CHONE FIGGINS hit .298 last year.

You’re right, he did.

CHONE FIGGINS hit .298 last year.

RYAN RABURN ? Don’t we have enough hitters that are flirting with the Mendoza line ?

From ROTOWORLD: Raburn is batting just .213/.315/.362 with zero homers and five RBI over 47 at-bats this season.

Hmm, but looking at his stats from last year, according to Fangraphs, he hit .291/.359/.533 with 16 homers and 26 walks in 291 PAs while playing some CF, some RF, some LF, some 3B, and some 1B. He’s also played 2B. He’s good.

RYAN RABURN ? Don’t we have enough hitters that are flirting with the Mendoza line ?

From ROTOWORLD: Raburn is batting just .213/.315/.362 with zero homers and five RBI over 47 at-bats this season.

Mattlock – Confirmation bias is also trying to say that this past offseason’s plan should have worked, could have worked, that hitters will turn it around soon really, etc. etc.

That could be an example of confirmation bias if it was wrong. But it’s not.

Looking at career numbers is all fine and good for constructing the roster

Oh, that’s a good thing, considering that’s what we’re discussing.

I was behind the theory on most of these guys as of spring training, from Figgins to Kotchman to Bradley on down

Behind what theory? Playing players that are good instead of players that are bad?

but really, at some point in the actual season, while playing the actual games, we flip over from “Wilson, Kotchman, Figgins and Lopez are much better hitters, hold on” to “Wilson, Kotchman, Figgins and Lopez should have been much better hitters… whoops”.

So what’s your point? Of course, if they keep playing like this the rest of the season, then obviously we look back and say, “Wow, who would have predicted that several good Major League players would all completely tank at the same time? That sucks.”

If it’s too early to get a read on these guys, let me know when you believe it’s late enough in the season to measure what these players, this year, are or aren’t doing.

Who cares? Discussing when to pull the plug on players for sucking for the majority of a season is stupid and pointless when there is absolutely NO evidence whatsoever indicating such a thing might happen. I don’t plan on what I would do if I walked out my front door and a plane crashed on my head, because there is no evidence such a thing might happen.

Remember, we traded a crappy, lazy, useless utility player for Kotchman and a crappy, lazy, useless, fat, ugly, stupid, obnoxious, idiotic pitcher for Bradley. Jack Wilson is a good player, despite his injury history, and despite the fact that your uneducated opinion tells you otherwise. Stop acting like Zduriencik passed up on a bunch of good options, because he didn’t. This is a team that lost 101 games a year and a half ago. Very rarely do any teams in such a situation ever come even close to thinking about contention like the Mariners are now.

Jack is a gold glove-caliber shortstop, and has the THIRD best batting average on the team (discounting the AAA kids) and 7 extra base hits.

He has more errors than normal, but he also had an injured throwing hand– and a bizarre 3 error game, that was a complete anomaly.

He’s been rated 3rd in the league or better for “range factor” amongst shortstops, since 2002. And he’s actually #1 amongst active players.

And he’s been a +1 or greater WAR player since 2006 (other than his shortened stop- no pun intended- at Seattle last year). In fact, for his career he’s NEVER had a negative WAR.

There are some positions to worry about on this team, but SS isn’t one of them in my opinion. Other than his injuries, for which we– tu’dah– have Josh Wilson who can take his place, Wilson brings the goods. I love watching him make routine plays out of grounders deep in the hole.

You don’t get to quote numbers from 40 plate appearances and then pretend like you have a handle on what regression to the mean looks like.

How many mound appearances does it take?

It would seem to me, reading some posts from earlier this year that we were all admonished not to expect Fister or Vargas to continue to pitch the way they did early.

Yet just last week someone, (was it Dave?) put up a thread saying, in essence, that that maybe those two guys were for real.

Are they now expected to drop back to being merely replacement level?

I believe Chris_from_Bothel has a point when he contends that Josh is as good as Jack.

Age and injury count for more than some arbitrary mean. The team is burdened enough with players in their twilight years. How many times do we have to relearn that?

You cited it [gambler’s fallacy ] in response to the statement “There is no way that Lopez and Kotchman will remain this bad.” That statement is likely correct, not a fallacy.

I think most of us understand gambler’s fallacy.

Perhaps Chris_from_Bothell is postulating the Sucker’s Fallacy, which is related to but distinct from the Gambler’s Fallacy.

The Gambler’s Fallacy says that if a coin flip comes up heads ten times in a row, then it’s due to come up tails several times in a row to even out the luck. This isn’t true. The coin still has a 50-50 chance of coming up heads or tails, regardless of what happened before.

The Sucker’s Fallacy says still believing the coin has a 50-50 chance of coming up tails after it came up heads ten times in a row is dumb, since the coins is obviously loaded.

Whether or not Lopez and Kotchman are Sucker’s Fallacies I don’t know. I hope not.