Confirmation Bias
One of the goals of this blog is to be a rational voice in a sea of emotional response. So, take this post in that vein.
A frequent comment that has been brought up as the M’s struggle to score runs and win games to begin the season has been that it’s okay to freak out about the offense because it was a weakness going into the season, and the first eight games are just evidence of the suspected flaws of the team. I understand why this makes sense on some level, but in reality, it’s just bad analysis in a different package.
That belief is really just a manifestation of confirmation bias, or the natural tendency to weigh evidence that agrees with your preconceived opinion too heavily. Everyone gives in to confirmation bias at some point, as their expectations are met and they inaccurately conclude that they “knew” something was going to happen. There are very few things in life that we know – the rest is different levels of speculation.
A lot of people speculated that the Mariners offense was going to struggle to score runs before the season began. That speculation may be founded on logical principles, with evidence to support it, and it may even be correct. However, looking at any small sample of data and deciding that it is “real” because it conforms to what you believed before it happened is simply faulty, and underestimates the uncertainty that was involved (or should have been involved) in your original thinking.
People do this all the time, and it causes them to make poor decisions. We simply do not have the ability to forecast the future with certainty, so we have to leave room for the fact that our forecasts could be wrong. When you decide that eight games is early enough to say that this team can’t score enough runs to win because you believed that was true a week ago and this simply validates your opinion, you aren’t building enough uncertainty into your forecast.
This isn’t to single out anyone – I’m just using the lack of offense as an example. I could use Rob Johnson’s constant dropping of the ball as a similar example. Because he was so frustrating to watch at times last year, there’s a preconceived notion that he can’t catch the baseball, so things like his dropped third strike on Gabe Gross last night get magnified, because it lined up with what we already believed. There’s confirmation bias everywhere in life. It’s just something we have to recognize and attempt to adjust for, because if we don’t, we’ll make bad predictions and end up overreacting to recent events.
Game Eight Recap
Boo, 2-6.
One of the great things about baseball is how different each game can be. Even with historical averages giving us a reasonable expectation of what might occur over long periods of time, on any given night, anything can happen. Good players can perform poorly while scrubs play the role of hero. Each game offers the promise of uniqueness.
This is part of why this first week (plus) has been so lame. There’s nothing interesting about this offense not scoring runs. 1-2-3 innings, lots of weak contact, and DHs stranding runners… we’ve seen all this far too frequently. It’s not new or different. It’s the same, and it sucks.
This isn’t to encourage you to freak out or throw in the towel. In the end, it’s still just eight games, and these guys are going to hit eventually. But until they do, the games are boring, and these recaps aren’t going to be all that interesting either. You don’t need me to tell you why the M’s lost tonight.
As for Hyphen, he had a bit of a strange night. Threw strikes for the first three innings, letting the A’s make easy outs, and then lost his command to start the 4th, walking three straight batters. But, then, as quickly as it left, he got it back, and got out of the inning with minimal effort. He ran into some more command problems in the 7th, but again, it came right back, and he managed to go fairly deep in the game despite a highly abnormal five walks. Generally, when you see five BBs in the box score, a guy was really struggling the whole night, but that wasn’t the case tonight.
I’ll probably talk about this more in the next day or two, but I’m officially ready to be done with the Bradley-as-LF experiment. He’s not running around with a piano on his back like Raul was, but he’s not exactly fast, he doesn’t take great routes, and the effort level leaves too much to be desired. You could probably live with the miscues if the M’s had a lumbering slugger at DH, but they don’t – they have the worst DH combination in baseball. At this point, the logical move is to move Milton to DH full time and find a new left fielder, as there’s no point in having a left fielder who can’t field and a designated hitter who can’t hit. The longer the team stalls on making that decision, the fewer games they’ll win this season.
Jack Wilson – you’re a nice fielder and all, but you kind of suck at hitting. Stop swinging at the first pitch all the time. You’re just giving the pitchers quicker outs. Take some pitches. It won’t kill you.
