Analytics lovers, you win. The World Series is another case of nerds winning sports.
As the founder and president of The Analytics Are Overrated and For Losers With No Friends Club, it’s time to shut down the site, and return all dues.
Even though the influx of data and numbers are not good for the marketing of baseball, the nerds won.
Several years back, when the tech revolution began, never did we baseball fans envision a time when there would be four outfielders to stop one batter, a reliever starting the game to pitch only two innings, and six pitchers combining to allow one run in a nine-inning game.
Just the same, several years ago — or several weeks ago for that matter — we never could have envisioned a neutral site World Series played during a pandemic in a brand new retractable roof stadium in Arlington, Texas.
But the Tampa Bay Rays reached the 2020 COVID Series because of numbers, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are here, too, because of data and a limitless amount of cash.
The Rays are out of the series because their infatuation with numbers bit them not in the butt, but on the other side.
Leading 1-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning in Game 6 of the World Series, Tampa manager Kevin Cash pulled his dominating starting pitcher Blake Snell after he allowed a one-out single.
Snell was rolling over the the best lineup in baseball, and was not laboring. But the numbers said it was time for him to go, so away you go.
Of course, the Rays coughed up their lead as the Dodgers scored twice in the inning en route to a 3-1 win to win their first World Series since 1988.
The math is always right, until they are get-you-fired wrong.
Twenty years ago, when the numbers started to increase their way into the game, we thought, “Those nerds are a threat to our way of life.” (Full disclosure: That’s a direct quote from the classic comedy “Revenge of the Nerds,” which was released way more than 20 years ago.)
For some reason we think everything else around us can, and often should, change. But baseball is not permitted to evolve beyond some glorified version of an America that is more a figment of our imagination than rooted in reality.
The world changes at varying speeds, as has baseball. The game currently sits in a passionate affair with data.
The nerds are now beating up the jocks.
As a baseball fan who is not crazy about this direction, we need to get over it. We just sound like a crew of old men at 3 p.m. dinners glorifying how much better it used to be while ignoring the good ol’ days were just as flawed.
“The world evolves and as it evolves you have to change with the times,” former LA Dodgers and current Colorado Rockies free agent outfielder Matt Kemp told me in a phone interview on Tuesday.
Kemp, who was promoting his foundation and the considerable work he’s done in the Dallas area with food and backpack drives for kids, has been in the big leagues since 2006 and has lived this evolution.
“I played in old school, and new school. I love some of the the old school, and the new. We can get a mix, and I think people will be happy.”
The mix will happen organically.
No matter what rule MLB commissioner Rob Manfred puts in place to try to eliminate the new formations to combat offense, including a discussed ban on the shift of defensive players, people will figure out a new way.
That’s the game. You can’t stop the game.
If all of these toys, gadgets, computers (and cameras) had existed 60 years ago, players and managers would have been doing the same thing to Mickey Mantle, and pulling Bob Gibson at 110 pitches.
As fans, our eyes have to adjust and just accept this is baseball today.
When “Field of Dreams” is ultimately remade, the new Kevin Costner does not re-connect with his ghost dad over a game of catch, rather they bond over the pure hatred over stealing second base and the mathematical stupidity of trying to bunt for a base hit.
Rather than trying to fight some of this evolution, guys like Manfred and everyone else in MLB need to market the people who play the game, and combat the actual length of the games themselves.
Baseball continues to fail miserably at peddling its personalities, which is what drives interest in any sport.
Everyone who does a thing with MLB must agree that its games can’t last four hours. The modern entertainment consumer is not going buy any four-hour long product six nights a week.
The infatuation with technology and numbers is not specific to baseball, and those of us who decry its infiltration gleefully disregard the fact that we complain about it while doing so on our iPhones, as we pay for everything from food to clothing to rent on an app.
The numbers game is not going anywhere, and The Analytics Are Overrated and For Losers With No Friends Club is officially closed .... although Kevin Cash may reopen it soon.
