Why Baseball Is Obsessed With the Book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'

Baseball|This Book Is Not About Baseball. But Baseball Teams Swear by It.

Everett Teaford remembers nan funny regard from nan executive crossed nan room. Teaford, a erstwhile awesome convention pitcher, had joined nan Houston Astros arsenic a master scout successful early 2016, and astatine an organizational meeting, his caller workfellow Sig Mejdal kept shooting him a look.

When nan group adjourned, Mejdal, past a apical Astros executive, approached Teaford and explained his interest. A decade earlier, erstwhile Mejdal was an expert pinch nan St. Louis Cardinals, his pre-draft statistical exemplary had offered a bullish projection connected Teaford’s master future. Teaford, past a Georgia Southern left-hander, had a sparkling statistical résumé — he’d had a 5-1 grounds and 1.84 earned tally mean nan erstwhile summertime successful nan prestigious Cape Cod League — that belied his flimsy stature.

Teaford stands 6 feet tall, but he was scrawny for a pro prospect, weighing 160 pounds “on my heaviest day,” he recalled. As Mejdal recounted nan backmost communicative to Teaford, he explained, “Well, 1 of nan biggest problems was that nan cross-checker thought you worked connected nan grounds crew,” referring to nan region’s supervising scout who saw Teaford raking nan mound without his azygous on.

Baseball is littered pinch examples of varying assemblage types — Astros 2nd baseman Jose Altuve, who is 5-foot-6, and Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge, who is 6-7, vanished 1-2 successful nan 2017 American League Most Valuable Player Award voting — but cognitive bias tin unreality judgment, too. In Teaford’s case, nan scouting information was predisposed to a intelligence shortcut called nan representativeness heuristic, which was first defined by nan psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In specified cases, an appraisal is heavy influenced by what is believed to beryllium nan modular aliases nan ideal.

“When we look astatine nan players opinionated for nan nationalist anthem, it’s difficult not to recognize that rather a fewer of these guys are acold from stereotypical aliases prototypical,” Mejdal said. “Yet our mind still is attracted rather loudly to nan stereotypical and prototypical.”

Kahneman, a professor emeritus astatine Princeton University and a victor of nan Nobel Prize successful economics successful 2002, later wrote “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” a book that has go basal among galore of baseball’s beforehand offices and coaching staffs.