r/Mariners • u/r4dius • 1d ago
MLB Network discusses over-fixation on analytics
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTyW41dV2/While the Mariners aren’t mentioned by name, they certainly feel like the canonical example (or counter-example, as it were).
The point that Leiter makes about the mental impact of a potential bunt I found particularly illuminating. As in: whether hitters are forcing pitchers to be multi-dimensional — versus enabling them to zero-in on avoiding the long ball.
Like seemingly everything in modern life, that which cannot be easily measured risks becoming invisible.
Here’s rooting for the Brewers to help incept greater nuance in the sport we love, and maybe even beyond Baseball.
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u/206-Ginge 1d ago
I think there's an interesting discussion there, similar to how the NBA is starting to find out that, when nobody is defending midrange jumpers anymore, they actually become valuable again.
At the same time, though, if your takeaway from "analytics" is "never bunt," you weren't paying attention to your analytics guys. Bunting almost always decreases the number of runs you're expected to score in an inning, but it increases the likelihood you'll score at least one run. Sometimes that's all you want or need, and that's when you bunt.
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u/vylain_antagonist 1d ago
that's the nature of gameified systems as a whole though. They're never 'solved' for. 3 true outcomes didn't 'solve' baseball; it was instead a push to embrace an undervalued approach to offense. As the league market chases that undervalued approach, the value jumps and the undervalued meta then shifts in a different direction again. it's a constant dance and requires a lot of evolved thinking and forward thinking to stay competitive on the edge of data efficiancy.
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u/206-Ginge 1d ago
Right, that's what the guy on the left in the clip (don't know the names of these guys) is basically saying in my understanding. If your takeaway from Moneyball was "look for guys with high OBP" instead of "look for guys who contribute to wins in ways no one else is valuing right now," then you were listening wrong.
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u/KingRalf13 22h ago
It's funny that you say 'evolved thinking' because evolutionary biologists were thinking of this exact concept to explain natural processes in the 1970s: they called it the Red Queen hypothesis, and it proposed (grossly simplified) that all species must constantly evolve to avoid going extinct (over evolutionary timeframes). It's very easy to extend this idea to baseball, and other sports. Whether an individual athlete or a team, you are not just competing against a stationary talent pool -- all other players/teams are constantly trying to improve and evolve as well, and that's what you're really competing against. I think perennial all-star players are good at adjusting to the ways other players are adjusting to them. And the same might be true for perennially successful franchises, although some teams can just throw money at problems and I find nothing ingenious about that.
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u/Mcpops1618 1d ago
I think what’s missed and is very clearly pointed out when you read moneyball is that stats/analytics/etc are great in the regular season, massive sample size, you need to play a certain way to try get to the playoffs.
Once the playoffs start, you need to beg, borrow and steal for every run you can get. If that means, bunting and stealing, do it. But you have to construct a team that can do both and you need a team that practices these skills. You can’t wake up on October 1 and change your dna.
My issue with the grumpy old men is they think it’s a way of thinking that says you can’t do more than one thing. They think it’s a debate between old minds/new minds, whereas analytics are just one tool in the tool belt. We saw Tampa fall victim To this the year they pulled snell after 2 times through, they should have felt the game flow and made a decision to go against the analytics in that moment.
As for the mariners, their issues this year were a manager who couldn’t manage his staff/bullpen, stars not playing well and then just outright bad baseball.
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u/writerpilot 1d ago
I’m old enough to remember when both 2008 and 2011 Mariners were the anti-analytics darlings. They were going to crush the league using pitching, defense and putting the ball in play to put pressure on opposing pitchers.
Wonder why those teams don’t have MLB Network analysts raving over them.
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u/Substantial-Pea7626 1d ago
The Diamondbacks gave Tony La Russa a head of baseball ops job in 2014, he was going to get things back to a more old school approach and was gone in 3 years. Funny how we don't hear about a lot of the failures of old school thinking but failures of analytical approaches are propped up all the time.
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u/serpentear Tartan 365 | Cruiser 1d ago
The A’s, Astros (recently), Angels, Rockies, and Marlins are all well behind the league on analytics and look at what that gets them.
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u/RedditJohn52 Logan is the Bomb 1d ago
I would add the 2001 team in there also. One of the best examples of team baseball.
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u/TheBloodyNinety 1d ago
The Jack Z story that ultimately led to his downfall is my favorite for the anti-analytics plays.
Here, I think fans are just grasping at straws to vilify Dipoto. The issue this season was underperforming. Which is typically attributed to the manager, who was fired.
