Though it’s quite brief, I have to believe that Jeff Sullivan’s post on the correlation between pitcher contact rates and strikeouts from this past August has got to be one of the most exciting of the year. It makes so much sense — miss bats, get strikeouts — and yet Mr. Sullivan appears to be the only one on the interweb (besides our own Matthew Carruth) asking substantive questions about it*.

*If there are others, please don’t hesitate to mention them below.

You can see the correlation between the two in this image I’ve stolen directly, unforgivably from Lookout Landing:

That’s pretty striking. And it begs a question: If the correlation between Contact% and pitcher strikeouts is so strong, then couldn’t Contact% help us understand which pitchers might be poised to top the strikeout charts next year?

Yes. With some caveats.

In that same post to which I’ve linked above, Sullivan also notes that, beyond Contact% (league average 80.5%), pitchers also control their strikeout rates by other means, such as First-Pitch Strike% (league average 58.2%), Zone% (league average 49.3%), Called Strike%, etc. While none of these factors correlate as strongly as Contact% to pitcher strikeout rates, it does appear as though they’re not entirely negligible, either. To that end, I’ve included the first two of those below for comparison’s sake.

What happens when we run the 2009 numbers for Expected K%s (xK%)? That’s the question I asked myself — and which I answered, I think, by means of the kinda dumpy looking table you see below. Here are the Top 10 starting pitchers (50+ IP) by Contact% with expected and actual strikeout rates, plus K/9:

So, what do we see here? Some likely suspects, for sure: Harden, Lincecum, Vazquez, de la Rosa. But also some surprises: Felipe Paulino (second!), Gio Gonzalez (third!), and Bud Norris. The first two of those guys I wrote about last week as tRA* surprises. Bud Norris I didn’t mention, but he actually finished 66th in tRA* out of the 183 pitchers with 150+ xOuts.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, we should probably be careful about that, as more research needs to be done in this area. Still, it’s probably reasonable — given his xK% and overall profile — to expect at least a small improvement in strikeouts from Felipe Paulino. Moreover, there’s reason to think — given his excellent Zone% — to think that Bud Norris will probably turn some of his walks into strikeouts.

How well do you think Norris will perform in 2010? Enter your Fan Projection here.

In my most recent dispatch, I — once I got past the crap — I looked at a couple of pitchers in Gio Gonzalez and Felipe Paulino whose Regressed tRAs (see: tRA*, courtesy of Matthew Carruth’s and Graham MacAree’s StatCorner) suggest a level of skill considerably beyond what their 2009 numbers might otherwise indicate.

Here are three more tRA* surprises from the 183 starting pitchers who recorded at least 150 xOuts (xFIP and xFIP rank — also out of 183 — in parentheses):

55. Garrett Mock, 4.55 (4.25/62)
In 54 career major league appearances, Mock has only 18 starts. Fifteen of them came last season in a total of 28 appearances. Here’s something strange about Mock: Despite being jerked around between levels and roles, he’s actually posted great peripherals these past two years. In addition to the strong 2009, he posted a 4.77/3.90 (tRA*/xFIP) in 2008 and, in 155.2 combined minor league IP over the last two seasons, has 144 K, 38 BB, a ground-ball rate around 45% and a line-drive rate below 20%.

Nor was this a case of being exposed as a starter, either: Mock posted a 18.4% K-rate and 10% BB-rate as a starter versus only rates of 9.5% and 12.7%, respectively, as a reliever (albeit in only 63 opponent PAs).

In this case, the culprit appears to be BABIP, which checks in at a robust .347 over his first 132.1 MLB IP. That might be bad luck. It might be that Mock’s BABIP-prone (although that’d still be high). Also, it could just be what happens when you play for the Washington Natinals Nationals. However it is, Mock’s 3-10, 5.62 season probably isn’t representative of his talents.

