Look, I get it. The Angels made a big, splashy offseason signing, nabbing Torii Hunter, and a big, splashy trade-deadline move, acquiring Mark Teixeira, in large part to avoid having to watch the Red Sox spray champagne all over Fenway Park in October. Again.

John Lackey was seething  when he told ESPN.com’s Amy Nelson,

“We are way better than they are. We lost to a team not as good as us.”

“[On Sunday] they scored on a pop fly they called a hit, which is a joke,” said Lackey, referring to a popup that was misplayed into three runs. “[On Monday], they score on a broken-bat ground ball and a fly ball anywhere else in America [except in Fenway Park]. And [Pedroia's] fist-pumping on second like he did something great.”

This makes me wonder: just how long has John Lackey been playing this game? (Answer: six years.) After all, to paraphrase fictional catcher Crash Davis, the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is just one extra flare a week—a gorp, a groundball, a groundball with eyes, a dying quail. That’s the way the game works. Game of inches, dude.

Dumbo isn’t the only guy to need help with a little performance anxiety. Slate has an interesting piece on whether or not sports psychology really works. The answer seems to be somewhere between “It depends” and “No one really knows.”

The fact that baseball shrinks can’t back up their work with numbers is at odds with the trend toward rational decision-making among baseball managers. Egghead GMs like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein have revolutionized the sport by using objective measures to build their teams. You might expect this new breed of executives to demand the same rigor from their psychologists.

But, say the shrinks, why not just ask the players if it works?

If John Smoltz says Llewellyn turned his career around, then Llewellyn turned his career around. Why shouldn’t we believe A-Rod when he says therapy helps him through his slumps?

This reminds me, of course, of the scene in Bull Durham when Crash lectures Annie about respecting the streak. “If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid or because you’re not getting laid or because you’re wearing women’s underwear, then you are.” But Slate writer Daniel Engber is having none of it.

In fact, we have every reason to doubt the testimony of professional athletes. Baseball players in particular are notorious for ascribing their success to inane rituals, astrological signs, and other hokum. Wade Boggs used to eat chicken before every game. If Boggs says that eating drumsticks helped him get hits, should we believe him, too?

Well, within baseball’s internal if-you-build-it, still-we-believe, calling-his-shot logic, I think the answer is yes. The idea behind Dumbo’s feather wasn’t that he didn’t need it to fly. He did need it—he needed to believe in himself in order to fly, and he needed the feather in order to to believe in himself. It seems pretty simple to me: a little therapy never hurt anyone, and if you think it’s helping your game, then it is. Maybe Engber is just thinking about this too hard:

Full-on experiments—with players assigned to different treatment groups—would yield the best data, but even that level of rigor isn’t necessary. Mental trainers could learn a lot just by keeping careful logs of all their cases, with statistical outcomes for each player.

Oy. I’ll give the last word to Crash: “Don’t think. It can only hurt the ballclub.”