The MVP Machine
Page 41
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
BEN LINDBERGH is a staff writer for The Ringer and hosts the Effectively Wild podcast for FanGraphs. The coauthor of New York Times bestseller The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, he lives in New York, NY.
TRAVIS SAWCHIK is a staff writer for FiveThirtyEight. The author of New York Times bestseller Big Data Baseball, he lives in Bay Village, OH.
ALSO BY TRAVIS SAWCHIK
Big Data Baseball: Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Streak
ALSO BY BEN LINDBERGH
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team
PRAISE FOR THE MVP MACHINE
“Travis Sawchik and Ben Lindbergh brilliantly capture the next frontier of major-league teams’ ‘evolve or die’ mindset: the league-wide movement of using data, technology, and science to revolutionize the way players are developed. Baseball has seen a rapid influx of high-curiosity, growth-mindset players and coaches, creating the perfect environment for innovation and rethinking convention. The MVP Machine provides tremendous insight into baseball’s latest transformation.”
—Billy Eppler, General Manager, Los Angeles Angels
“The MVP Machine isn’t just the purest distillation yet of baseball’s information era and how it came to be. It’s a seminal road map for the game today and treasure map to find—and understand—the gems baseball soon will offer.”
—Jeff Passan, MLB insider, ESPN
“As the game of baseball, and more specifically the teaching methods within, continue to evolve, The MVP Machine paints a real-time portrait of player development. Players and coaches are in a constant search for advantages that will push their personal limits on the field in order to maximize their abilities. Ben and Travis provide fascinating details of how individual players pushed the boundaries of innovative coaching, self-reflection, and a willingness to make even the smallest of adjustments in order to reach new heights as players. This book is a very accurate portrayal of modern-day player development and the ongoing pursuit of individual greatness.”
—Mike Hazen, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Arizona Diamondbacks
“A lot of books have claimed to be Moneyball 2.0, but this book actually delivers. It chronicles the changes that are transforming the game of baseball at a fundamental level and shifting power back into the hands of players and coaches.”
—Mike Fast, Special Assistant to the General Manager, Atlanta Braves and former Director of Research and Development, Houston Astros
“High-speed cameras and radar-tracking devices have revolutionized training and are now giving baseball players accurate, detailed, and actionable feedback during practice. This captivating book details step-by-step how merely good major-league players have recently been able to transform themselves into great ones and reach previously unattainable levels of mastery by purposeful and deliberate practice.”
—K. Anders Ericsson, Conradi Eminent Scholar of Psychology, Florida State University, and author of Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
“Travis Sawchik and Ben Lindbergh are always at the forefront of the analytics revolution. The MVP Machine brings us the newly emerging competitive advantage whereby players are joining the intellectual advancement of the game and utilizing the new tools available to build a better major-league player. Make no mistake, this is how games, divisions, and World Series titles are now being won.”
—Brian Kenny, MLB Network
GLOSSARY
Abbreviations
ABCA: American Baseball Coaches Association
AL: American League
ALCS: American League Championship Series
ALDS: American League Division Series
BABIP: batting average on balls in play
BP: batting practice
CBA: collective bargaining agreement
DSL: Dominican Summer League
ERA: earned run average
FIP: fielding independent pitching
GM: general manager
IL: injured list
ISO: isolated power (slugging percentage minus batting average)
MLB: Major League Baseball
MLBAM: MLB Advanced Media
MLBPA: MLB Players Association
MVP: most valuable player
NCAA: National Collegiate Athletic Association
NL: National League
OBP: on-base percentage
OPS: on-base plus slugging
PD: player development
PDP: Prospect Development Pipeline
PECOTA: player empirical comparison and optimization test algorithm
PGA: Professional Golfers Association
SABR: Society for American Baseball Research
SEC: Southeastern Conference
TPI: Titleist Performance Institute
WAR: Wins Above Replacement
WARP: Wins Above Replacement Player
WHIP: Walks plus Hits per Inning Pitched
wOBA: weighted On-Base Average
wRC+: weighted Runs Created Plus
Terms
A-ball: A lower level of the affiliated minor leagues.