58. Billy Buckner, 4.58 (3.77/29)
Who the what?! In the event that you’re not acquainted with Buckner — which, I don’t entirely blame you — here’s a brief summary: He was drafted by the Royals out of the University of South Carolina in 2004. He made his debut with said depressing franchise in August of 2007. In December of that same year, he was traded to Arizona for Alberto Callaspo. Overall, he’s had a few decent minor league seasons, posting a K per IP every now and then, but nothing very promising.

Last year, however, Buckner showed signs of life, producing his best-ever minor league FIP, a 3.31 mark, on the strength of an 8.39 K/9 and 3.93 BB/9 in 103 IP (13/16 GS/G). Moreover, his major league returns, distributed predominately over two month-long call-ups (5/22 – 6/26 and 9/3-10/2), were excellent: 77.1 IP, 64 K, 29 BB, 48.8% GB, 21.3% LD. The line drives are a touch high, maybe, but not dangerously so. And like Mock, he excelled as a starter, recording a 19.1% K-rate and 7.8% BB-rate over 320 opponent plate appearances.

His 4-6 record and 6.40 ERA are unlikely to get him any attention, but a 63.% LOB-rate, 16.7% HR/FB, and .347 BABIP all suggest that Buckner is better than that.

63. Mitchell Boggs, 4.61 (4.67/121)
Boggs is a little bit different than the two other guys here, because he actually benefited from some good luck last year. His HR/FB came in at a friendly 5.7%, his ERA was a perfectly reasonable 4.19, and he did it all with an underwhelming 46/33 K/BB situation going on. Of course, those numbers are mitigated largely by his ugly .366 opponent BABIP. Anyway, whatever his apparent success, though, you’d be hard-pressed to say he was highly regarded — a fact to which his multiple demotions can attest. Nor did St. Louis ever really find a specific role for him, as his 9/16 (GS/G) split suggests.

What we can say about Boggs is that, given his peripherals from last season, there appears to be a chance of him becoming a useful starter in the Cardinal mold. His starting and relieving K/BB were almost identical (1.40 v. 1.38), as were his GB%s (both right around his season mark of 52.7%). If that doesn’t necessarily correspond with your impression of Boggs over the season, here’s why, probably: His opponent BABIP was .389 when he started versus only .292 when he relieved.

Ideally for Boggs, he’ll continue to develop in the direction of his last four starts, over which period he posted a 58.0% GB-rate and 12.3% BB-rate. Which is to say, he’s not Joel Pineiro yet (60.5% and 3.1% in those cats, respectively). But then again, before last year, not even Joel Pineiro was Joel Pineiro.

How well do you think Mock, Buckner, and Boggs will perform in 2010? Enter your Fan Projection here.

It may or may not interest the reader to know that I’m writing these words from Aix-en-Provence. Yes, in France. No, I’m not joking. Yes, c’est totally vrai.

As to why I’m here, I can’t say exactly, on account of how unimaginably low down on the Down Low it is, but I can tell you this: My wife lives here. Is she a spy, sent here by the US government to learn more about stinky cheese and arrogance? Obviously, I’m not at liberty to answer that sort of question.

But one more thing I can tell you is this: While milady speaks the native language fluently, my own French — to put it lightly, and probably also wrongly — is pas bien. As a result, I don’t do a lot of the old “talking” here. Mostly I spend my time indoors, imbibing all manner of fermented beverage, and pruning my awesome fantasy basketball team so’s to make it even awesomer. (Actually, I should add: I also try to read L’equipe, a real-live sporting daily that, despite being a little light on quantitative analysis, appears to be a legitimately awesome paper.)

So, like I say, I don’t parle the Francais real great. Still, one thing I know for sure how to say — perhaps the first phrase I ever learned — is Je deteste voyager en hiver. For those of you following along at home, that means (en anglais), “I hate to travel in winter.” I don’t know why or how I learned such a thing, but I’m glad I did, on account of I actually do hate traveling in winter. And not just that, but there are like thirty other things I hate to do in winter — things like going outdoors and paying the gas bill and also just being awake. Cold = my worst nightmare.

