Slow Starts, Bad Starts, and Small Sample Sizes

Today I wanted to focus on something non-Rivalry oriented. This may relate to you if you have a fantasy baseball team (or two or ten), but in the realm of baseball comes down to player psychology, confidence, and getting off to a good start. I'm talking about batters who you expect to be good who start off slow or pitchers who you expect to win who keep getting creamed. I was inspired to write this when I saw in one of my fantasy baseball leagues C.C. Sabathia being dropped.

In this post I'm not aiming to give any fantasy advice--rather I want to make sure everyone understands that baseball's a long season and this early in the season is too early to make the prediction that a player is going to have a bad season. This leads me to the point of sample size. And I don't want to get into statistics too much here, but here's a long definition. For a quick and dirty definition, sample size is the basis for how statistics are measured--this goes for anything from sports to medicine to social science. The larger your sample size, or the number of things you're measuring/counting (wins or batting average or home runs in the baseball sense), the better able you are to draw conclusions or make predictions.

At this point in time in the 2008 baseball season, it's way to early to predict much of anything. Unless a player is injured, we may know what to expect in terms of playing time, but if someone is healthy and playing everyday we can't assess who's likely to be MVP now or what teams will be in the playoffs. What I have done is pick out batters having terrible starts who we expect to be better and pitchers also having terrible starts who've pitched much better than they are now. I've come up with a few categories that may explain why they're having a slow start--but these are just one factor into why.

Batters

I'll start with some batters first. I suppose we can throw around terms like slump and power sapped to describe some of these players. For example, why hasn't Prince Fielder who hit 50 HRs last year hit his first yet? Or shouldn't Ichiro be leading in batting by now?

Slow Starters

Sometimes players just get out of the gate slowly. Robinson Cano for example has shown he doesn't hit well in the first half and tears it up in the second half of the season. While it's frustrating to watch these players suffer early on, they eventually find their groove and start hitting the way they should.

2008 Slow Starters: Adam Dunn, Andruw Jones, Ryan Howard, Robinson Cano

Getting Old

Time is not on the side of most ballplayers to begin with, so for those who are still playing in their late 30s or early 40s age is certainly a big factor at any point in the season.

2008 Getting Old: Frank Thomas, Jim Thome, Paul Konerko

Bad Luck

There's this other thing in baseball called luck which is hard to explain. Hitters may be pounding the ball and swinging well, but the ball is hit at fielders or they happed to hit the ball off the bat in just the wrong spot. It's bad luck all around and the luck of the players below will change around I'm sure.

2008 Bad Luck: David Ortiz, Prince Fielder, Mark Texerira, Alfonso Soriano, Troy Tulowitzki

Pitchers

Pitchers are a different kind of animal. Since they haven't pitched actual games in the offseason (except for those who play in Mexican and other Latin American winter leagues) they are building back up arm strength, adjusting to new lineups, and trying to keep their pitch count down while going deep into games. At least this is my perception of how pitchers think--I hear they're a special group.

Mechanics

It's easy for pitchers to change their mechanics, experiment, or have some wrinkles early on in their delivery. This is the same for batters too, but pitchers have to repeat their wind up over and over again. Bad mechanics can lead to bad habits, leaving pitches over the plate, or worse yet lead to injury during the season.

2008 Bad Mechanics: CC Sabathia, Justin Verlander, Francisco Liriano, Roy Oswalt,

Jeff Francis

Possible Injuries

Some pitchers have a track record of injuries while others are coming back from them. Sometimes pitchers hide their injuries until it's too late and the damage is done. Others may not have been injured and have some early season soreness or "dead arms". Signs are their though that can be picked up on.

2008 Possible Injuries: Ted Lilly, Dontrelle Willis, Chris Young, Tom Gorzelanny, Jeremy Bonderman

I may be off base in the selection of these players, but all of them are off to bad starts. But we can't tell what kind of season any of them may have at this point. I think the majority will "regress to the mean", or have a season typical of their average season. A few may have break out seasons while others could possibly have their worst season ever. And some may end up on the DL for most of the year. Whatever may happen, we'll have a better idea later on of where these player's seasons are going.