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u/pokeroots Anything but blaming the lineup 12h ago
The brewers and rays are showing that the approach the M's have is too heavy handed in one direction. Just like the Lions 4th down approach last year. Dipoto it's unwilling to adapt his analytics from when he learned about them
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u/mrkangtastic 1d ago
I remember a couple months ago someone posted a throwback highlight to this sub of Brendan Ryan stealing two bases because the opposing team wasn't covering the bags. I remember being so hyped when that happened. But it's sad to think that was an all time Jack Z-era highlight.
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u/Maximus_2698 1d ago edited 1d ago
Analytics is not the Mariners' problem. You can't convince me that "analytics" indicated that the Mariners should constantly pinch hit for one of their better hitters with the worst hitter in baseball over and over again for half the season. Or that it was the right call to carry 6 starters and run a man down in an already short bullpen just so they could "keep guys stretched out". That's not analytics, it's traditional, old-school baseball based on conventional wisdom and vibes.
The teams that are still playing right now are all some of the most analytical teams in baseball. It's why they're still playing and the Mariners are sitting at home.
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u/Griffdogg92 1d ago
I mean, wasn't the 6 man rotation like the best our pitching looked all year? Miller and Castillo didn't like it, and it was clearly communicated poorly, but I distinctly remember it working quite well
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Griffdogg92 1d ago
The 6-man rotation and piggyback are different things
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u/AnnihilatedTyro RELEASE THE MOOSEN! 1d ago
Derp. You're right, my bad.
Note to self: coffee before stats
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u/asteriskmos Naylz Sin Bin 1d ago
As far as I know from our beat reporters, our lineup & bullpen management isn't strongly based on analytics. Its just Dan slipping FO (as per Divish) and making choices in his gut feel. Ya know, the same gut feel for the sport Jerry explicitly admitted he had to help Dan catch up to the current version of.
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u/YardAdmirable7060 1d ago
You’re joking, right?
You’ve literally got it completely reversed.
None of those things are traditional baseball things.
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u/Maximus_2698 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, left/right matchups and "keeping guys stretched out" are absolutely traditional baseball things, for one. But I'm not really talking about the strategies themselves, I'm talking about the mindset. They didn't run Rob Refsnyder out there for 114 ABs because the stats said they should. They did it because he's a lefty, and he's here to hit lefties, so we're gonna let him keep hitting lefties until he figures it out. Same thing with the 6 man rotation. An analytically-minded organization would have taken Castillo out of the rotation as soon as it became clear he couldn't pitch effectively after 4 innings. But, they didn't want to hurt his feelings and he was the most expensive pitcher on the team, so they let it ride, which caused massive issues later on.
The point is, they did too many things the stats obviously didn't support for reasons that had nothing to do with analytics. That is traditional baseball. Teams like the Brewers don't do things like that.
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u/YardAdmirable7060 1d ago
Left/right matchup is an analytic thing.
You think they were platooning guys in 1930?
Stats are not analytics. Stats would say bench Rob. Analytics say he will be a better matchup against a lefty than whoever he’s coming in for.
The stretched out thing doesn’t even have anything to do with this discussion and was definitely just trying to insulate Castillo/Miller’s value as a starter before one of them was traded.
Even so… does that sound like old school baseball or modern day analytics?
Without any animosity, and in the kindest way possible, you have no idea what you’re talking about.
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u/Maximus_2698 1d ago edited 1d ago
You think they were platooning guys in 1930?
Uh... yes. Even earlier than that actually. Maybe use Google before you start telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.
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u/YardAdmirable7060 1d ago
The fact you think that is the same thing as what is going on today is another indictment
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u/Maximus_2698 1d ago
I'd love to hear what you think the difference is if you don't think it's the same thing.
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u/YardAdmirable7060 1d ago
Old school “platoon” = what you allege the Mariners are doing. Thoughtless vibes.
Modern platoon = based off what the data scientists decide is most optimal.
Pinch hitting Rob Ref for a much better hitter is the furthest thing from traditional baseball and analytics + analytics based on matchups are the only way to explain it.
Old school baseball you’d get 2 maybe 3 pitchers in a game. Now you are routinely getting 6 guys throwing in a single game. That’s 6 different matchups that your analytics team is gonna favor a certain player over another in.
You’d also never take out a “better” player for a “worse” player based on tradition/vibes.
A front office now specifically builds their roster around these practices… as we’ve unfortunately seen it comes with varying levels of success. Every team does this and it’s not just left/right anymore either. The wealth of data is insane.
