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/KingRalf13 1d 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. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis