The Perils of SSS (Small Sample Size)
In real life baseball, we are familiar with the tendency to generalize from too little data. We know that 15 games in April is not a whole season. And yet, every year, fans get overexcited (or overly depressed) about early results. Some of us in the EFL are Mariner fans. The Ms are 6-9. Their offense has been bad. Their starting pitching not good enough. We are tempted to despair. “This team just can’t hit. Ty France is okay again, but the rest of them are just pathetic.”
(Of course, its not just the small sample size. Ms fans have decades of frustration to back up their discontent.)
Similar things happen in the EFL, with a twist . . . THE PEARS ARE IN FIRST. The world has turned upside down. Pigs are flying over Paris. What a wonderful world!
Don’t get excited. The Pears are currently benefiting from Roses’ generosity. I’m sure reality will reassert itself.
But maybe not!!
Thanks, Phil, for trying to console some of us. But I despair. Random variance I can handle. But 16 games of unrelenting disaster isn’t random. Not even 13 days out of 16. The W’s are beyond rescue by a regression to a mean. They need a eucatastrophe.
Why is the term “eucatastrophe?” The “cata” part connotes badness. The “eu” part connotes goodness. So they cancel each other out. “Eucatastrophe” should mean just “some inconsequential thing happened.” The W’s won’t be saved by an inconsequential event. They need eustrophe, plain and simple.
Sam Miller wrote a piece with various takes on Randy Johnson’s pitch that killed the bird. One of the takes begins with recalling that the D-Backs and Giants were on the verge of an all out bean ball war, or a brawl, in that spring training game. But when the bird got blown out of the air, everyone forgot their feud. One player said he believed God had sacrificed the bird.
The W’s might need God to sacrifice another bird to redeem them and put them on a new track.