The Q-View

Opening Day of the baseball season!

New Age baseball officially comes to the Philadelphia Phillies.

I am not enthused. Chip Kelly redux?

I am keeping an open mind–or trying to–when it comes to Gabe Kapler, Mr. Positivity, Mr. Analytics, Mr. 2018 Baseball.

Be Bold.

“Be Bold.” That is what it says on the T-shirt the Phillies will give out on Opening Night, April 7, a game I will be attending. I’ll be able to wear my own Gabe Kapler saying!

The thing that bothers me the most about Kapler and his ilk is that they act like they are reinventing the game, like everyone who came before the Era of BIG DATA did not really know what they were doing.

The Olde Ways need to be pushed aside to compete in 2018, no matter how successful they were in the past.

And the jargon! Getting the most out of your players is now “hunting for value at the margins”. An uppercut is “increasing the launch angle.” Good bite on a curve is now explained by “spin rate”.

And then there is WAR.

From an article by Ken Rosenthal:

While the basis of [Wins Against Replacement–WAR] is wins added compared to that of a replacement-level player, its calculation centers around the number of runs a player adds offensively and the number of runs he saves his team either defensively or on the mound. Since the universal goal of the game is to win games, these run totals are converted into wins.

Uh huh.

The underlying assumption in all of this data analysis seems to be that all subjectivity can be eliminated from decision making, the “gut-feel” of managers and players. How does one know if a shortstop was affected mentally by the fact that the runner on first has great speed and the shortstop was playing half-a-step up and that explains why he only got the tip of his glove on a ground ball in the hole. While his WAR measures long-term performance, that play did not help his stat did it?

The game may be more mathematically precise, but is it better for the fan given radical shifts, flopping outfielders by hitter, six pitching changes a game, building a statistical wall to keep out the bunt and the steal, the emphasis on home runs?

I get it. A strikeout is just another out, so don’t worry about trying to get the ball in play with two-strikes. Increase that launch angle.

They should get that I do not want to go to Citizens Bank Park and sit through a game where the Phillies strikeout 12 times, even though one of their mantras is “control the strike zone” (which used to be simply “work the pitcher”), with two home runs and no other hits, let their starting pitcher only go six innings because….a printout in the dugout says so, muddle through the seventh inning with three pitchers because, you know, right-right, left-left, right-right.

Whatever.

I’ll be rooting for the Phillies because I always have.

Go Phillies.

But, good luck to all the old-school managers, like Terry Francona in Cleveland or Mike Scioscia in Anaheim.

Yeah, I know, those guys have a statistical bent at times. At least they speak Olde Baseball.

And they won before BIG DATA made the game sooooooo much better.