Don Draper voice (via ChatGPT):
You can tell any story you want about a baseball player. All it takes is choosing the right starting point. Pick a 15-game hot streak and he's a future Hall of Famer. Highlight a cold stretch and suddenly he's a bust. That’s not analysis, it’s authorship. You’re not uncovering truth, you’re shaping perception.
People want numbers to confirm what they already believe. They want to feel smart, justified, certain. So we slice the data to fit the narrative. A slump sells panic, a streak sells hope. The illusion is that it’s objective, because there’s a stat behind it. But it’s still a sales job.
Baseball is full of streaks, full of noise. The truth is always messier than the story we tell. But the story is what sticks.