Lindbergh Reference or ABA Reference?
Saturday's St. Louis Cardinals game is best forgotten—not just forgotten, but removed permanently from existence with such abandon that, by the end of your obliviating session, the Cardinals themselves might no longer exist. Or baseball. Because so long as baseball exists, the record books do, and as long as the record books exist we'll have to remember the time that Jaime Garcia's ERA went from 1.93 to 3.28, and the time that Ryan Franklin's ERA went from 9.20 to 7.79.
If any game could promote the misconception that regression to the mean is a kind of brute-force move nature makes to get ERAs that look like other ERAs at all costs, it was that one. But I have to remind nature that it managed to forget rookie backup catcher Tony Cruz in all of this—he went 2-3 in Garcia's spot to bump his batting average up to .625.
I'm not looking forward to his next appearance, where regression to the mean will break his legs and leave him for dead on a street corner.
0 comments
Edited by Dan Moore
Dan Moore has been writing about baseball on the internet since that was a novel thing to do. A graduate of the University of Missouri, he lives in Springfield, Illinois. See my profile
