Stay Away From Kevin Kouzmanoff

Read an interesting piece in the Newsweek blog about how a person’s name affects their natural proclivity for certain items.

Examples: Chris Carpenter rehabs while dining on caviar, Placido Polanco jogs while listening to Paula Poundstone, Tom Trebelhorn totes around his toddler in a Toyota.

Alliteration in lieu of science, perhaps, but the article backs up its Sally-sells-seashells-science with baseball statistics.

…Based on data from 1913 through 2006, for the 6,397 players with at least 100 plate appearances, “batters whose names began with K struck out at a higher rate (in 18.8% of their plate appearances) than the remaining batters (17.2%),” the researchers find. The reason, they suggest, is that players whose first or last name starts with K like their initial so much that “even Karl ‘Koley’ Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but he might find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and therefore he might avoid striking out less enthusiastically.” Granted, 18.8% vs. 17.2% is not a huge difference, but it was statistically significant—that is, not likely to be due to chance.

Might want to bump up Kazmir and drop Kevin Kouzmanoff on your draft cheat sheet.
OTHER FANTASY NEWS: