Several days ago, a New York Times article titled "How New Rules Turned Back the Clock on Baseball" was posted over at Hacker News. The 2023 Major League Baseball (MLB) season has adopted several rule changes including implementing a pitch clock, limiting pickoff attempts, increasing the size of bases, and banning extreme defensive shifts. The results have been dramatic, with a much faster pace of play and a large increase in stolen bases. It is an effort to undo many trends in the game that have been influenced by the rise of advanced metrics.
Statistics have always been a part of baseball, whether it's trying to hit .400, strike out 300 batters, or trying to hit 60 home runs in a season. In the 1990s, typical statistics to measure hitting success were batting average (BA), home runs (HR), and runs batted in (RBI). Pitchers were evaluated with statistics like strikeouts (K), wins (W), earned run average (ERA), and walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP). During this era, there was an increase in the amount and type of data collected during games, providing far more details for statisticians to analyze.
Some of these statistics like BA, HR, RBI, K, and W really aren't great indicators of the value of a player. For example, wins are heavily influenced both by a team's lineup and the defense behind a pitcher, so they don't correlate well to the quality of a pitcher. Home runs are valuable to an offense, but it's a count instead of a rate, meaning it's influenced heavily by how many plate appearances a hitter receives and how often the hitter takes walks. Statistics like ERA and WHIP were better because they presented as rates, though they were still influenced significantly by the quality of a team's defense. The development of advanced metrics, which are newer and more insightful statistical tools, provided a lot of insight into what is actually valuable to a team's success.
In the present day, statistics like weighted on-base average (wOBA) and wins above replacement (WAR), in addition to many others, are commonly used to measure the value of players. These statistics attempt to determine the true value of each play to a team's success and present them in a single metric. For example, examining the seasonal constants used to calculate wOBA shows that stolen bases aren't particularly valuable compared to even outcomes like taking a walk. It also shows that home runs are more than twice as valuable as a single. This was one factor in changing the typical approach taken by batters.
In some cases, the advanced metrics also differed significantly from conventional wisdom. For many decades, hitters were generally expected to change their hitting approach with two strikes, sacrificing power for just trying to make contact with the baseball. However, advanced metrics revealed that strikeouts weren't much worse for a team's success than groundouts or flyouts. The result was a more aggressive approach to hitting with two-strike counts, accepting much higher strikeout rates in exchange for more doubles, triples, and home runs. Additionally, there is significant value in just getting on base, and walks (BB) are valued almost as much as singles. Hitters generally swung more aggressively at pitches inside the strike zone but also avoided chasing pitches outside of the strike zone.
The result was a trend toward an increase in the three true outcomes (HR, K, and BB), which are plays where only the pitcher and catcher are involved in the defense. In front offices, nerds displaced people who had significant experience playing baseball, because teams coveted their skills in processing and analyzing data. But for many fans, the game had become much less interesting, with slower games and less action involving defense and baserunning. Baseball had been largely optimized with more data collection and many advanced metrics to evaluate players, but the result was a boring product for fans.
There's no way to take the analytics out of baseball, and teams aren't going to start replacing the nerds in front offices with people who have more playing experience. Instead, MLB introduced several new rules this season designed to make the game more entertaining and reduce the negative impacts from expanded use of advanced metrics. Although it has not completely reverted the game of baseball back to the 1990s, the statistics in the New York Times article show that the rule changes have created a faster-paced game with more baserunning.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Opportunist on Friday June 09 2023, @10:03AM (3 children)
Everyone here should know the effect this has. If you gauge my value by a metric, you will get me to work to that metric, and that metric only. If you measure ticket closing times, I'll haphazardly deal with tickets and instantly close them. If you measure the number of tickets being reopened, I ignore reopened tickets while still having new tickets to work on and will tell my customers exactly that so they open new tickets instead of reopening old ones, increasing the number of tickets I close in record speed even further. And so on.
