One of the more interesting aspects of following pro sports is taking note of how they evolve. On a basic level, the games we follow that once saw its athletes hold off-season jobs to make ends meet now see even those who make league minimum be counted in the top 1% financially. Evolution exists in the strategy of the gameplay, as well. In football, the premier positions were once running back and middle linebacker. The game’s current incarnation now puts the focus on quarterbacks and edge rushers. Basketball was once an inside-out game, promoting pounding the ball into the post. Now it’s played outside-in, with an emphasis on spacing and outside shooting.
Seeing baseball’s evolution, however, takes a bit more of an astute eye, as its evolution is more subtle than those other sports. Baseball is all about taking advantage of the limited number of opportunities one is given while on the playing field. As the game changes, so to does the nature of those opportunities. Thus, baseball’s new efficiencies might be where you least expect to find them, and they might be leading us into MLB’s post-Moneyball movement.
The baseball world is now more than a decade removed from the “Moneyball” revolution. That movement saw an increased emphasis on on base percentage (OBP), and working pitch counts, among other aspects. But as the game moves on, those old inefficiencies are MLB’s new efficiencies. The aspects of Moneyball are now so widely accepted and paramount in everyone’s mind that the new value might be in ignoring it… well, some of it.
First, let’s establish that Moneyball did prove some things that can now be stated as fact. OBP is a better indicator of a batter’s skill than batting average – the stat that was (and still is) more palatable to the casual fan. Even the most analytical-minded fans might be caught saying so-and-so hits above .300. From the bottom to the top, baseball is not completely rid of its reliance on these more primitive stats, but advanced metrics have offered more, and better, information.
Where MLB’s post-Moneyball movement plays its greatest role is in the approach of hitters and pitchers. Where the Moneyball-minded players were taught to go as deep into the count as possible, others might see that, as a result, the value – from a hitter’s perspective – might be in jumping on those early pitches. Even hitters with the best batter’s eye would probably admit that watching an early-count meat pitch whistle by in the name of working the count is a wasted at bat. And pitchers know that, with an emphasis on pitch counts, establishing an early edge – and throwing strikes right away – is more important than ever, even if the numbers don’t indicate there’s much of a change in that area.
This is not to speak in extreme generalities. Baseball is, and always will be, an individual sport framed in a team context. While the Moneyball movement affected the way some hitters approached their at bats, not all bought into it, and that’s fine. Likewise, not all will buy into the anti-Moneyball approach to hitting.
Joey Votto in one of the best all-around players in the league. So is Carlos Gomez. Each symbolizes the extremes of that matter at hand. Votto is the ultimate example of a patient hitter, almost to a fault at times. Votto works counts and sees so many pitches each at bat that the Reds switched their lineup for most of last season so that Votto was directly behind ultra-speedster Billy Hamilton. The thinking was that if Hamilton is standing on first, the sheer number of pitches Votto watches would open up more opportunities for Hamilton to swipe second.
But Votto’s patience also puts him in more situations where he’s behind in the count, or working on a full count where he must concentrate more on putting the ball in play than on driving it somewhere for extra bases. Gomez, however, frustrated his managers and coaches so much with the Mets and Twins that they traded him. His lack of patience at the plate led to those teams losing patience in his overall development. That frustration carried over to the early portion of his tenure in Milwaukee, but it wasn’t until the Brewers took a more hands-off approach that Gomez (now in Houston) finally reached his potential.
Gomez is super-aggressive at the plate, and to try to artificially improve his plate discipline is to make him a lesser player (it would be like the Oklahoma City Thunder trying to coach Russell Westbrook to play at a slower speed). It can be maddening to watch Gomez swing so hard at an out-of-the-zone first pitch that his helmet flies off his head; it can be equally frustrating to watch Votto watch strike after strike cross the plate while he keeps his bat on his shoulder. Every player deals with this sacrifice-this-for-that nature of the game every time they step up to the plate.
Pitchers might also stand to benefit from this. Everybody who follows baseball has seen pitch count graphics, but one must wonder if maybe throwing some extra pitches is worth it if those pitches come in a shorter time span. Which is to ask: If a pitcher throws only nine pitches to get out of an inning, but must wait thirty minutes to take the mound again while his team’s hitters work the opposing pitchers’ count, how much better is that than if that same pitcher threw thirty-five pitches in two innings over the course of that same thirty-minute span?
An interesting (indirect) byproduct of more hitters jumping on early pitches that might have baseball ecstatic is that it might be a subtle solution, in part, to the biggest worry the game has right now: game length. If there are more players taking a Carlos Gomez-like approach, games will either: 1) be shorter time-wise; or, 2) run the same length, but with more runs scored. Either scenario would be seen as a win for the sport.
Usually, when dealing with these trends in baseball, the overall effect can’t be known until after the fact. The lag in the time from the start of any paradigm shift to when it can be accurately identified and observed makes this mostly speculation at this point in time. But it should be something fans keep in the back of their minds as the season approaches. The next time you want to criticize a hitter for wildly swinging away early in the count, take a deep breath, and think about the broader mechanisms that might be at work.
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