Thursday, July 25, 2013

ADVENTURES IN SMALL SAMPLE SIZE SLUGGING (SSSS)/1: BALLPARKS A-B

So this is the place where we have to fill like crazy, since what follows here (and in many fun-filled future installments...) is little more than a series of Excel mini-tables dressed to kill.

And one way that we do that is to have a lot of single lines (or at least they would be, if it weren't for the fact that there are all these effin' tables).

But we can fix that.

So, anyway, herewith we are championing the highly scorned and derided "small sample size." We know that these are only rarely on the side of credible, and are most often just downright worthless.

But think of them as the stat-man's version of junk food.

They have the carefully balanced test-tube flavoring, the preservative-induced long-lasting crunchiness, the heaps of extra sodium. They produce comfort via extremity, and they go well with just about every beverage known to man, G-D it.

So in the shamelessness of a late July when you're too lazy to cook a proper meal (read: don't have time to do any real research other than copying a bunch of output from David Pinto's DbD dB), we find these little binges into small sample size stats to be harmless (and we have the signed waivers to prove it!).

And, hey, we love a simple, sibilant, snake-like acronym as much as anyone. Why jump the shark or shuffle off the mortal coil without the sinister sound effects that made all those slasher films with gratuitous nudity and people doing unimaginably stupid things to "advance" the "plot" so memorably execrable.

Which, naturally, is why we picked slugging average  as the "measure" here. That gets us the all-important, crucial-to-national-security-and-world-peace-and-ever-increasing-oil-company-profits "fourth S," the one that tells you that there's not just one snake in the room, but an entire platoon of creepy, crawling creatures that help those slasher films "motivate" nubile young actresses to...

...to do what nubile young actresses do in silly, stupid slasher films.

So, for God's sake, just lie back and enjoy it. Think of it as casual sex, except without the STDs. You can always go a diet later. After all, it's only belly fat...

Small sample size slugging will not rot your brain or (perhaps more importantly...) your teeth so long as you heed the warnings on the label and play close attention to expiration dates. For example, realize that Cardinals' rookie Matt Adams, who has a .603 SLG in Busch Stadium III (see below), is quite likely to fall off this list any day now.

(And just in case you've actually been reading this instead of looking at the charts, this is a good a time as any to tell you that these tables simply list all of the players with .600+ SLG with at least 100 PAs in any particular ballpark.)

(And since there are many, many ballparks--though not as many as there are nubile young actresses--we are only displaying those parks whose names begin with "A" or "B." And, let's face it, current statistics prove that there are more ballparks beginning with "A" or "B" than there are nubile young actresses whose cup sizes are "A" or "B.")

Some of the names here will be well-known, others won't (and you already know what the "analogy" would be if we were shameless enough to keep grinding it out...but if we did that, you would naturally start rooting for us to be playing a real-life version of the James Caan role in Misery, which is not something that we would wish on you, even if you had it coming--but...hey, let's face facts, you probably do, particularly if you are still reading this).

We'll be back with more of these snappy, small-size treats (soon to be available in "fun sizes...), ranging into more alluring regions of the alphabet (at least with respect to...OK, OK, we won't sully it by saying it, you can fill in the blanks for yourself, via the miracle of inference...)--just as soon as we can conjure up the requisite amount of imponderable free-form freakout verbiage to sustain another installment of....

 (cue echo machine here)....

!!!SMALL SAMPLE SIZE SLUGGING!!!