[This post was submitted by loyal Nation member Matt Habel. Thanks, Matt!]
This post came about from a commenter who posed the question, “Does the Reds winning coincide with Billy getting on base?” It is certainly an intriguing question which anecdotally would seem to have a very obvious answer and has even been brought up by his teammates.
The idea that any single player can directly impact a team’s win/loss results more often than not doesn’t really seem intuitive in baseball. At least to me. A quarterback in the NFL or a dominant basketball player (see James, LeBron) makes much more sense than a position player in the MLB.