As much as that might be the case, I’m quite sure the reader didn’t come here to get bummed the frig out by Carson Cistulli. Which, that’s why I’m proud to announce that there are also a number of winter activities I enjoy — activities like drinking hot toddies and drinking mulled wine and drinking hot cider.

Oh, and also sorting statistical leaderboards like a mother.

One such leaderboard to which I’m particularly looking forward is the wRC+ one. When FanGraphs Overlord David Appelman adds it to these electronic pages, I can tell you right now that I’m gonna sort the crap out of it.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. What I’m here to talk about is how today I was sorting through the tRA* leaderboard — that is, regressed tRA — over at our own Matthew Carruth’s StatCorner.

If you sort tRA* for the starting pitchers who recorded at least 150 xOuts — that is, expected outs based on the tRA outcomes — you get a lot of the usual suspects. For example, here are the top 10 finishers in tRA*, compiled in an embarrassingly sophisticated table (with tRA, so you can see the difference):

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Today, we look at some young pitchers who made highly anticipated debuts last season but have as yet to eclipse the 30 ballot threshold in our Fan Projections: Neftali Feliz, Rick Porcello, and Chris Tillman.

Feliz pitched exclusively in relief for Texas after an early-August promotion, blowing away hitters with a 95.8 mph fastball.

Porcello is a ground-ball monster who’ll reach drinking age just in time for New Year’s.

Tillman came to Baltimore as part of the Bedard trade. He breezed through the minors but had a little bit more trouble in his major league debut.

My wife believes that I’m wrong almost all the time. I, being a man, have a very different view of the matter. Which one of us holds the more reasonable opinion? you might wonder. I can’t say for sure. I will add this, however: if it’s reason we’re talking about, consider: of the two of us, only my wife uses a product called “enzyme scrub.”

QED? I’d say so.

However it is between milady and I, I was most assuredly wrong last week when I wondered aloud whether the Observer Effect might influence the Fan Projections here at FanGraphs. Or rather, I wasn’t wrong to wonder it aloud — that seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The wrong thing, it seems, is the analogy I constructed. For the Observer Effect truly to be in play, it would be the numbers themselves that would change (and not the opinions of the people predicting them) by being readily available to the public.

My B, is what I have to say about that.

Still, my mis-step had its own rewards, as the commentariat suggested a number of legitimately interesting alternatives to the Observer Effect. Alternatives including: subject-expectancy effect, volunteer/participation bias, and something called anchoring.

The result for me — and, I hope, for the reader — was a pleasant and shockingly educational one. One that also made me consider the role of sportswriting — to consider, in particular, what it means to be wrong.

British author John Carlin suggests that the purview of the sporting journalist, first and foremost, is to frame the sporting conversation for the public. He writes in White Angels, a chronicle of Real Madrid’s Galactico era:

You need people to lead the conversations, to stoke up the debates. If only to have someone to disagree with. Because for the fan football is more about talking than anything else.

Football fans only spend a small part of their lives actually watching games: they spend far, far more time talking about football, a game whose greatest value to humanity, perhaps, is that it does us the immense service of giving us a limitlessly fertile subject of conversation, giving us an activity which is entertaining, inspiring, and — even –fraternally binding. Football allows people to reach out to one another like maybe nothing else can.

Carlin’s point is relevant to our honored pastime, as well. For even though baseball reaches many fewer people than does soccer, it’s not an unsubstantial number. And it’s a number that includes mostly Americans. And Americans are rich!

At its heart, Carlin’s point has merit: the sportswriter’s job is to define the topics which are to be discussed around the proverbial water cooler and, simultaneously, to define the terms in which they ought to be discussed. Having been a reader of sporting journalism for approximately as long as I’ve been able to read — so, at least since age 16 — I’m most thankful for those voices who are able to begin interesting conversations. If not for that, I would have almost zero to talk about with any man I met…ever. I mean, what would we discuss otherwise? Our feelings?! Ick.

