Two very different Gilroy High baseball teams showed up for two
games with Morgan Hill rival Live Oak this past week.
The first sprang out to an 8-0 lead at home on Tuesday, banged
out 13 hits and went on to win 15-8.
Two very different Gilroy High baseball teams showed up for two games with Morgan Hill rival Live Oak this past week.
The first sprang out to an 8-0 lead at home on Tuesday, banged out 13 hits and went on to win 15-8. The second could only manage five hits and no runs in a 5-0 shutout of the Mustangs by the Acorns on Thursday in Morgan Hill.
Like we said, two very different teams. Or were they?
Baseball just isn’t that simple, folks.
There’s a reason baseball people tend to take a more philosophical approach to wins and losses than those involved in other sports. A very poor shooting night by a very good basketball team could conceivably cause it to lose to a lesser opponent. But generally not by a whole lot. A football team that scores 25 points a game is unlikely to ever get completely shut out by an evenly matched foe.
Baseball’s different.
The very best batting lineups are still made up of individuals who fail more often than not. To score a single run, a team needs to put together a string of improbable-on-the-face-of-it individual triumphs. Mathematical odds being what they are, sometimes a lot of success comes at once – as it did in the 15-8 win – while other times all the failure bunches up in clumps – as it did in the 5-0 loss.
So, really, two different Gilroy teams didn’t show up to this week’s games. But two different sequences on the probability chain did.
Yes, it’s a fairly geeky way to look at the sport. And lots of baseball people scoff at such talk. “Moneyball” is either a great insight into the game or a vile blasphemy, depending on your perspective.
All the same, everybody can agree that in baseball, two games really don’t tell much of a story. That’s why, at least on the professional level, baseball’s season is far and away the longest. It takes lots of games for the relatively slight advantages a player or team has on the probability scale to show up in a meaningful way.
Baseball has to be looked at over the leisurely long haul – that’s what makes it so beautiful.
For now, here’s what we can say about Tri-County Athletic League baseball at the halfway point: Four teams have a reasonable shot of winning this thing. Gilroy and Live Oak are probably the best teams in TCAL, but either Hollister or Palma could catch a few breaks and contend as well.
What we’re absolutely sure of is this: Whichever team wins it all will do so because they’re focused on playing good baseball and letting the odds take care of themselves.
