Look: Alex Rodriguez’s Tweet About ‘Analytics’ Goes Viral

Alex Rodriguez has a tendency to draw reactions when he’s in the booth during a game, but he can also do the same thing when he’s on Twitter.

During this afternoon’s ALCS Game 2 between the Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros, Rodriguez did the latter. After a series of tweets about the Astros’ lack of starting pitching, Rodriguez fired off a message about Red Sox outfielder Kiké Hernández, who is having a monster postseason thus far.

“For all the analytics people that work in #MLB please stop saying there’s no such thing as hot or cold,” Rodriguez wrote. “Kiké is HOT!!!!!!!! Just like [Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Randy] Arozarena was last year!!!! Simply incredible.”

Well, A-Rod is correct that Hernandez, who hit his third home run of the ALCS and fifth of the postseason this afternoon, is scorching hot. But he’s not quite on the money here regarding analytics and the nature of “hot” and “cold” hitters.

The analytics community doesn’t believe that hitters don’t go through certain streaks where they are performing exceptionally well or poorly. They just don’t think those streaks are necessarily predictive of anything over a large sample size.

Also, the Red Sox are one of the more analytically-driven teams in MLB, and we don’t think any of their staffers would say Hernandez isn’t hitting out of his mind at his moment. He’s a major reason why Boston tied the series up today and has even made it this far.

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