But I would also caution against using it (i.e. the capacity to start the conversation) as the only criteria by which we adjudge the quality of our sportswriting. Skip Bayless, Bill Plaschke, Mike Frigging Lupica: they all start conversations. Trite, muckraking, even sometimes intellectually dangerous conversations. They’re the literary equivalent of Adam Sandler’s final answer in the quiz bowl scene of Billy Madison — to which answer the principal/host responds: “At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it.”

Frequently, the reaction from the reasonable person to this manner of screed is some combination of rage and/or snark and/or, in extreme cases, a heaving bosom. None of these is healthy (or pleasant for the innocent bystander). And yet, as Carlin would suggest — as, in fact, some American sportswriters have actually suggested — so long as the journalist has gotten a reaction from the readership, then he’s done his job. Some might even go so far as to say that, to the degree that the reader is affected, positively or negatively, then that’s how well the sportswriter has performed it.

I submit that we, the readership, do not want to be enraged by inane sportswriters — that it’s merely the only reasonable reaction we can have. Nor should our anger be regarded as a sign of effective journalism. Why do we return again and again? Because we like sport, is why. And because we’re hopeful that once in a while, our writers will tell us something.

I submit a second thing, too: that it’s okay to be wrong. Or, it’s okay so long as it’s done in a spirit of inquiry and not in the service of blustery self-importance. The question should be asked: Does the author regard his work as hypothesis or conclusion? Is the author writing to promote curiosity or kill it? Does the author have Prince Albert in a can? (Note: this last question isn’t entirely relevant but still very important.)

Of course, life isn’t always flowers and piece of cake. As Charles Simic writes (and Deborah Tannen echos in “For Argument’s Sake”): “There are moments in life when true invective is called for, when it becomes an absolute necessity, out of a deep sense of justice, to denounce, mock, vituperate, lash out, in the strongest possible language.” Certainly, Our Father Who Art in Boston (read: Bill James), for whatever his other shortcomings, was not a stranger to this mode of expression during the early days of our science. (I remember an Abstract article, I think it was, that begins with the bold pronouncement: “It’s time for the amateurs to clear the floor.” That’s, like, T.I.-level invective.) Certainly, censure is sometimes necessary.

To summarize: The sporting journalist should attempt to make his work interesting. He should view his work as an attempt to start a conversation. He should respect the intelligence of his readers. He should realize that, in many cases, certain of his readers will have knowledge that he does not. He should prepare himself to be corrected once in a while.

Mind you, I could be wrong about that.

Today, we cast our gaze at three young outfielders who each made their debut last year: Julio Borbon, Michael Brantley, and Drew Stubbs. Vote early and often!

As for last Friday’s targets (total ballots in parentheses), we have Aaron Harang (172) pitching about 20 more innings in 2010 and netting about another half a win in value; Scott Feldman (154) conceding more than 50 points of opponent batting average over last year’s total and losing a win over replacement in the process; and John Lannan (159) using smoke, mirrors, and an 88 mph fastball to post a 2.3 WAR.

In high school, I — like many — was taught that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle refers to changes that the act of observing can have on the phenomenon being observed. So, for example, if I (for some unknown reason) were attempting to observe a particle and was using some sort of device that would bounce a photon off of said particle, I would inevitably change the particle’s position or momentum. Thus, in attempting to measure it, I would’ve have actually changed it. To measure it au naturale would, in this incredibly hypothetical scenario, be impossible.

Despite the fact that my high school was impossibly prestigious and reputable, it turns out my teacher only had it sorta right. The actual definition of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (per Wikipedia, which is always right) is that “certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.”

What my physics teacher was describing is actually known as the Observer Effect. And while (again, per Wikipedia) the two are related — Heisenberg was integral in defining the Observer Effect, too — it’s usually the Observer Effect that people are meaning when they say Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

And it was the possible influence of the Observer Effect that I considered when FanGraphs Overlord David Appelman announced the arrival of Fan Projections this past weekend.

