Gould argued that the demise of the 400 hitter, (Ted Williams, was it 1953?) was part and parcel of the improvement of the game.  Hitters are getting different kinds of hitting opportunities these days At Bats per game are below 2.5 and declining.  I love the strategy of defense, pitching around heavy hitters, but is it really good for the game?
28feb10
Gould added to the “spilled ink” on the batting average, and I will attempt to answer the question about the quality of ball and hitters when compared over time.  Hopefully I will wash out the changes to the game.  I don’t feel that game is better.  But being a SABRmatrician, I want to see the numbers.  Then I will make some kind of pronouncement, if not make up my mind.
Two new graphs will be added to Bigger/Better2, a continuation post: 
    1. At Bats per game, 1900 - pres where players had 30 or more Games and more than 1 & 2/3 At Bats per game.
    2. The standard deviation of the At Bats per game. 
I believe that these graphs support my supposition that 55 or so is a good point to start including players records in any analysis.  Guy who don’t make 50 and especially 30 games in a year aren’t really ball players for that year.

Gould was correct in seeing that there are some underlying laws of nature in Baseball stats.  I don’t think his explanation is the best one available however. 

I love unraveling a SABRmetric conundrum!  This will take a few more posts.

cactusmitch - 16 February 2010 07:41 PM

Gould argued that the demise of the 400 hitter, (Ted Williams, was it 1953?) was part and parcel of the improvement of the3 game.  Hitters are not getting as much opportunity these days At Bats per game are below 2.5 and declining.  I love the strategy of defense, pitching around heavy hitters, but is it rally good for the game?

You can’t use ABs for this analysis because of walks increase.  Try using PAs per game.  Also, Williams hit .400 in 1941.

Thanks, All Star,
I’d love to use PA ‘cuse I think BA is so bogus.  I’ve gone through the baseball data bank for my own use and set the defaults on batting statistics from NULL to zero and have better comparisons, IMHO.  NULLs, say in sacrifice categories, exclude all the players statistics if included in a MySQL query.  Sacks count as a plate appearance but not an At Bat.  In the early years, say 1941 and prior, there were less sacrifices, but surprisingly there are a few.  At least one post season stat, is it Home Runs? defaulted to zero.  Should the rest be NULLed? 
What is the opinion of the Think Factors?  Does the current walk-the-hitter strategy contribute to better baseball?  Hall of Fame begs some kinds of comparisons.  I think that SABRmatricians and BBTFers are up to it.
Cactus

So Gould was right, and Gould was wrong.  Yes, a law of nature.  Variability decreases with the number of observations for most things like baseball.  No! More baseball is not necessarily better baseball, unless I have tickets to the game!  Stay tuned for a comparison of Ted Williams’ 19FORTY-ONE accomplishment compared to players’ on the basis of Z-scores!