Felix Day on Friday. Can’t get here fast enough.
Game 8, A’s at Mariners
Rowland-Smith vs Duchscherer, 3:40 pm.
The M’s open at home today, looking to put a bad road trip behind them. Randy Johnson throws out the first pitch, and I expect he’ll get a tremendous ovation. He deserves it. And, just so I can be the four millionth person to make this joke, perhaps the M’s can tell him to just stay on the mound afterwards, because this team could use him.
Hyphen takes the hill for the M’s. Back in the friendly confines of Safeco Field, he should pound the strike zone and make the A’s earn their way on base. This team is built to prevent hits on balls in play, so RRS just needs to throw strikes and let the park and defense do the rest.
Wak shifts the line-up again, moving Bradley down to the six spot to take some pressure off of him. Also, Kotchman ends up hitting 7th even with an RHP on the mound, as apparently his appeal to Wak that he can handle the third spot only got him a few days at the top of the order – Gutierrez is in the three hole tonight, and will probably remain near the top of the order until he cools off. Long term, this line-up doesn’t really work, as you don’t really want Gutierrez, Lopez, and Griffey trying to be your RBI guys against a right-handed pitcher, but as long as its just a short-term thing until Milton gets going, it’s not the end of the world.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 2B
Griffey, DH
Bradley, LF
Kotchman, 1B
Johnson, C
Wilson, SS
Ian Snell Leaves Team
Per Ryan Divish on Twitter, Wak has said that Ian Snell has left the team for family reasons. No idea how long this will last. Will add more information as it becomes available.
Update: Divish adds that Wak doesn’t think he’ll miss his next start. So this is probably just a minor thing.
Good News from the Weekend
Sooooo, the Mariners had a hard time on the opening road trip. Today’s 9-2 loss was disheartening, and I don’t want to dwell on it (Snell got hammered, end of analysis). The problem of course is that there just isn’t a whole lot else to dwell on; the season’s too young, and you can only replay the Gutierrez catch from Saturday so many times (I’ve had to recharge my iPhone solely because I was replaying that highlight too much). If you’re feeling frustrated with the team in general, or if you’re fed up with the latest bizarre miscue (TWO catchers interference calls in one game? What?), think of the following:
1) Chad Cordero’s rehab is going quite nicely, thank you. Last year, I put Cordero in the same category as Jeff Zimmerman – nice stories of ex-All Stars who were attempting comebacks, but who faced overwhelming odds. Well, The Chief’s looking pretty good. The sample sizes are tiny, but visually, Cordero’s throwing extremely well. He’s getting strikeouts and ground balls (in 3 IP, he’s yet to allow a ball in the air), and he actually touched 90MPH today. Cordero averaged 90.1 MPH with his deceptive FB in 2007, and he’s getting surprisingly close to that benchmark. He could replace his ex-teammate Jesus Colome, though the M’s need a spot for Jack Hannahan, and thus Cordero may need to wait.
2) The West Tennessee rotation has looked outstanding, and consensus top prospect Michael Pineda hasn’t pitched yet (he gets the start tomorrow evening). Today was Mauricio Robles turn, and he went 4 1/3 innings of scoreless ball with 5 strikeouts and 6 groundouts to 2 air outs. He threw 82 pitches and seemed to tire a bit in the 4th and 5th innings, but the result was encouraging for a guy who’d looked great in the spring. Some fans may look at the line and complain that Robles looks like another Erik Bedard, but the rest of us will rejoice that Robles’ results look like another Erik Bedard. My condolences to Jacksonville, who, having faced Robles today, will attempt to figure out Michael Pineda tomorrow. Woooo Pineda day!