Bauer Unit: The mph/rpm reading of a pitch; used to quantify spin.
Big 12: An NCAA Division I athletic conference.
changeup: A pitch type thrown slower than a fastball and designed to fade away from a batter.
Class D: How the lowest level of the minor leagues was defined prior to 1962.
College World Series: The NCAA Division I championship tournament.
curveball: A breaking pitch that departs from a straight trajectory due to its spin axis and spin rate.
Cy Young Award: The annual award bestowed by the Baseball Writers Association of America on the best pitcher in each major league.
Division I, II, III: The levels of intercollegiate athletics, from highest (Division I) to lowest (Division III).
Double-A: The second-highest level of the minor leagues after Triple-A.
draft pick: A player selected in baseball’s first-year player draft, which is held each June.
Edgertronic: A type of high-speed, high-definition camera manufactured by Sanstreak and applied to pitch design.
fastball: A pitch type that generally features the greatest velocity and the least movement.
fly ball: A label for an elevated batted ball.
40-man roster: The group of players eligible to be added to the 25-man active roster, including players on the 25-man, some minor leaguers, and players on the injured, bereavement, or paternity leave lists.
four-seam fastball: The fastest and straightest pitch, thrown with the fingers perpendicular to the seams.
Golden Spikes Award: The award given to the best player in Division I baseball each year.
Gold Glove Award: Honor bestowed upon the best fielder at every position in each major league.
Great Wall of Groundball Prevention: A ring of screens stationed around the infield to encourage hitters to aim up, designed by Indians coach Pete Lauritson while at the University of Iowa.
gyroball: Theoretical pitch thrown with a spin axis in line with its movement, making it immune to the Magnus effect.
High-A: Between Low-A and Double-A in the minor-league hierarchy.
hit-by-pitch: Term for when a batter is hit by a thrown pitch.
indy ball: Independent baseball; collective term for all professional leagues unaffiliated with MLB teams.
K rate: Percentage of plate appearances that result in a strikeout.
Laminar Express: Nickname given to Trevor Bauer’s two-seam fastball.
laminar flow: A principle of fluid dynamics that can make a sphere (such as a baseball) curve away from its initial course.
leverage index: A measure of a plate appearance’s importance in determining e
ach team’s win probability within a game.
L-screen: An L-shaped protective net designed to shield batting practice pitchers.
Magnus effect: The force exerted on a spinning sphere or cylinder that creates a pressure differential on opposite sides, leading to movement.
newton metre: A unit of torque.
Opening Day: The first day of the MLB season.
PITCHf/x: A camera-based pitch-tracking system that debuted in MLB ballparks in 2007.
Players Association: The union representing MLB players.
pop fly or pop-up: A mishit batted ball that is hit high but not far and is typically easily caught.
pulldown: A max-effort practice throw.
pull side: The left side of the field for a right-handed batter, or the right side of the field for a left-handed batter.
Rapsodo: A portable tracking unit capable of measuring pitch speed, movement, spin, and spin efficiency.
Rookie ball: The lowest level of the domestic minor leagues.
Rookie of the Year: Award given to the best new player in each of the major leagues.
Rule 5 draft: An annual player selection process designed to prevent teams from hoarding too many young players in their minor-league systems; players selected must be added to the new team’s MLB roster or returned to their old team.
sabermetrician: An analyst devoted to obtaining objective knowledge about baseball, often employing statistical or mathematical methods.
Saber Seminar: Annual Boston-based sabermetric conference for charity.
sidespin: The type of spin that makes a breaking ball or changeup move horizontally.
sinker: A fastball gripped parallel with the seams that travels slower and moves more than a four-seamer, generally thrown to induce ground balls; also known as a two-seam fastball.
slider: A breaking pitch with more velocity and horizontal break than a curveball; has the highest average whiff rate of any pitch.
spike (half, full): Grip classifications pertaining to the placement of a pitcher’s index finger on a ball; with a full spike, a pitcher jabs the tip of his index finger into the ball.
spin axis: The axis around which a ball or sphere spins, which determines the direction of its movement or break.
spin rate: Frequency with which a pitch rotates around its spin axis; plays a role in determining how much a pitch will break.
