That’s exactly what I was wondering. Interesting…

So, no point to trying to sign inconsistent bad pitchers! They might just have to settle for trying to sign GOOD pitchers…

The ubiquitous Eric Seidman e-mailed me after I posted this. He too studied the same thing in a similar fashion.

To quote his message about his findings:

1) Consistency doesn’t really correlate to success on any level–inconsistent guys were just as likely to have good numbers as consistent guys

2) Consistency itself is inconsistent. Over a multi-year span, running an intra-class correlation, pitchers consistent one year were in no way guaranteed to be consistent moving forward, meaning it is not a repeatable skill.

I wonder if inconsistency is a “skill”, IE, is it repeatable? Does it correlate year to year?

So, in your chosen measure, is the SD in a players game score something that correlates from year to you?

I bet that correlation exists but could be very, very weak.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/barry_zito_consistency_and_the_2009_giants/

Ahhh… The “Stochastinator”, my favorite made up word from the world of sabermetrics.

From the looks of this, he found – in a theoretical study – essentially the same thing you found in your real world one.

You essentially won’t win any games when a pitcher gives up 14 runs per nine, but you’ll hardly win any games when a pitcher gives up 7 either, so you’d much rather have a pitcher who gives up 1 run, then 14, than one who gives up around 7 every time.