OK. Say you’re playing Blackjack.
You get two Kings.
Do you hit or stay?
Easy, right?
If the card that would have gone to you was an Ace, would you still feel that way?
Probably, right? Even though that ace would have given you a blackjack and a win, the odds of getting one were not in your favor. Holding was the smart play.
What about if you ended up losing because another player or the dealer got the Ace? Would you still feel it was a good decision?
Probably, right? That’s where the phrase “bad beat” comes from. You got unlucky.
But what if someone was watching and said “You IDIOT! You play to win the game, hello! You choked, man! You should have hit! You would have won! What a DUMB decision to hold. I can’t believe you did that!”
You see where I’m going with this.
One of the ways to understand the Blake Snell decision is to understand that one of the driving forces behind the analytics movement in sports is probabilistic thinking. To oversimplify a complex field, probabilistic thinking involves making the best decision based on the available data.
Notice the goal. “Making the best decision.”
Not “getting a desirable outcome.”
Not “winning.”
That’s where the analytics movement runs into the traditional sports mindset and our old friend the Sport Ethic.
That mindset is results oriented. You win, you’re good. You lose, you’re not. It’s results driven. The analytics movement is process driven. It tries to separate the results (which can happen because of any number of reasons in and out of your control) and the process (which you can control).
If you’re seeking to understand the source of the analytics-traditionalist argument, this is a good place to start.