Statcast: A comprehensive player-tracking system that debuted in all MLB ballparks in 2015, combining optical cameras and TrackMan radar.
super-utility player: A versatile player capable of playing a number of defensive positions.
TrackMan: A Doppler radar-based tracking system that began in golf and measures the speed, movement, and spin of pitched and batted balls in almost all high-level ballparks.
Triple-A: The highest level of the minor leagues.
tunnel: A pitch’s path to the plate: by throwing different types of pitches within the same tunnel, a pitcher can camouflage his pitches’ true natures until it’s too late for hitters to react to their movement.
Voros’s law: “Any major league hitter can hit just about anything in 60 at-bats”: a cautionary maxim about the perils of small-sample performance, coined by baseball analyst Voros McCracken.
Winter Meetings: Annual baseball industry convention, often accompanied by a flurry of player transactions.
0-for-4: The stat line of a batter who had no hits in four at-bats.
NOTES
Chapter 1: Saviormetrics
1. Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (New York: Norton, 2003).
2. Bill James, “An Interview with Billy Martin,” Esquire, May 1984, 71–72.
3. Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt, Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way (College Park, MD: Potomac, 2004), 312.
4. John Harper, “A’s GM Still Putting ‘Money’ Where His Mouth Is,” New York Daily News, August 3, 2003.
5. Phil Birnbaum, “Eliminating Stupidity Is Easier Than Creating Brilliance,” Sabermetric Research, June 13, 2013, http://blog.philbirnbaum.com/2013/06/eliminating-stupidity-is-easier-than.html (blog).
Chapter 2: A Natural Maniac, an Unnatural Athlete
1. Harry Hillaker, “Tribute to John R. Boyd,” Code One Magazine, January 28, 2015, www.codeonemagazine.com/f16_article.html?item_id=156.
2. Angela Lee Duckworth, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” TED Talk, published May 9, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8.
3. Ben Brewster, “Four Ways to Improve Your External Rotation to Throw Harder,” TreadAthletics, August 5, 2016, https://treadathletics.com/external-rotation-throw-harder/.
4. Tianyi D. Luo, Gregory Lane Naugher, Austin Stone, Sandeep Mannava, Jeff Strahm, and Michael T. Freehill. “Ultra-long-toss vs. Straight-line Throwing for Glenohumeral Range of Motion Recovery in Collegiate Baseball Pitchers,” Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, July 31, 2017, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5542142/.
5. Kevin E. Wilk, “Insufficient Shoulder External Rotation Increases Shoulder Injury, Surgery in Pitchers,” Healio: Orthopedics Today, December 2015, www.healio.com/orthopedics/sports-medicine/news/print/orthopedics-today/%7Bb565af15-810c-4ec0-8b50-8acedc98391a%7D/insufficient-shoulder-external-rotation-increases-shoulder-injury-surgery-in-pitchers.
6. Lee Jenkins, “Trevor Bauer Will Not Be Babied,” Sports Illustrated, August 15, 2011.
Chapter 3: Making Mules into Racehorses
1. Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt, In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 70.
2. Ibid., 75.
3. Ibid., 78.
4. Ibid., 74.
5. Ibid., 78.
6. Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 113.
7. Fresco Thompson, Every Diamond Doesn’t Sparkle (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1964), 71.
8. Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, 122.
9. Thompson, Every Diamond Doesn’t Sparkle, 125.
10. Richard J. Puerzer, “The Chicago Cubs’ College of Coaches: A Management Innovation That Failed,” The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, no. 26, Society for American Baseball Research (2006): 3–17, http://research.sabr.org/journals/files/SABR-National_Pastime-26.pdf.
