Old School – Analytics

I am old school. Never have claimed to be anything but. Baseball has been a part of my life, a big part, for over 60 years. LA was a minor league city until the Dodgers moved here in 1958. We played the game anywhere we could, usually on our school playground. Some played little league, others did not.

I never really had any coaching until I played little league. Then the coach showed me how to position myself to catch grounders and what to do with fly balls and pop ups since I was playing 1st base most of the time.

I knew how to bunt, but rarely got that sign since I was considered a power hitter by our coach. We did not steal much, but not many little league teams do since you cannot lead off.

But I watched as many games as I could and was amazed, they could stand there and put themselves in harm’s way with a pitch coming at them as fast as a speeding car.

I loved watching Maury Wills and Jr. Gilliam. Wills would get on, steal a base, Gilliam would either sacrifice him to third, or get a hit, or pull the ball to the right side, give himself up, and get Maury to third. Then someone would hit a sac fly or a single, or sometimes even take the ball out of the park, and voila, a Dodger rally.

Baseball was a different game back then. We were taught to hit the ball squarely. Also to go with the pitch, do not try and pull everything. If memory serves, and sometimes it does not, I rarely pulled the ball. Most of my hits went up the middle, or to left center.

I loved watching pitching duels. Although more nerve racking than the games when the team scored a lot of runs. But I loved watching great hitters too. And my generation was blessed, we had so many that would later be in the Hall.

Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Banks, Kaline, Cepeda, McCovey. Snider, Carew, Robinson, and others who were very good, but not hall worthy. And of course, Mr. Hustle, Pete Rose.

Rose does not get talked about much anymore, but he was a ballplayer. Not blessed with great size or athleticism, he made up for it with tenacious play and a burning desire to get better. And Pete Rose wanted to beat you. It took a while and some pretty good trades and acquisitions, but his Reds finally became a powerhouse in the 70’s.

Hit and run, bunts, steals. That was the kind of offense we were weaned on. Pitching and pitchers were far different animals. Pitchers were taught to finish what they started. Players were always on one year deals, and some still had to work in the off season.

To me, and I understand this is a personal choice, the game was better. There were no long dragged out meetings on the mound, most games were not interrupted by multiple pitching changes in an inning. Occasionally there were some memorable fights. But the game seemed to have a flow. The players were exciting to watch and the pitchers threw some nasty stuff.

Pitchers. Ahh, I got to see some truly great ones in those years. Ford, Wynn, missed seeing Feller by a couple of years, Spahn, Marichal, Gibson, Koufax, Drysdale, Wilhelm, Palmer, and a lot who followed, Blyleven, Kaat, Lolich, McLain, last pitcher to win 30, Maddux, Glavine. The list goes on. And these guys finished games. That is what they felt they were paid to do.

Things change as they always do. I am not sure exactly when analytics creeped into the game, but I am pretty sure Beane used it extensively before anyone else.

Now the numbers on the back of the cards that were the basis for judging a player’s worth to a team virtually began to mean nothing. What? BA means zip and OBP is more telling?

Most of us could not understand what in the blue blazes they were talking about. Hey, a guy hits .300, with 30 homers and 100 ribbies he is pretty good. A pitcher might have a 4.67 ERA, but he won 20 games! He has to be valuable. I just did not get it, and no numbers cruncher was ever going to convince me that wins, BA, RBI’s were not important stats.

I am, and always have been, an eye test guy. I could watch players on the field and over time get a sense of what kind of player they were. I will use one of my favorite whipping boys as an example. Yasmani Grandal.

Yasmani Grandal by all accounts and reports is one of the best pitch framers in the game. Until he came to the Dodgers, poor ignorant me did not even know this was a thing or a skill. And indeed I could see that this guy was pretty adept at getting balls called strikes.

Chalk up one for the analytic geeks. But he also was one of the worst at blocking balls in the dirt, and had a high passed ball count almost every year in blue. Chalk up one for us old school grey beards.

Grandal had a ton of power from the left side, and not so much from the right. His career numbers prove that. In his 4 years as a Dodger he topped 20 homers every year but the first one. His BA high was .247, and the low was .228. His OBP high was .353, and the low .307. His K rate was close to double his walk rate over the 4 years.

So over all he did a decent job, always seemed to fade come playoff time, and in 2017 lost his starting job late in the year to Austin Barnes. But he was also to my eyes mind you, not a clutch hitter. I saw him hit many HR’s that allowed the team to pile on, but rarely one that won a game, or put the team in a tie or ahead in the game. Here to me is a telling statistic. In wins he hit .267, more than 20 points higher than his career average, and right at the Mendoza line, .206 in losses. He has 92 homers in wins, and 50 in losses.

