Anchored in Spring

We can rationally tell ourselves that small sample sizes have to be taken with caution (and they do), but no matter how much we believe that to be true, they will still affect us. It’s a byproduct of a psychological bias known as anchoring and for the most part it’s extremely difficult to avoid falling victim to. The aspect of anchoring (or focalism as it’s also known) that we must be aware of for baseball purposes is sometimes referred to as the adjustment problem. In a nutshell, the adjustment problem is when you are asked to make a value judgment on something. Almost without fail, your brain will go back to some previously heard value and adjust from there. Basically, it’s letting an extremely (and sometimes completely irrelevant) small sample hold a sway over your perception and it’s tough to avoid.

What I am specifically getting at is performances in April and how they influence opinions of players for the rest of the year. A hot start in April establishes a baselines of performance at a high level and probably gets mentioned a lot in the media. From that point forward, no matter how well that player performs, unless you are intimately familiar with the player’s performance, your first instinct is to go back to those numbers you were hearing about in April and adjust from there. This is similarly true for cold starts. All that’s needed is for the performance to be extreme enough to get mentioned and for you to not pay that much attention to the player at other times. Need a few examples?

These aren’t going to apply for everyone, we don’t all have the same strength of bias and like I mentioned above, if you happen to follow a player day to day whether because he’s on your favorite team or rival team or fantasy team or whatever then you will not be as susceptible to the adjustment because your brain has many more data points stored away. The key is not having heard or seen a player’s stat line for awhile. For American League fans, quick, how has Miguel Tejada and Carlos Delgado’s season gone? Think of their line in your head right now. Now go click on those links and see how you did?

Most of you, if you qualify above, would have over-estimated Miguel Tejada’s line and under-estimated Carlos Delgado’s. Tejada got off to a fast start in Houston and made some news as they flirted with contention and since Tejada had come over via trade and posted a near 1.000 OPS in April. But since May 4th, Tejada has posted just a .263/.295/.367 line. Delgado has been the opposite. He sat at a meager .532 OPS on April 27th and was subject to some stories about how the hope for a bounce back from his previous year’s struggles were not to be. All Delgado has done since then is hit .274/.360/.542 and he’s now up to a .840 OPS on the year and making a case for his option to be picked up by the Mets.

A last one, this time for the National League folks. How’s Jacoby Ellsbury doing? He was in the news a lot this spring for his fast start to the year paired with the Red Sox defending title and his memorable October. Through Ellsbury’s first 28 games this season he had an .857 OPS and an impressive 17 walks to just nine strikeouts. But since then, Ellsbury is hitting just .258/.304/.347 with 66 strikeouts to just 22 walks and his season OPS is now under .700.

Beware those early numbers.