It is officially spring today with the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere although baseball enthusiasts celebrate spring the day their teams report to Spring Training. Hope springs eternal, and Washington Nationals fans will hope that this year will exceed expectations. Projections rarely meet reality for sports teams on their final record. In the end, you find some players exceeded their expectations while others fell short. There are a myriad of factors during a long season that affect the results, and yes, there is an element of luck, and health, and you take the good with the bad. It is part of the ups and downs during a baseball season which is a 6 month marathon that ends days after the autumnal equinox. Baseball spreads over all seasons as Spring Training technically begins during the winter.
This is why they say you don’t play sports on paper. But in the off-season, you scout using your senses sending that information to your brain, and in modern baseball you cross-check the scouting with analytics. Nothing is a perfect science when it does not work out or on the other side some players exceed the expectations. Most player acquisitions are judged in hindsight — the way most critics judge with clarity as if they knew the whole time. Foresight is what the best managers have, but it’s not foolproof. Along with what does not show up on the stats sheet are the intangibles of the game. Continue reading