This idea was apparently so revolutionary they wrote a book and made a movie about it. It was hardly widespread even 20 years ago.
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u/PrinceOfPuddles 10h ago
That's just the no true Scottsman fallacy, just because it's ineffective doesn't mean it isn't under the same umbrella. Saying it's only a platoon if it works and both players are good and if you think otherwise you have no idea what you are talking about is a wild take.
Besides, trying to split things cleanly into either old school vibes and modern analytics with no crossover is a fruitless endeavor. Pulling Raley while he was hot to get him out a matchup he has struggled with is an analytics move, but batting your worst hitter, the worst hitter the organization has ever had, in the leadoff spot is about as vibes based as you can get.
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u/YardAdmirable7060 10h ago
It’s not about effectiveness at all. I don’t know where you got that from.
Not sure if that fallacy is applicable here. Unless you think that 1930s teams were also using advanced sabermetrics and predictive analytics to determine optimal matchups? Or were they actually doing something different?
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u/Proshop_Charlie 1d ago
The problem you're missing is that analytics got the Mariner's to that point in the first place.
Refsnyder was supposed be the right handed bat that crushed lefties. The problem was if you look at the 2025 Canzone vs LH pitching it wasn't horrible. The sample size was just small.
Then after a few months, even people on this sub were saying it, was that Refsnyder will turn it around etc. It wasn't looking at the sample size and seeing that Canzone was hitting nearly the same vs LH as he is RH pitching.
That's where they should have started looking at the analytics again and made a change.
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u/Maximus_2698 1d ago
It's forgivable to acquire a platoon bat on a team friendly deal to hit lefties. It's not forgivable to continue giving that player meaningful ABs long after it becomes clear he doesn't have it anymore, and his platoon pair is hitting better than him against both sides. He was 34 and a career replacement level player when they acquired him. They should have foreseen a potential decline. If their "analytics" told them that Refsnyder (or AJ Pollack, or Kolton Wong, or Tommy La Stella, or fill in the blank) could be counted on to be a difference maker on this team, then frankly, their analytics suck.
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u/stickymeowmeow 1d ago
Then why did the exact same thing happen under Servais?
I know the hot take of copium right now is to blame Dan for everything - and he absolutely was part of the problem - but have people completely forgotten the Servais era? The lefty/righty pinch hit BS was just as prevalent then. Jerry is on record, when asked about this very thing, saying he doesn’t believe hot streaks are statistically significant. The analytics say to play the lefty/righty matchup, so ignore what your eyes are telling you… that’s Jerry and the front office R&D. And that’s the opposite of “old school” baseball.
“We look at a player's projection based on who they are, not based on the last 10 days. The data tells us that a right-handed hitter facing a left-handed pitcher is always going to have a structural advantage over the long haul, regardless of whether that hitter is currently 'cold' or another player is 'hot'."
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u/Legitimate-Let-8500 1d ago
Baseball is an art, not a science.
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u/KingRalf13 22h ago
Nah, Vincent van Gogh would have been just as bad at baseball as Charles Darwin. Baseball is a beautiful combo of art and science, not just one or the other.
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u/Maximus_2698 1d ago
I'm not blaming Dan for everything. A lot of this is front office decisions. My point is that it wasn't just my eyes that were telling me the Raley/Refsnyder platoon wasn't working. The stats said it too. And their insistence on continuing to try to make it work for so long was not based on any analytics that I am aware of.
Jerry is right that a RHH against a LHP does have a built in structural advantage, but that's conventional wisdom and doesn't lead to a significant increase in production in every case, especially when other factors like normal age-related regression are at play. Analytics revealed that this particular platoon was not working and should have been abandoned long before it finally was. That's why I assert that the Mariners are not actually an analytically-driven organization.
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u/Polaris06 #24 Ken Griffey Jr. 1d ago
I’m convinced Jerry was using AI to manage us this season. Some of the decisions made this year reflect the bastardized almost logical but nonsensical conclusions reached by AI when you give it data. A lot of things we did this year were like what I get as feedback from my AI-obsessed boss when he feeds our company data into Claude for its “advice.”
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u/writerpilot 1d ago
If any host on MLB Network says it, it can safely be dismissed as anti-intellectual garbage. The Brewers are one of the most analytics heavy clubs in baseball, they just execute it better.
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u/serpentear Tartan 365 | Cruiser 1d ago
So are the Dodgers, Rays, and Guardians.
MLB Network is ridiculous.