Now, I don't know much about baseball, but the players would be idiots if they don't know those metrics and start playing towards them.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dalek on Friday June 09 2023, @11:27AM (2 children)
There are some pretty extreme effects of management by numbers. There was a book called Game of Shadows [wikipedia.org] that was written by two reports for the San Francisco Chronicle and was published in 2006. The authors acquired some of their information from leaked grand jury testimony and were threatened with jail time if they didn't reveal their source. It tells the story of Barry Bonds, who to this day holds the single season and career home run records, which are 73 and 762, respectively.
As a young player in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. were both young outfielders and were among the most talented players in the history of baseball. Bonds played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Griffey played for the Seattle Mariners. Bonds was probably the better of the two, though Griffey also had elite talent. Although their talent was similar, they were very different personally. Griffey had a huge personality, always had a huge smile on his face, wore his hat backwards, and always seemed to have a lot of fun playing baseball. Bonds was standoffish with the media, insubordinate to his manager, and was toxic toward his fellow players. In some respects, baseball is a meritocracy, so Bonds got away with it, and was even rewarded with a huge contract by the San Francisco Giants starting in 1993.
Bonds had the rare combination of hitting for average, having tremendous power, playing elite defense, and having the speed to steal a lot of bases. In terms of hitting alone, his 1992 and 1993 seasons were among the two greatest seasons in the history of baseball. His 1990 and 1996 seasons weren't far behind, and he was probably the best player in the National League each of those four seasons. Bonds won three MVP awards early in his career along with several gold gloves and silver slugger awards. Even in the seasons when he wasn't quite as productive, Bonds was still among the best players in the league.
The single season home run record is one of the most cherished in all of baseball. Prior to 1998, this record was held by Babe Ruth (60 home runs in 154 games) and Roger Maris (61 home runs in 162 games). Those records were shattered by two players in 1998. Sammy Sosa hit 66 home runs. Mark McGwire hit 70. Both players had been power hitters earlier in their careers, but neither had home run totals quite like that in prior seasons. Many years later, McGwire admitted he was using steroids in 1998. Although Sosa hasn't admitted to steroids, there was a leaked report that he tested positive for steroids in 2003. If true, Sosa lied to Congress in 2005 when he denied using steroids. Although I'm not aware of any direct evidence, it's widely assumed that Sosa was also doping in 1998. McGwire and Sosa cheated, and even in 1998, there were rumors that steroid use was widespread in baseball.
Until 1998, Bonds had never used steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. Bonds only hit 37 home runs in 1998 despite still having a very productive season. He believed that he deserved a new contract that would pay him similarly to McGwire. Bonds was a much more complete player, whereas McGwire was a one-dimensional player who hit for tremendous power while many of his other skills were subpar. While he didn't hit for the same power as McGwire, his high batting average and on-base percentage, baserunning, and defense probably made him at least as valuable as McGwire. When the Giants refused to renegotiate his contract, Bonds was angry and envious, which led him to start doping. There were issues with his doping regimen that led to an injury and caused him to miss significant time during the 1999 season.
Bonds underwent an incredible physical transformation, dramatically bulking up during the 1999 and 2000 seasons. He still hit for a high batting average, and his power was dramatically increased. Bonds hit more home runs in 2000 and 2001, 49 and 73, respectively, than in any prior season in his career. In the process, his speed all but vanished, meaning that he stole few bases and his defense declined substantially. Because teams at the time valued players who hit lots of home runs, Bonds sacrificed his baserunning and defense to become a one-dimensional player.
If Bonds had never touched a steroid, he would have still made many tens of millions of dollars during his career as a player. He would have almost certainly been voted into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot despite his toxic personality. Instead, he chose to turn to a cocktail of chemicals that included synthetic testosterone ("the cream"), tetrahydrogestrinone ("the clear"), stanozolol, trenbolone (which is typically for bovine use), testosterone decanoate, deca-durabolin, norbolethone, human growth hormone, insulin, and clomid (used to treat infertility). If that sounds really unhealthy and dangerous, that's because it is. Eventually, Bonds skills declined and the wear and tear on his knees made him a huge defensive liability in the outfield as well as a slow baserunner. The Giants declined to sign Bonds to a new contract after the 2007 team, and no other teams were interested, either. To this day, Bonds has not been voted into the Hall of Fame. Many fans view his career achievements as illegitimate, completely tarnishing his legacy. When Bonds was asked about allegations of doping, he made lame excuses like claiming he thought "the clear" was flaxseed oil, even though it was administered through drops under the tongue, which is not usually how one consumes flaxseed oil. Bonds is remembered as someone who had a toxic personality, cheated so the Giants would pay him more, and then lied to everyone about his cheating.
