can't just hold the ball and let the clock run out! The team has to get the other team out at least 27 times.

So, as it were, baseball is a game of opportunities. It's a game of turns. You get 27 turns to score more runs than the other guys, and they get 27 turns to score more runs than you.

The problem, however, is that teams don't always play like this is what's going on. Instead, they play baseball more like football, when having a lead late in the game means you can just kneel your way to a victory! What ends up with these sorts of teams is they lose more than they otherwise might have to.

Now, I'm not sure how fair it is to charge the Anteaters with such a misunderstanding. But one thing is sure. I think that while we were far from perfect last week, we have started the process of playing baseball like it's a game of opportunities.

In the three victories last week, the games were won relatively late in the game. On Tuesday against San Diego, we scored the eventual game-winning run with two outs in the 7th. In the Saturday victory against Sac State, we held them in a close game to secure the win. And on Sunday, we tied the game with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th, eventually going on to win the game with Fisher's homerun.

Although it might not be too obvious, we are starting to take advantage of our late-game opportunities and beginning to stop other teams from cashing-in on their late-game opportunities in a way that we did not do in previous games.

If we keep this up we will be just fine.

Mar. 8
Here's my running theory on why there's so much superstition in baseball.
Hitting coaches, baseball gurus on the conference circuit, and anyone who's been around the game will tell you that sometimes hitting is out of your control. You can square a ball up, hit it on the screws, crush one to left, line one to center, and still fail to benefit the hit column. The baseball does not honor intent. And neither do the fielders. Such a situation puts hitters in a precarious position. How should they get balls to fall when getting hits is not always in their control?

The easy answer: lucky socks.

Or maybe a different breakfast. Or maybe waking up on a different side of the bed. Perhaps rally caps will do the trick. Heck, maybe the girlfriend's got to go! Baseball players are in a constant effort to get rid of the kryptonite and hang on to the lucky charms. Why? To somehow control what cannot be controlled: whether balls fall.

Ok great, Francis, you've seen Bull Durham.  But what's that got to do with the Anteaters who went 2 and 2 against Pepperdine and St. Mary's last week?

For starters, one has to wonder why we didn't sweep in a week that we probably should have swept. Did a bunch of good hitters suddenly get worse? Are our pitchers just not good enough? Or are we just plain unlucky?

I think the human inclination is to immediately start pointing fingers--to start searching for the curse trying to uncover the problem---just like eager hitters do when they start blaming their 0 for 4 on what they ate for breakfast!

But I think this inclination is wrong. Good baseball wins baseball games, not lucky shoes. Bad baseball loses games, not kryptonite. Over the course of the season what type of baseball a team plays shows up in their record. I think we, as a team, are on track to sealing up the cracks in our game so we can play quality baseball.

And when you start playing quality baseball for nine innings every game, a team's luck starts to turn.

Mar. 1
The Anteaters lost 3 out of 4 games in South Carolina this last weekend. Two of the three losses came late in the games. Yes, we were all very disappointed. But I think these losses have exposed some underlying problems that need to be fixed if we want to play in Omaha.

From what I know about developmental psychology, there is a phenomenon when two children play beside each other but not together. Normal toddlers do not do this. Instead, when most toddlers are put in the same room they will play a game together. Though it might be primitive, there will be some form of coordination. They play together. Developmentally challenged children, on the other hand, often don't do this. They sit together in the same space but each play their own game, alone. Psychologists call this "parallel play."

Now it might be a stretch, but when the Anteaters went 1 out of 4 in Myrtle Beach I felt like we played beside each other and not together. Like I said last week, our team has almost too many good players. But running 9 good players on a field does not translate to winning. If we want to win, we need 9 guys playing not just on the same field but 9 guys playing together.

Feb. 22
There is something sacred about the beginning of the baseball season. Anything is possible; nothing is on the books; a team has unlimited potential. While perhaps overly cliche, the first series is always the first test to see whether a good team on paper is a good team on the field. Our team happens to be very good on paper. Until last friday night, however, that was all we were. By sweeping the first series, we have begun the process of proving the quality of our team. We still, however, have a long way to go. Some areas of our game need to be cleaned up. The pitchers, for the most part, performed pretty well. But we hope they will continue to improve. The same can be said for the defense. Our offense, which we think will be very exciting, showed a little strength over the series, but will also need to improve.