Every team releases bugs into production. Hopefully the majority are ones you know about and have consciously decided to do it, but there will be some that you didn’t know about as well. It comes with the territory. Accept it, move along and try to minimize it as much as possible.

A similar thing happens on both an individual and team level in baseball.

To the individual, each at-bat is a release to production. Sometimes you get on base, sometimes you go back to the bench with your tail between your legs (which is how most of my baseball career went). Minor league player Nick Weglarz was on Baseball Today and related the advice he received from the hitting coach while playing (for Canada) in the World Baseball Classic earlier this year.

Never doubt yourself. No matter how bad things get during the season. Just what got you there and don’t feel sorry for yourself because no one else will.

And then he went on to discuss his approach at bat

I don’t like to look at the stats too much, but they play a huge factor in this game. I try to take each at bat individually, put up a quality at bat, hit the ball hard or draw a walk. And if I can do that each time the stats will take care of themselves.

(The smart) baseball head offices also realize that sometimes, despite their best intentions, things don’t always go as planned. See how many injuries the Jays have had to their pitchers this year for instance. But on Prime Time Sports yesterday, Rob Neyer was was talking about the Boston ownership.

John Taylor, the owner of the Red Sox, will talk about this. He knows you can’t win every year. No matter how smart you are, how good your players are. You are going to have some years where you don’t make it [to the playoffs] because you weren’t real lucky. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t try to win every year, you don’t try to get better, you don’t people accountable. What it does mean is that you can have the second, or third best run differential in the league and miss the playoffs. … Bad things happen to good teams.

You could have the League of Super Testers as your test group, but they will miss stuff. Not always, but sometimes.