Watched about 10 minutes total, which I suspect is about 10 minutes more than any of you.

A theme of my “writing” here is randomness, and there are few academic conclusions more robust than the fact that the vital human skill of discerning patterns makes them lousy at detecting randomness. If you ask people to give a random string of numbers and compare it side-by-side with an actual random of string of numbers, one can detect which one the humans generated every time — mostly because the human numbers jump around too much relative to the random ones. Humans generate sequences that jump around too much because they perceive patterns in the bunching.

When Whitman had five consecutive good outings, people began to jump to the conclusion that the randomness of his returns had been quashed. Silly humans. I said yesterday that Elder was going to try to prove me wrong. Six runs given up in the first three innings shows, sadly, that I was right. Whitman generates true randomness, not that he means to. A few consecutive good outings is a required element of it, as are consecutive bad outings. He is a human Geiger counter.

Olson hit a homer. Enyel De Los Santos returned to Truist and discovered that he can give up runs there no matter whose laundry he has donned.

Some great college football yesterday, including Tech and Georgia. I am not as ecumenical as tfloyd in my pro-natal state leanings, but c’mon — does anybody really like Tennessee? That same dumb song over and over? (Not to mention that they have stolen a Yale fight song, not even renaming it, with some set of bastardized lyrics whenever they don’t play Rocky Top. At least Oklahoma when they stole a Yale fight song renamed it to Boomer Sooner.) And is there anyone, anywhere who likes Notre Dame?

Rubber game today which I might watch, though I expect to be driving during most of it. Joey on the bump.

The Mets jolly free fall continues, and they are now within a half-game of joining the Braves on a deep-sea fishing trip in early October. When you look at the current Wild Card standings in the NL, the first eight teams line up in run differential order. While that isn’t random, it is very unusual. It is far more patterned than the normal levels of team-to-team randomness would dictate. (Compare it to the AL, for example.) Humans…..