As as been noted in these electronic pages — most recently by Dave Cameron — the idea of Fan Projections/Community Forecasting relies on the Wisdom of the Crowd, a concept ably explored by James Surowiecki in a book of the same name. That book begins with an anecdote about Statistical Wunderkind and Pretty Racist Francis Galton. The story (dramatized by Radio Lab here) goes like this: Galton visits a country fair. At the fair, he comes across a weight-judging competition, where fair-goers are encouraged to guess the weight of an ox. No one guesses the weight of the ox exactly, but Galton, gaining permission from the organizers to do so, collects all 787 entries and finds that the “average” guess comes out to 1,197 pounds. The actual weight of the ox? 1,198 pounds — i.e. closer than every single one of the entries.

That’s an exciting discovery. But the difference between Galton’s experiment and the one we’re conducting here is that the Crowd (read: you and you and you) can see the results in real time. If each of the fair-goers from the Galton anecdote had been able to see the guesses that had preceded their own, would that have affected the results? If you and you and you can see Derek Jeter’s current projection before making your own, how will that affect your own assessment of Jeter?

In other words: Will the Observer Effect come into play here?

The answer is: I don’t know. Of course, there’s a big emphasis on the “I” there. Here are some subjects in which I have little in the way of expertise: physics, statistics, personal hygiene. (The last of these, I recognize, isn’t wholly relevant to the present conversation; still, it’s the truth.) But you know who might know? People who are smarter than me. People like Tom Tango and Dave Cameron. So I asked them. Below are their respective responses.

Here’s Tom Tango:

No, I don’t think there will be a bias caused by seeing other fans’ forecasts. You will note that David shows the selections a bit differently from the standard line. Furthermore, fans are notoriously stubborn.

Having said that, it’s a simple matter to look at the forecasts early on and later on and seeing if the standard deviations of the selections are tighter the later the selections. I’d be shocked if you find anything.

Personally, I’d be shocked if I found anything, too — but only because that would mean that I’d checked.

And now Dave Cameron:

I think it’ a legitimate issue, but David has designed the inputs in such a way that limit the opportunity to just repeat what has already been done. Since most of the rate stats are calculations based on the raw inputs, the fans aren’t going in and just projecting players for the .360 wOBA that everyone else already concluded was likely. Instead, they are projecting the components, which are less likely to be observed. I know that I can tell you what the wOBA/WAR projections are currently at for a few players, but I have no idea how many doubles and triples anyone is projected to hit.

I think that will mitigate some of the problems the observer effect raises. We can’t eliminate it, of course, but it shouldn’t be a big enough problem to ruin the projections.

So the consensus here seems to be that no, mostly likely the Observer Effect will not influence (or noticeably influence) the Fan Projections. Consensus is different than fact, of course, but it’s good enough for now.

If you’re like me, you find no greater comfort than to bury yourself in the warm embrace of sweeping generalizations. That, and you haven’t showered in about a week.

And while the readership is undoubtedly curious about my bathing habits, in the interest of time, I’d like to confine the present discussion to an exploration of the former: sweeping generalizations.

Specifically, in this post, I’d like to look at the opportunity that the Fan Projections has given us to make some barely supported claims about the FG readership.

Of course, any and all demographic information is already available to FanGraphs Overlord David Appelman. Like Dr. Claw of the Inspector Gadget cartoon series, Appelman runs the crime syndicate known as FANgraphs from an overstuffed swivel chair in his rainswept castle, surveying our every waking moment on a surprisingly advanced Tandy computer.

But as you can probably guess, we lowly contributors are not allowed to talk to Appelman or look at him directly or learn his true identity — and we’re certainly not privvy to his secret databases.

Which is why these Projections are a great opportunity for those who, like me, are curious about the kind of people who point their internet browsers this way. In the interest of discovering just that, I made periodic records yesterday of which players were the most frequent targets of our new Fan Projections.

Below is a list of the players with the times at which they crossed the 30-ballot threshold. In each case, I’ve added a brief, and wildly speculative guess as to why this or that player might be popular amongst the readership.

