Anecdotal Evidence

by definition.... "Where only one or a few anecdotes are presented, there is a larger chance that they may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases."

And we know there are many here (you know who you are) who, as pertaining to this game and regardless of the source, will quickly dismiss any anecdotal evidence as baseless...unreliable, cherry-picked and therefore it must be non-representative of the facts... just a few small examples of a much much larger picture is certainly not enough to draw any accurate conclusions....as it pertains to this game.

BUT

many of these same people, rely "only" on anecdotal evidence when it comes to forming their opinion of others here ...

Oh, come on Nev, just because we don't agree on everything doesn't mean I don't like and respect you. Most of us who play this game here have way more in common than they do differences. As a matter of fact, there aren't many people here I don't like. Everybody seems to be a pretty good guy. We all have the same goal: to have fun playing this game based on the great sport of baseball. Some of us have a secondary goal, to prove that we are good managers. Some of us have another goal, which is to make the game as accurate as possible in our pursuit of goals 1 and 2.

While we are competitors, we're like athletes in any other sport, realizing that if not for the competition, there would be no games and no sport.

It would be hard to dislike people with whom I have so much in common.

Yes, I acknowledge that there are a few managers here who are unhappy that the outcomes don't always, in their opinion, reflect the probabilities, almost entirely when it has a negative impact on their team and that such managers are always quick to cite small sample anecdotal evidence of improbable outcomes as to what's wrong with this game. Anybody who has read this forum for more than 6 months knows who those managers are, whether they are complaining about 50 cent starting pitchers getting wins against $10 mil starting pitchers, bad stolen base outcomes, poor performance by star players, getting swept on the last day of the season by a team 40 games behind in the standings, etc., etc. If we didn't like to compete, we wouldn't be here, and it bugs us when we work hard to get favorable odds and we lose anyway. Sometimes the dice are a convenient, and perhaps the only, scapegoat.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BD It's not a question of like or respect...but all you wrote here is anecdotal.... Count how many posts in the past 6 months or the past 6 years, then consider how many teams I've had. *All things considered* I barely post one one thousandth of the crazy senseless stuff I see...And you certainly can't think I don't recognize that senseless improbable things have happened in my favor too...Of course they have, and of course I know it....but I explained earlier why I don't post that stuff, because people already assume that I'm somehow full of braggadocio, based on what exactly, I don't know, because I *Never* post anything positive about my teams, titles, records etc...you get small snapshots of a much larger picture of me and then assume you know me....yet these few paragraphs are about as close as we've come to ever even having a conversation.