When the players know that management uses a specific metric like home runs to decide the value of a player, and when there are many millions of dollars on the line, players will do a lot to satisfy the metric. That includes rampant cheating, destroying their own legacy, and taking extreme risks with their health.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 09 2023, @02:27PM (1 child)
Some think that it wasn't just financial gain that motivated Bonds to take steroids, but a big part was ego too. Sosa and McGwire were getting *all* the accolades and press and their HR race was tracked with great fanfare daily, and some think Bonds knew they were doping and frustrated that he wasn't getting the recognition he deserved, so he decided to get on board with the program. I remember, especially in the early 90s, that it wasn't the absolute amount of money that was the motivating factor for players in itself (at least for the ones at the top), it was whether they were paid the highest. Salary was a proxy for respect, and some athletes had contracts that tried to guarantee that they would always be paid more than any other player. I don't know if that is as big a deal as it used to be with players because I don't follow baseball much any more; baseball has largely abandoned me. I don't have cable and they've moved everything to cable; I'm in the media market for TWO MLB teams (Nats and O's), and I can't watch a single game without jumping through streaming hoops.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday June 10 2023, @02:30AM
[whisper]
https://v2.sportsurge.net/list-baseball [sportsurge.net]
[/whisper]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dalek on Friday June 09 2023, @11:40AM (2 children)
If you're interested in some of the details in the math behind determining the value of specific outcomes (e.g., walks, stolen bases, home runs, etc...), this is done with linear weights. Fangraphs has a pretty good description of the method at https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/linear-weights/ [fangraphs.com].
As with hitters, there are statistics like Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) that try to measure the true value of a pitcher. If you look at how many runs a pitcher gives up per inning, that's affected by many factors that include the quality of the defense, the park the game is played at, and luck. The pitcher has little control over the outcome once a ball is put in play. They have far more control over the three true outcomes, which are walks, home runs, and strikeouts. FIP uses linear weights and tries to remove the effect of team defense and luck, and is intended to be a more accurate measure of a pitcher's skill and value. There are a lot of different ideas about the best ways to measure the true value of players, but a lot of the approaches are built around linear weights. If you're interested in the math involved, I recommend that Fangraphs link.
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(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Sunday June 11 2023, @07:02AM (1 child)
I don't know if it's true, but I've read that Catfish Hunter relied on fielding to achieve his success: pitching in a manner that caused batters to hit the ball poorly.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday June 14 2023, @01:09AM
That's to quite an extent true. Hunter was a real pitcher, watching him pitch was watching a master perform his craft. Although far from the hardest thrower of his era, he broke more bats than most pitchers. He gave up a lot of home runs, but they were usually solo shots as he got everyone else out. He also piled up the innings, completing 15-30 games most seasons at his peak. You don't see that sort of performance now, where pitchers are revered if they last six innings a few times each season, and the best season complete game totals are measured in the mid single digits. Hunter was far from alone back then, 250 -300 innings pitched in a season was a measure of success, not an unreachable fantasy.
What will take the "nerds" and analytics out of baseball is finally realizing that it doesn't work, at least not to the extent that has allowed it to control the game today. Analytics arose from the minor success of teams that tightly managed what they spent. Careful roster choices allowed such teams to field competitive teams, although in the end they usually always lost. Getting close brings the fans back again though. The game is not playing statistics vs statistics, dollars vs dollars, it's players vs players. At some point it will again become apparent that allowing the best players to play, sometimes against the "odds", is the formula for success. Analytics will never go completely away, it was always a part of the sport (platooning has been common since the late 1940's), but hopefully it will recede to a more reasonable place, the sooner the better.