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/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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u/[deleted] 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.

https://tht.fangraphs.com/great-platoons-1914-1948/

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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 ‏‏‎ ‎ 15h 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 15h 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 1d 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.”