I guess you could say, I did not understand what baseball people were looking at that had these players rated the way they were. I saw Mike Piazza his rookie year. One of the first at bats I saw of his he hit a line drive off of the left center field wall for a double, and that thing was one of the hardest hit balls I had ever seen. I just knew this guy was a masher.

My eyes had never deceived me. So when AF took the reins, and started retooling the team using analytics, and not good old fashioned baseball tools type of scouting and evaluating, I was more than a bit perturbed.

But I know baseball as much as it is a sport, and evolving continually, it is more than anything else, the entertainment business, and they are here to make money.

I am just now, after all these years getting to understand what WAR means. Do I care? Probably not. Simply because I still use the eye test. You have to be blind to not see how bad some of these guys are struggling this year. I do not need the WAR stat to tell me most of them could be replaced very easily. There are so many different stats they use now, baseball cards would have to be 8X10’s to list them all.

I do not know what dWar is. And frankly, I care little. I do know I can see when they are not playing good defense with my own eyes. I do not think, oh gee, Kike’s dWar took a hit. But when I see a player like Joc go through a 1-20 slump, his BA is not going to look good in the morning.

I guess one of the things that really confused me about all of this is how analytic geeks have devalued what a win means on a pitchers resume. The game is over 100 years old. For the first 4/5ths of its life, pitchers are evaluated by their wins and their ERA’s and now that is not so?

For a pitcher to get a win, a starter anyway, they have to go five innings. Pitchers in the pen get wins all sorts of ways. Extra innings when the team comes back and wins, coming in in a tie game, and the team takes the lead. Stopping the opposition and the team scores while they are the pitcher of record.

After all, doesn’t the team that WINS the most games at the end of the season stand as the Champion of the division? I just could not understand how someone devalues that. When CK passed Koufax on the all-time win list last year, everyone made a pretty big deal of it.

I doubt we will ever see a 300 win pitcher again. No current starter in MLB is close. 200 is the new 300. Pitchers just do not pitch complete games anymore. It is not important in the new baseball. Bullpens are in the game at the end of the game almost every time.

Players are paid enormous sums these days, and keeping them healthy and contributing is the main focus. Analytics are used in every facet of the game. Even when considering who to draft. Computers cut down the paper work considerably.

I guess when you come down to it, for the people who run the game today, it will never change. As for me, as a fan, I cannot understand most of it, but I know it is in the game to stay.

But also as a fan, I cannot say it has changed the game for the better. Players are hitting more HR’s than ever, but they are striking out more too. That’s because even the K has been devalued. Striking out is now no big deal. When I played, it was something I NEVER wanted to have as the end result of an at bat.

And striking out too much kept a lot of players from ever reaching the heights some thought they would.  I love the Dodgers. Always have, but I can honestly say. this is not the most exciting baseball team to watch. And they have gone that route before.

Baseball does not have a lot of characters anymore. There are some very good athletic players, and they go about their business and play hard. But someone who gets you excited every time they step to the plate because you think you might see something special? Not so much.

Mike Trout is the best all-around player in the major leagues. He has 3 MVP trophies to prove that. Mookie Betts is the most exciting player on the Dodgers. He proves that every game simply with his hard play and baseball IQ. But Trout to me is not exciting to watch. He is just a perfectionist with a steady solid approach that never changes.

Analytics have changed the way players are evaluated. Front offices and scouts look for different traits than they did when I first started loving the game. And in the adopting of these numbers and tendencies, some of the basic parts of the game have come to mean little. Bunting is a dying art. Hitting the ball where it is pitched is rarely seen. It is all about launch angle and exit velocity. With pitchers it is spin rate.

I will always love the game, and I have to live with the way it is analyzed and played because it is what the game has become. But there are days when I close my eyes and see # 7 with that sweet swing connecting and sending one into the RF bleachers, or laying down a perfect bunt and beating it out. Or #24, running full speed towards the CF fence and making an over the shoulder catch and losing his cap as he often did doing it. Or # 32, firing another fastball that the batter could only hear and not see into the catcher’s mitt. And sometimes breaking off a curveball that made the batter look so absolutely over matched when he swung.

And finally, watching # 30, take that lead, dive back a time or two, and then with the crowd yelling his name take off for second and beat the throw easily in a cloud of dust.

Have analytics made the game better? I think that determination is in the eye of the person watching the game. As for me, I am as always an old school guy. Give me a Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays over anyone on the field today anytime. They were as exciting as it gets.