Is there a come back of old school in pro baseball?

Interesting topic & take @Dominik85.  I think a lot of the exercise science, nutritiion, etc... will remain.  I'd categorize that as off-field stuff and again I think the investment in making these athletes better off the field will stay.

It's the on field stuff, lineups and game mgt that I think you are referring mostly to.  It  would seem the Red Sox have not received that memo, and possibly their demise is investing too heavily in their analytics dept.   They've been doing it a long time.  We all have Bill James to thank.  His 17 years with the Red Sox generated 4 World Series championships since 2003.  Every team saw value in that and invested to some degree in folks that could solve baseball math problems.  Their motto is "you can't have enough nerds".   I find it interesting that they have no problem hiring these number crunchers, but yet they won't invest in starting pitchers and are nickel & diming their way to a AAA starting lineup.  John Henry and company may be a bad example, but I think if they start going old school then I think the rest of the league will have already made the move ahead of them.   The Red Sox front office has been asleep at the wheel (literally) with race cars, soccer, etc....

Like everything in professional sports it is going to come down to money.  How much do they want to invest in a team of nerds or a team of baseball players?  Ownership always seems to have an operating limit, and I don't see John Henry putting a crowbar to his wallet for baseball talent.

JMO.

Just my $.02 as an analyst and a baseball junkie.

Not everyone gets it.  Analytics is a tool, but without the person who can interpret it and then identify the best way to apply it to actual 1. the personnel you have and 2. how it fits into the overall outcome.  That needs to be someone who gets both the analytics and the game (mechanics, strategy, etc), too much is lost to interpretation and lack of understanding of one side or the other so they just go with it.   Many of the metrics used today are not scientifically sound in their validity, but were put together "as best possible without true controls" to create comparative metrics, to score a players ability to x or y vs others, etc. (that means one person is better than another when this metric is applied, not this is the best way to do something) and then the skill is getting applied generally across the board to hitters and fielders in how they do things.  This was not the purpose for much of the analysis.

An example is the metric of Runs Saved.  Totally fabricated based on what I call, logical over reasoning.  There are far too many variables to control for this to be anything but comparative.

but Baseball Analytics has created a whole new industry and when teams pay for it, they need to do something with it.

It's really a shame because it could help, just few know how to apply it well, in my opinion.

Honestly, I don't see that there should be a hard difference between "old school" and "new"  what I see is that the new can be used to validate the old and vice versa.  Whatever is done, needs to be specific to the skills and abilities of the players, not change them.  Unfortunately because of the breakdown in understanding this, it has become an old vs. new.

From a baseball standpoint, one needs to understand the situation, yes swinging for the fences on 0-2 over an entire season across all at bats in the league may show a higher run output, but when the games on the line and you need that run right now, is that the best approach for this pitch?

To answer the question, I think teams that can't afford to support a dedicated analytics team will go away from it and go back to just old school knowledge as they may not be seeing the ROI.

I'm curious, how many of players understand the analytics?  Are they taught this?

@anotherparent posted:

I'm curious, how many of players understand the analytics?  Are they taught this?

the analytics is a metric, a measure,  you can reach the benchmarks in different ways, not all are good ways.  If a player understands the analysis, then they can possibly be useful, as long as they apply the right method or mechanics to achieve the goal the right way.   So technically, they only need to understand the best way to do something that produces the best measure and make sure that applies to the desired outcome (which is not always the reaching of the metric but the improvement in skill).  So no, the player does not need to understand the analysis, but the coach who tries to use it and then decides the player needs to change something to reach it, better understand it.

It is better for the player to think about improving the outcome, not the metric used to "help" measure it.

the goal should not be to reach a benchmark metric, but to improve, one is only a tool to help assess that goal not the goal itself.

A lot of good comments above. I believe there is a lot of value in analytics - but not at the expense of experience and wisdom. The pendulum has swung too far to the data side and it has been bad for the game. IMO it all began with the practice of hiring Ivy League business people (w/ no baseball playing or coaching experience) to run MLB front offices. And those people staffed their office with like minded people that also don’t know baseball - and gave them way too much authority. This resulted in people that don’t know how to play the game making decisions about how the people that do know how to play the game should play. We now have a lesser product on the field as a result. Some orgs have recognized this and are taking corrective measures (at least to some extent.)  When Chris Young took the GM job with the Rangers he accepted it under 2 conditions: 1) he could hire Bruce Bochy, an old school manager, and 2) Bochy’s decisions would not be dictated by data analysts. Of course for that to happen we had to get Jon Daniels (prior Ivy League GM that set the franchise back 10 years) successfully escorted out of town. The logical answer is a balance between analytics & experience. Which appears to be much easier said than done.

I like analytics for strategic purposes. But for selecting players it’s over the top. Either a player can play under pressure or they can’t. I’ll take more simple stats like batting average with RISP. What percentage of runners in scoring position did he drive in. Give me pitchers who don’t give up the long ball. Don’t beat yourself.

Earl Weaver had analytics nailed sixty years ago … pitching, defense and three run homers.

