Baseball is neither fair nor consistent, this much we all know. It is however, predictable. Not in the sense that we know what will happen with each player taking each individual AB, but in the sense that based on the complete picture of performance formed by a player's peripheral figures, we can typically feel a certain degree of confidence that a player will either sustain their current level of play or gradually drift closer to their baseline of true ability. That's why it is beyond maddening[...]