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u/moe1984 1d ago
the brewers have the highest BA and OBP in baseball, they're top 5 in sac hits+sac bunts, and they're 2nd to last in homers. the point being made in the video is about using analytics to understand what to do in different situations to win ball games, instead of just being a "three true outcomes" drone. so what does your comment mean?
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u/vylain_antagonist 1d ago
Yeah but as the league meta evolves, the analytical target for hidden value evolves as well. The Brewers don't shape their team towards those outcomes because they've embraced an old school mentality; they have a data driven approach that has highlighted for them a market opportunity that's opened up as the league has moved in a different direction.
The issue the Ms have is what Jerry said in his presser last month: the process became the goal this season and they lost competitive focus and accountability on results.
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u/moe1984 1d ago
yeah i agree with all of that, we are on the same page. the brewers are doing what i wish the mariners would do. any approach that is 100% one way or the other will never work. you have to take into account the state of the league, the state of your roster, your home ballpark, etc., otherwise you either base everything on vibes (aka letting cal bat in the top half of the order for the entire season while he was hitting .160) or on bad data analysis (aka letting refsnyder get at bats for as long has he did based on matchups, and then letting ward get at bats for similar reasons when he was even worse).
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u/_Elrond_Hubbard_ Too Roblessed to be stressed 1d ago
I think there's a point that predictability is a weakness and the Mariners are extremely predictable because they have to always follow the Dipoto playbook 100% of the time
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u/RedditJohn52 Logan is the Bomb 1d ago
Watching the Dodgers move Ohtani down in the lineup, and possibly not playing him in the next game vs leaving Cal at 2nd in the lineup is what I want the next manager to do. And if the next Refsnyder isn't hitting, don't play him.
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u/BabboBBB 22h ago
Last time Cal hit second was June 25 (45 total). He also hit third 3 times, fourth 42, fifth 9, sixth 15 and seventh 7.
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u/Zhukovhimself CANzone🤌 20h ago
Bro, brewer and Rays are the 2 most analytically driven teams in the fucking league. Both employees ton of data analysts. Idk what this concept of small ball = old school comes from
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u/pokeroots Anything but blaming the lineup 12h ago
It's MLB Network
Analytics=things I don't like
Old school=things I do like
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u/No_Passenger_6053 23h ago
An aversion to stealing bases is idiotic if you have guys who can steal bases. Rickey Henderson and Vince Coleman made pitchers a nervous wreck anytime they were on base. That helped every hitter they were facing.
I’m less keen on bunting guys from first to second, but teaching the best hitters in the world to bunt effectively will definitely translate to wins in extra inning games with a player starting the inning on second with zero outs. I don’t understand why more teams aren’t automatically doing that in extra inning games.
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u/_Elrond_Hubbard_ Too Roblessed to be stressed 1d ago
Dipoto won us the on-paper World Series this year, we should be thanking him
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u/stuckinflorida 8h ago
The Brewers use more analytics than anyone but their in game philosophy is different. In the Padres series they were setting lineups based on projected late inning matchups which makes a lot of sense if a postseason starter is only going 3-4 innings. They just decided to accept the tradeoff of "Matsui lefty vs lefty" bad matchups in every single game in that series. It paid off in a huge way against Morejon and Miller.
Having followed the Brewers for a number of years, they started drafting slap/speed guys about a year before the rule changes went into effect and then they started training them in the minor leagues to let the ball go deeper before they swing and favor an oppo approach. They knew exactly what they were doing.
I don't think their bullpen approach is any different than other teams though. They just have been extremely careful to keep the workload low of their high leverage guys. It helps when you have a former starter like Ashby who is doing the middle innings "Bazardo" role from the 2025 Mariners but at a much higher level.
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u/BabboBBB 7h ago
Eno Sarris today in The Athletic: "Two organizations in particular have an impressive track record of finding edges through analytics and then implementing them on the field. All four of these teams are probably in the top 10 when it comes to investment in research and development and in using the data to get a leg up on opponents. The Guardians and Dodgers deserve attention as well. But right now, there may not be two better organizations to take on the 'Moneyball' mantle than the Brewers and Rays."
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u/Worried_Process_5648 3h ago
Old guys who couldn’t pass a third grade math test hate math for some reason.
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u/pokeroots Anything but blaming the lineup 12h ago
MLB Network is filled with "old man yells at clouds" the Brewers are looking likely to advance to the world series and are one the most analytically driven teams in the league. This is just blaming analytics for problems when they're not and saying that not analytics is good despite praising teams that are well known for their analytics focused approach.
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