@adbono posted:

A lot of good comments above. I believe there is a lot of value in analytics - but not at the expense of experience and wisdom. The pendulum has swung too far to the data side and it has been bad for the game. IMO it all began with the practice of hiring Ivy League business people (w/ no baseball playing or coaching experience) to run MLB front offices. And those people staffed their office with like minded people that also don’t know baseball - and gave them way too much authority. This resulted in people that don’t know how to play the game making decisions about how the people that do know how to play the game should play. We now have a lesser product on the field as a result. Some orgs have recognized this and are taking corrective measures (at least to some extent.)  When Chris Young took the GM job with the Rangers he accepted it under 2 conditions: 1) he could hire Bruce Bochy, an old school manager, and 2) Bochy’s decisions would not be dictated by data analysts. Of course for that to happen we had to get Jon Daniels (prior Ivy League GM that set the franchise back 10 years) successfully escorted out of town. The logical answer is a balance between analytics & experience. Which appears to be much easier said than done.

Texas still has an Ivy League GM...Princeton.  Will you be able to sleep at night? ;-)

@HSDad22 wrote, “the goal should not be to reach a benchmark metric, but to improve. One is only a tool to help asses that goal, not the goal itself.”

This comment wins the internet for the day. It is perfectly stated. The problem is that it flies in the face of what you hear from almost all the scouting services, recruiting services, private instructors, etc. - basically all the people trying to get in your pocket. The emphasis on reaching individual metric milestones has unseated the efforts to become better players. Just because you can throw 90 doesn’t mean you can pitch. Just because you run a 6.6 sixty doesn’t mean you are a good baserunner. Just because you have a 103 EV doesn’t mean you are a good hitter. But the general public has been brainwashed into believing the opposite of what I just said - by people that are trying to sell them something. Becoming a better player is a process. It doesn’t magically happen when you reach a milestone metric.

@fenwaysouth posted:

Texas still has an Ivy League GM...Princeton.  Will you be able to sleep at night? ;-)

Yes, but he played at Princeton. And he had a long career pitching in MLB. That makes him a little different, doesn’t it?!

@adbono posted:

Yes, but he played at Princeton. And he had a long career pitching in MLB. That makes him a little different, doesn’t it?!

Kinda the perfect balance between education and experience

Well, this was the point of my question.  There are some colleges where there are classes in baseball analytics - and players actually take them.  But is that common, or is it rare?  Because obviously the people who are best placed to understand analytics in the game are people who have actually played.

@adbono posted:

Yes, but he played at Princeton. And he had a long career pitching in MLB. That makes him a little different, doesn’t it?!

It makes him a lot different!

I think on the offensive side you'll see BA and OBP make a comeback. I think there will be a return of the .300 hitter.

I also see it moving towards a more size friendly game. With the pitch clock addition and the way stolen bases spiked across the league I see smaller, leaner guys getting more opportunities if they can hit for average and get into scoring position.

The teams that have been in the mix for the world series are always teams near the top of the league in BA and teams that strike out less. I think the "it doesn't matter how you get out" phase is being left behind and more emphasis will be placed on guys who make productive outs.

Breslow is an Ivy League graduate and a former player. I don’t know if any Sox fans who are satisfied with the results. Apparently the Sox believe analytics includes getting players to sign with a weak team for less than their true worth.  

I just am puzzled by analytics people who have not played.  But I guess that was the point of Moneyball.

One issue is that baseball is a 60 40 sport, I.e even the best teams only win 60% of the time but the post season is a more Binary thing either you win or you don't, in a 4 game series even the worst team can beat the best with a bit of luck.

That creates the narrative that "analytics works only in the regular season but not in the post season".

This is not really fair of course, people remember the famous "fails of analytics" like when the rays pulled Blake snell early and lost the game, but people don't remember the many times a team loses by playing "by the book".

People in general don't like a probabilistic world, they want a deterministic world.

The media are playing to this, they want to explain probabilistic elements to have a post season series more like an NBA series where the best team usually wins. For fans and journalists the right thing failing 40% of the time is not really a pleasing answer, you want to have a narrative why it failed and "soulless analytics people who don't have feel for the game" is a better story than "we flipped a coin and it came out on the wrong side".

@RJM posted:

Breslow is an Ivy League graduate and a former player. I don’t know if any Sox fans who are satisfied with the results. Apparently the Sox believe analytics includes getting players to sign with a weak team for less than their true worth.  

True, he is any Ivy League grad and Red Sox fans aren't satisfied with ANYTHING the organization has done since 2021 including using analytics to be cheap.  However, Red Sox fans know (only too well) Breslow is boxed in by ownership in what he can and can't do just as his predecessor was.   Hopefully, common sense and old school baseball with be back at Fenway in 2024.

@fenwaysouth posted:

True, he is any Ivy League grad and Red Sox fans aren't satisfied with ANYTHING the organization has done since 2021 including using analytics to be cheap.  However, Red Sox fans know (only too well) Breslow is boxed in by ownership in what he can and can't do just as his predecessor was.   Hopefully, common sense and old school baseball with be back at Fenway in 2024.

Nothing is going to change. Epstein wasn’t hired by the Sox. He won’t be involved in day to day operations or personnel decisions. He has a job elsewhere. He’s on retainer as a consultant for FSG.

I figure the Sox fail for at least two more years (last place) waiting to see what happens with their prospects. The problem is any starting pitching prospect with a potential future will only be in AA this year.