3) Luke French’s change-up appears more effective this year than in 2009. After a remarkably easy looking start against a righty-heavy line-up on Friday, everyone was talking about French’s change. You’ll recall that French’s outpitch in 2009 was his slider – a pitch that was 5.3 runs above average last year (1.93 runs per 100 pitches). The slider helped him hold lefties to 3.60 FIP, along with an 18:5 K:BB ratio. But his mushy change-up allowed righties to pummel him: his FIP against righties was 6.08. That’s why it was notable that French held a line-up of 7 righties scoreless on Friday night, and why it was so encouraging to see French use his change to set up his below average fastball – he got several swinging strikes on fastballs after starting hitters off with low change-ups. This profile still faces long odds in the majors (where hitters are less likely to be late on 89 MPH fastballs because they’ve seen a few 79 MPH change-ups), but if French can keep righties off-balance, he looks a lot more like Jason Vargas, and while that’s less good than looking like Felix Hernandez, it means he could add some value to the M’s in 2010.
Game Seven Recap
Boo, 2-5.
Instead of watching the M’s-Rangers game, I drove over to Greensboro to catch Zach Wheeler’s pro debut for the Augusta GreenJackets, with Baseball America’s Conor Glassey and Ben Badler. I wasn’t all that sad to miss an Ian Snell start in Texas.
Wheeler, though, didn’t want me to get off that easy. So, he channeled his inner Snell, and ended up recording just one out. He walked three and threw nearly 40 pitches, most of them nowhere close to the strike zone, before departing. I may not have watched the M’s get trounced by Texas, but I had a similar experience.
Lousy road trip #1 is in the books. Let’s hope Safeco is a little more friendly this week.
Game 7, Mariners at Rangers
Snell vs Feldman, 12:05 pm.
Last week, Snell pitched pretty well, but I felt like we needed to see him do it against better hitters before we got too excited. Well, here’s your chance, Ian. If he can get through this Texas line-up three times, that will be impressive.
In other news, Bradley gets the day off today, and because Langerhans was DFA’d, Byrnes gets the start in left with an RHP on the mound. This is one of the reasons why getting rid of Langerhans was stupid. But hey, at least Mascot only struck out twice yesterday.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Kotchman, 1B
Gutierrez, CF
Griffey, DH
Lopez, 3B
Byrnes, LF
Moore, C
Wilson, SS
Prospect Performance of the Year (to-date)
Jay will have more shortly over at Mariner Minors I’m sure, but I thought it was worth pointing out that near-unanimously unpopular 1st round draft pick Nick Franklin turned in the best offensive performance in recent Ms prospect history tonight. The 19-year-old went 4-4 for the Clinton Lumber Kings, with a double, a triple, and two home runs.
Single games in the minors don’t mean anything, but teenagers who can hit for power in the pitcher-friendly Midwest League are a rare commodity. Teenagers who can do so and play a competent shortstop are rarer still. If Franklin proves over the next few months that he has more power in him than scouts believed on draft day, we may have something special on our hands.
Game Six Recap
Yay, 2-4.
Try not to get used to the recap-right-after-the-game-ends, as I’m not going to be able to watch every game live, especially on weekends. On Saturdays, we’re going to run into a lot of Fox blackouts, so I probably won’t have much to say on those days, since it kind of helps to be able to watch the game in order to talk about it.
So, here’s an abridged version – nice hit Guti, nice catch Guti, nice win guys.
Game Six, Mariners at Rangers
Hernandez vs Harrison, 12:10 pm
Happy Felix Day, indeed.
The M’s switch up the line-up a little bit, moving Bradley down to the #5 spot. I’m sure this is a “take the pressure off of Milton” move, but it’s not like Jose Lopez is killing the ball right now or anything, and this could come back to haunt the M’s in the late innings. Most of the Rangers good relievers are right-handers, so if the top of the order gets on and Lopez comes up with Bradley on deck, Wak may regret this decision pretty quickly.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 2B
Gutierrez, CF
Lopez, 3B
Bradley, LF
Mascot, DH
Kotchman, 1B
Johnson, C
Wilson, SS