It’s not just recency bias; the way something ends has a disproportionate impact on our evaluation of it. Maybe it’s because we’re raised on coherent narratives and the idea of building to a conclusion. What happens first is just setting the stage for late
Not so for baseball teams working their way through a 162-game schedule. Oh, certainly the season has a narrative — but it doesn’t have to make sense. The order in which events unfold is not meaningfully reflective of any essential truth. Barring seismic injury, a lineup that rakes in the season's first half retains the capacity to score a bunch of runs over a handful of games when it matters most.