Monday, November 30, 11:40 am PST
Hitters: Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki
Pitchers: CC Sabathia

Before Mr. Appelman raised the minimum ballots-per-projection from 10 to 30, this list was longer, but for the purposes of the present work, it’s fine. Pujols is fun to project because he’s crazy good. I’m guessing that the readership just enjoys entering all those video game-sized numbers next to Pujols’s name. Ichiro, besides being Ichiro!, is a player who gives projection systems fits. It’ll be interesting to see how the Fans do here. Sabathia is our first pitcher, because he hails from a large and interested market (read: New York) and because he’s probably an odds-on favorite to lead the AL (if not the majors) in wins.

Monday, November 30, 12:50 pm PST
Hitters: Dustin Pedroia and Franklin Gutierrez
Pitchers: NONE

Gutierrez is obviously a FanGraphs favorite based on his outstanding defensive production. Pedroia, besides hailing from another large and interested market (read: Boston) also possesses a little bit of that Ichiro mystique, I think. No, he’s not a hero in Japan, but he does have a profile (small frame, swings from the heels, excellent contact rate) that resists easy categorization.

Monday, November 30, 2:10 pm PST
Hitters: Derek Jeter
Pitchers: NONE

Jeter is a potentally polarizing figure, and certainly one upon whom fans are eager to weigh in. As of 12:35 pm PST today, he’s got a Fan-Projected UZR of -1.5. It’s interesting to note that, at this point, Sabathia had a full 75 ballots cast for him even as no other pitcher topped 30.

Monday, November 30, 4:10 pm PST
Hitters: David Wright, Adrian Beltre, Jose Lopez.
Pitchers: NONE

Seattle-ites again. Beltre is interesting, like Gutierrez, because of the influence of defensive play on his overall value. Lopez? Hmmm. Maybe Dave Cameron is stuffing the ballot box.

Monday, November 30, 4:55 pm PST
Hitters: Russell Branyan, Jeff Francoeur
Pitchers: Felix Hernandez

King Felix became the second pitcher with 30+ ballots, again — along with Branyan’s inclusion — suggesting that Seattle is representing real hard around here. Francoeur is like the anti-Gutierrez for the average FG reader: where Guti’s contributions are easily overlooked, Francoeur plays well in traditional stats like AVG and HR while displaying almost nothing in the way of plate discipline. (As of 12:40 pm PST today, Gutierrez has a 4.8 WAR versus Francoeur’s 0.4.)

Monday, November 30, 7:30 pm PST
Hitters: Joe Mauer, Mark Teixeira, Ken Griffey Jr., Jack Wilson
Pitchers: NONE

Joe Mauer is sorta like a mini-Pujols in terms of production. Teixeira is a New Yorker. Griffey and Wilson are two more Seattle-ers.

Monday, November 30, 9:10 pm PST
Hitters: Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano
Pitchers: NONE

New York fans (again!).

Tuesday, December 1, 9:30 am PST
Hitters: Kevin Youkilis, Chase Utley, Carlos Beltran, Ryan Howard, Evan Longoria, Ben Zobrist, Nick Swisher, B.J. Upton, David Ortiz, Jay Bruce, Jacoby Ellsbury, Chone Figgins
Pitchers: Tim Lincecum, Zack Greinke, Ricky Nolasco, Edwin Jackson

So, you’ll notice that there’s 12 hours between this and the last check-in. A man’s got to sleep, alright. Anyway, here we get some Bostonians (Youk, Ells, Ortiz), some New Yorkers (Beltran, Swish), and a couple of World Series-ers (Utley, Howard). Longoria, Zobrist, Upton, and even probably Edwin Jackson appear as part of the R.J. Anderson Effect. That, and the fact that the Rays, as an organization, are a case study for Doing Things the Right Way. Figgins is little guy with a high walk total: Will he sustain that? Lincecum and Greinke are your Cy Young winners and interesting for that reason. Jay Bruce and Ricky Nolasco (and Jackson, too) are Appelman’s “Target Players” for the day (supporting the fact that Appelman will be obeyed).