11. Christopher D. Green, “Psychology Strikes Out: Coleman R. Griffith and the Chicago Cubs,” History of Psychology 6, no. 3 (2003): 267–283.
12. Charlie Grimm with Ed Prell, Jolly Cholly’s Story: Baseball, I Love You! (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1968), 240.
13. Al Wolf, “Cub Pilot Plan Poses Problem,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1961, C2.
14. Edward Prell, “Col. Whitlow Takes Over—Cubs Appoint Athletic Director,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 11, 1963, C1.
15. Kevin Kerrane, Dollar Sign on the Muscle (New York: Beaufort, 1984), 128.
16. Ibid., 128.
17. Richard J. Puerzer, “The Kansas City Royals’ Baseball Academy,” The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, no. 24, Society for American Baseball Research (2006): 3–13, http://research.sabr.org/journals/files/SABR-National_Pastime-24.pdf.
18. Spike Claassen, “42 Survive Cuts for Royals’ Academy,” The Sporting News, September 5, 1970.
19. Spike Claassen, “Kauffman Dedicates ‘Dream’ Academy,” The Sporting News, April 3, 1971.
20. Ibid.
21. Ted Williams and John Underwood, The Science of Hitting (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 14.
22. Leigh Montville, “A Gripping Tale: The Accidental Discovery of a Two-Seam Changeup Has Made Atlanta’s Tom Glavine Baseball’s Best Pitcher,” Sports Illustrated, July 13, 1992, www.si.com/vault/1992/07/13/126807/a-gripping-tale-the-accidental-discovery-of-a-two-seam-changeup-has-made-atlantas-tom-glavine-baseballs-best-pitcher.
23. Peter King’s Football Morning in America, “Week 2,” aired September 17, 2018, NBC Sports, https://profoot
balltalk.nbcsports.com/2018/09/17/patrick-mahomes-chiefs-nfl-week-2-fmia-peter-king/?cid=nbcsports#the-lead-mahomes.
24. Craig R. Wright, The Diamond Appraised (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 24.
25. Ibid., 12.
Chapter 4: First Principles
1. Elon Musk, “The Mind Behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity,” TED Talk, February 2013, www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spacex_solarcity#t-232078.
2. Chris Anderson, “Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars,” Wired, October 21, 2012.
3. Barry Bearak, “Harvey’s Injury Shows Pitchers Have a Speed Limit,” New York Times, September 16, 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/sports/baseball/harveys-injury-shows-pitchers-have-a-speed-limit.html.
4. Michael G. Marshall, Coaching Pitchers, section 9, chapter 36, www.drmikemarshall.com/ChapterThirty-Six.html.
5. Kyle Boddy, “Reviewing ASMI’s Biomechanical analysis of Dr. Marshall’s Pitchers,” Driveline Baseball, October 10, 2011, www.drivelinebaseball.com/2011/10/reviewing-asmis-biomechanical-analysis-of-dr-marshalls-pitchers-focus-performancevelocity/(blog).
6. David McCullough, The Wright Brothers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 63.
7. Ibid.
8. Kyle Boddy, “Weighted Balls, Safety, and Consequences,” Driveline Baseball, March 3, 2016, www.drivelinebaseball.com/2016/03/weighted-baseballs-safety-and-consequences/(blog).
9. Frans Bosch, Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach (Rotterdam, Netherlands: Uitgevers, 2010), 227.
10. Eric Cressey, “Weighted Baseballs: Safe and Effective, or Stupid and Dangerous?,” Eric Cressey, December 15, 2009, https://ericcressey.com/weighted-baseballs-safe-and-effective-or-stupid-and-dangerous.
11. G. S. Fleisig, A. Z. Diffendaffer, K. T. Aune, B. Ivey, and W. A. Laughlin, “Biomechanical Analysis of Weighted-Ball Exercises for Baseball Pitchers,” Sports Health 9, no. 3 (May/June 2017): 210–215, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27872403.