Complexity & the "Luck" of Winning It All

There is a certain amount of luck involved in regular season play with avoiding injuries, prospects panning out, veterans having one more good year, so on, and so forth. Luck isn’t as much a part of a 162-game schedule as it is for a best of 5 or best of 7 postseason series. The 162-game schedule is a much larger sample size than a short series.

Don Denkinger’s call in game 6 of the 1985 World Series hurt the Cardinals’ chances of winning. Though, not everything came be blamed on that Denkinger call for the Cards’ downfall. Errors from normally dependable defensive players can hurt a team like Garry Maddox’s error in the 1978 NLCS that led to the Dodgers winning the pennant over Philly. Jose Lind of the Pirates made a critical error in the ninth inning of game 7 of the 1992 NLCS that ultimately helped the Braves to the World Series.

Thanks for your comments!
My post focused on how difficult it is to operationally define this entity called “luck”. That is why I default to Branch Rickey’s definition, which emphasizes that people are largely responsible for placing themselves in a position or conditions to “be lucky”.
The design element speaks to control by training, conditioning, skilled management decisions, etc.

Really nice post….I’ve been coming to this site since last April so I have never seen it Bradley-free. I think the banter is ok, when it stays civil, it makes me laugh. It has really given me a sense of both sides of the coin and has made me more open-minded. BCB has educated me alot about baseball too, and I love baseball. I can understand tho why you might feel it needs to be more upbeat and I hope you feel better soon. I also think that Luck is in the eye of the beholder. I saw the Cubs as being real lucky in 08…in 09 not so much. But yet with all the injuries etc. they only won 14 games less, was that luck? Anyway, hope to read more of your posts.

I pity the people who represent themselves as BCB Cub Fans by behaving as if they are more like a “Pack of Hyenas”, tearing and ripping each other apart during this recent carnage of off-season verbal attacks.

You don’t spend much time in the game threads, do you?

rec’d.

Feel better soon.

Rec’d.

applause

there were meant to be astericks around the word “applause”

Putting together a championship team is a product of three things. In order from most relevant to least relevant, they are:
1. Luck
2. Amount of money owner is willing to spend
3. Skill of those in the front office.

You, sir, seem to have your feet planted firmly on the ground among all of us weirdos who fret and obsess about the Cubs. You’re the anti-BLou (whom, by the way, I have nothing against and usually agree with) inasmuch as you just want to enjoy your faith and hope rather than wallow in the muck of discouraging facts. BLou (and I) may be real realists but so what? It’s baseball — let’s enjoy ourselves!

and it was the first Spring training that my younger (adult) daughter attended with me. We were optimistic to rebound from the awful nosedive in the last few weeks of ’06!

As I tried to convey in my post, “Luck” is a most difficult and complex entity to operationally define.

I work as a behavioral psychologist, and use principles and laws of human behavior and learning to help define and analyze complex “terms” and phenomenon into simpler more directly objective measurable units of behavior/environment relations in order to determine how a complex, unknown entity operates.

Your description of “luck” is interesting and certainly worth further scientific investigation. However, it is something that can be labeled "an explanatory fiction," because the term being defined can just as easily be explained by reversing the description of the term without ever getting to any satisfactory account of the variables that truly account for how and why “luck” operates:

Try this – ‘pressuring the other team and forcing mistakes they typically wouldn’t make are the byproduct called "luck."

It makes for a kind of circular reasoning which never gets to explaining what is really operating and why. The first term being defined “begs the question” of a satisfactory explanation and vice versa.

What is worthwhile in your account is an investigation of the variables that “pressure” the other team into atypical "mistakes."

Much of our education system and parenting unfortunately teaches us that “mistakes” and “errors” are "bad," “shameful” bits of behavior, and should either be punished, or avoided at all costs.

There is an alternative more useful and positive scientific approach to learning that views and treats “errors” as a natural part of learning, and even describes errors as "learning opportunities." These initially high rates of learning opportunities eventually are no longer “selected” when the learner continues to practice daily at high rates of “correct” learning performance.

Ryne Sandberg, despite the many accolades and descriptions of being a "natural," in terms of his stellar fielding play, was not born so. He worked hard and long hours fielding a ton and variety of practice balls hit to him in order to “learn” from his errors, and perfect his “automatic/fluent” All Star caliber of defensive play. All of the “greats” have followed the same learning path: Michael Jordan, Ray Charles, Leonard Bernstein, and Ella Fitzgerald…

The MLB teams that consistently make the playoffs or are always in contention, have instructional systems in place that are sound, and historically proven successful at teaching the fundamental skills to every player in their system at each level the same way in order to arrive at “quality” MLB level players who are fluent with the fundamental skills. These players and systems teach and learn through frequent repetition, and errors, until the player performs the basics “automatically” – as if they are not even thinking about what they are doing!

This is where the naive sportswriters come in with their labels of “the kid’s a natural”; he was “born to play baseball”!

Students who do not learn basic simple math facts will struggle later in school with more complex forms of math, especially algebra and calculus. The same is true with music, reading, bricklaying, cooking, and swimming. When mastery of fundamental skills is not achieved, complex forms of learning are difficult, if not impossible to acquire at fluent levels.

Most Cubs teams and their instructional “systems” that I witnessed in my lifetime have been poor to absent. This is a huge factor as to why they have had their long drought, while newbie franchises have accomplished what the Cubs have long desired. It NEVER had anything to do with “luck” as is commonly defined.

That is why Branch Rickey’s definition makes the most sense to me from a scientific learning point of view. In other words, he was saying that there is no such thing as “luck”; intelligent systematic “design” and consistent dedicated implementation is the “residue” that he referred to in his definition.

For me, “luck” is merely "happenstance," an atypical event or occurrence that can be accounted for by “just being in the right place, at the right time.” It’s like winning a lotto – the odds of winning are astronomically against you, but one person may “get lucky” and win!

George Castle does a tremendous job in going through statistical probabilities analysis of how many times the Cubs should have made the playoffs and won at least one or more World Series since 1945. Their absence and drought have nothing to do with curses or luck – just consistently bad, inept management.

Of course, management creates these “systems” or does not, and the proof is in the pudding! You are probably too young to have lived through the College of Coaches “system” that P.K. Wrigley experimented with in the early ’60s.

During that fiasco, Cub fans should be grateful that sportswriters of that era did not dub them “laughable losers” instead of “lovable”! There was nothing lovable for me about the Cubs inept management and very absent effective systematic approach to operating a MLB team!

Successful MLB teams win consistently, because they know how to frequently “grow” their own players at a variety of positions. That’s why the minor league “systems” were called “farm” teams; and I believe, first started by Branch Rickey!

Growing your own talent on the farm was too simplistic for the Cubs and P.K.W. – he preferred a more sophisticated “College of Coaches” to rotate every two weeks through his Major League and Minor League teams; trying to teach higher order more complex skills, despite the fact that many players were devoid of most fundamental skills at mastery levels!

It was like asking a novice piano student to immediately sit down and fluently play Mozart concertos!

Well maybe their “luck” has just changed with new management many people will say. I say, “Good Luck” with believing that, because the Ricketts will win it all when they reverse the “cursedly” bad management and organizational practices of the past ownership since William Wrigley, Jr.!

“Someday…”