Tuesday, December 1, 12:15 am PST
Hitters: Matt Wieters, Jimmy Rollins, Michael Saunders
Pitchers: Jon Lester

We have an Oriole, folks! Of course, it’s not just an Oriole: it’s Matt Wieters! Rollins is a third World Series-er. Saunders is your ninth Mariner.

Baseball projection season is in full-ish swing, as part or all of the Bill James (available here already), CHONE, and ZiPS projections for the 2010 season are available to the public.

The man in charge of the latter-est of those, Dan Szymborski, was kind enough to sit down (electronically, at least) and answer some tough questions.

Why do we find projections so compelling? Which projections have particularly surprised Szymborski? When is it okay to drink on a boat? All of those questions are answered in what follows.

Szymborski consented to be interviewed Sunday by means of EtherPad, a program that allows multiple users to create and edit a document. Hence, the “etherview” — the phenomenon that no one anywhere describes as “the single most important contribution to news media this year.”

Carson: Dan, I want to make some sweeping generalizations about you, but I’m having trouble. Like, you’re from Baltimore, I know. But the only thing I really know about Baltimore I learned from John Waters movies. Is that what your life is like?

Dan: Not the Wire?

Carson: No. But a smart friend recently chastised me for not having watched it. It seems, uh, gritty. Is your life gritty?

Dan: I’m not sure that I would describe it as gritty. In the context of the Wire, my life bears little resemblance to high-end drug dealing. The hardest thing about Baltimore is learning how to properly eat steamed crabs. You figure out how to eat a crab and which segregated mass transit portion to ride and you’re pretty much set as a Baltimoron.

Carson: Okay, I know two other things about you. One: you’re a Malamud on your mother’s side. Two: you play classical piano.

Two questions. One: Any relation to Bernard Malamud (author of The Natural, among other things)? Two: You ever bang out any Erik Satie?

Dan: Malamud was my mother’s father’s first cousin. They lived down the street from each other but didn’t really talk much after they went to their respective colleges. He was also my grandfather’s second cousin, due to a part of the family tree being unfortunately close to another branch.

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Note: While the following isn’t technically a book, it’s very close to book-length. This was unintentional. On the plus side, Ken Arneson knows how to rock the mic right.

Readers will remember Ken Arneson both/either from the etherview that appeared in these electronic pages a couple months ago and/or the world-beating interweb sites — Humbug Journal and Catfish Stew — of which he was the world-beating author.

I wanted to address at least two issues with Herr Arneson (if not more). For one, I suspected that the invocation of “procedural memory” in my most recent post here was (a) ill-advised and (b) wildly inaccurate. I trusted that Arneson would right this egregious wrong. For two, I wanted Arneson to flesh out the comment he’d made on another post in which I suggest that Jered Weaver serves as an object lesson for the idea of flow, on account of how successful he is with such little velocity. He appears to be “trying easier,” I claim.

Ken Arneson responded in the comments section:

The “try easier” issue is just another example of the differences in the declarative/procedural memory types.

Muscle memory is procedural memory. That means it’s an automatic, subconscious process. If you try to induce conscious control over those types of memories, you’re rerouting the process through the wrong memory system, and you’ll likely mess the process up.

The conscious part of the process has to come in advance, in tricking the procedural memory system to automatically do what you want it to do when the time comes.

That’s why there’s no such thing as clutch, but there is such a thing as choking. You can’t make an automatic process any better, but you can avoid “thinking too much”, ie sabotaging the automatic responses with improper routing.

Arneson consented to be interviewed Wednesday by means of EtherPad, a program that allows multiple users to create and edit a document. Hence, the “etherview.”

Ken: Hej.

Carson: Really? Are there any “hej is for horses” jokes in Sweden?

Ken: Haven’t heard one, but there’s a bunch of good Swenglish jokes here (NSFW).

Carson: You had me at “Swenglish.”

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