For many, the idea that our lives are nothing more than a series of random events occurring outside the control of ourselves or some celestial being is either far too much or not nearly enough to consider. It’s a frightening thing to go against what one is naturally inclined to do. After all, we’ve evolved into beings with brains that fabricate significance, and we instinctively attach this quality to different experiences as a method of producing meaning without much regard for accuracy.
In baseball, this practice is undertaken so frequently that fans of the sport have developed a counter argument against misplaced significance consisting of only three words: “Small sample size.” The term conveys that an opinion about a baseball player’s ability is giving too much credence to what could be the randomization found in a small amount of occurrences. For example, if a batter faces a pitcher four times and gets four hits, it doesn’t mean that he’s great against that particular pitcher. There were only four instances from which to draw a conclusion, and several other random factors could account for success or failure.
Randomization is an important concept in baseball, not just because of the camouflage it presents to analytics and evaluation, but also because it’s played such an enormous role in one of the sport’s most fascinating figures: Josh Hamilton.
