For the most part, fans don’t want to admit how much luck – or good fortune if the word luck annoys you – plays in the game. My opinion is that players and front offices have a better understanding of that. Here’s a snippet of an interview with Taylor Tankersley, a veteran reliever that the Mets signed as LOOGY depth over a decade ago:
Your last 8 games you got hit pretty hard (.412/.450/.1.059) including 3 HR to your last 20 BF. What happened in this stretch?
Fractions of an inch. If you were to go back and look at video of those splits that you spoke of, I can remember getting Adrian Gonzalez out twice in Dolphins Stadium and combined he hit the ball about 750 feet and both got caught on the warning track in center field. I got Josh Hamilton out; he hit a screaming line drive right at the left fielder. Things like that, the ball was bouncing my way, I had good fortune. The last half of my big league outings last year the ball was falling in the gap or sinking over the fence. On paper it looked like a dramatic difference but there really wasn’t.
There are things that are the results of luck that you hope balance out over the course of a season. That ball that’s hit in the Bermuda Triangle that falls for a hit that’s just out of reach for the second baseman, the shortstop and the center fielder. That 115-mph line drive hit right at the third baseman for an out. That 3-2 pitch that’s two inches outside that’s called for a strike. You can probably think of other things like these, too.
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