Analytics and Entertainment: How Advanced Stats aren’t Ruining Baseball

Like it or hate it, analytics in baseball are here to stay. No longer will discussions be about the run batted in, but rather the weighted run created.

At the end of the day, baseball is a business. The time tested way to drive business? Wins. At least in the long run.

But what about the game level? What if I brought a friend to a random game in the middle of June? What has to happen in the game for me to think that I got my money’s worth?

Ultimately, teams will value what brings them wins more than what entertains the fans, but these aren’t mutually exclusive.

Thirty years ago, standards to judge a player’s value towards winning may involve valuing stolen bases, batting average, or the amount of wins a pitcher has highly. If a pitcher has more wins he must be valuable right? (Not really). Strikeouts, as a batter, hurt your value, and walks were a sissy way to get to first.

Those days are gone. Strikeouts aren’t nearly as frowned upon and while yes walks aren’t as good as singles, they’re much closer than previously thought.

It was mentioned on the Ringer’s MLB podcast that analytics, and more specifically, the three true outcomes (walks, strikeouts, and home runs) philosophy, is making baseball less entertaining. They disliked the lack of movement on the bases which create more complex and entertaining situations.

To some extent, I agree. Late game situations with runners on base are thrilling, especially when the game is tied. With the home run we clear bases more often, with strikeouts we don’t even get fielders fielding, and walks may put men on base, but there’s no tension and uncertainty a ball in play makes.

Furthermore, with men on base, anything can happen. Facing a pitcher with no one on? Unless you’re facing Madison Bumgarner, the worst thing that can happen is put an unathletic pitcher on the base paths, but with runners on, a whole game can change with one swing of the bat.

Take for example Archie Bradley, a middle reliever for the Diamondbacks. In the 7th inning of the 2017 National League Wild Card game, he hits a bases clearing triple to give much needed insurance for Arizona (who ended up winning the game). This was Bradley’s fourth at bat of the year.

But that’s only part of the game, and three true outcomes players aren’t as prevalent as it may seem. Look at the MVP contenders last year: Jose Altuve slashed .346/.410/.547, and “only” 24 home runs. Aaron Judge doesn’t get all the hype if he only hit home runs (he had a 0.284 batting average last year, and is currently hitting 0.337). A similar story is found in the National League with guys like Giancarlo Stanton and Joey Votto.

This is all anecdotal however. Let’s look at league wide trends.

Note that strikeouts were not very well recorded in the early days of baseball.

The value of the Home Run has been clear for almost a century now. In the days of Ty Cobb, you were told to hit downward to get singles. The risk of striking out with long upward swings was not worth it, but once the Slugging Sultan of Swat came around and formed Murderer’s Row, baseball minds began to realize maybe they should swing for the fences. Sabermetrics enhanced that perception even further.

To some, it may be surprising that there’s a recent downward trend in home runs, but many confounding factors exist, most notably the end of the steroid era. Even the recent spike has been commonly attributed to “juiced balls”.

All this being said, the overall trend is still up on home runs. Everyone digs the long ball. Analytics have helped baseball become more entertaining in this regard.

Strikeouts, on the other hand, are hard to gauge their “entertainment value”. We chastise hitters for striking out five times, but we also celebrate pitchers for striking out twenty batters in a game.

Nevertheless, strikeouts are way up, and the trend looks like it will continue (ask Giancarlo Stanton). More traditional baseball fans may not like this, but how entertaining this is is subjective. It’s all about context to me: Max Scherzer mowing down Baby Bomber’s? Sign me up. Chris Carter “earning” a golden sombrero against Brandon McCarthy? Hard pass.

A lot can be said about the strikeout trends, overall I think it does hurt how entertaining the game is. There are way more free swingers giving mediocre pitchers seemingly better “stuff”, or at least the appearance of so. Anyone can be a free swinger, not everyone can be Clayton Kershaw.

Walks however are pretty un-entertaining to me. Are there cases where they are? Absolutely: a 15 pitch walk with a ton of foul balls that finally ends in a walk? That’s exhilarating. Even a routine flyout can rile up the crowd if it took 21 pitches to get there, nevertheless, there’s not really much of a trend going on.

Analyzing the three true outcomes, we get a mixed picture. But why stop there? The game involves a lot more than three outcomes.

One of the victims of sabermetric thought has been small ball. While not completely dead, (especially in the National League), you won’t find teams building teams based on the concept of “manufacturing runs”.

While good teams should be able to pull out small ball tactics when necessary (notably in low scoring games in late innings), you’ll be hard pressed to find teams fighting for one run in the 2nd inning (unless the pitcher is hitting).

For those unfamiliar, small ball is the mindset of sacrificing the potential for a large inning, in order to create a higher likelihood of scoring at least a run.

The biggest strategies you will find in a small ball team is stress on the sacrifice bunt, and the stolen base.

The more I have read about analytical thinking, the more I grow further away from small ball. I am still a fan of the stolen base at the right time, but the sacrifice bunt, a staple of small ball, has grown to be an antiquity.

The thought was sure you’re giving the other team an out, but putting a runner in scoring position would make up for it.

This was always conjecture. Take the concept of run expectancy, how many runs are you supposed to score on average based on the base runners and outs. With no outs and a runner on first, if you were to swing the bat, you would be expected to score 0.831 runs by the time the inning ends. Small ball dictates that you must bunt here to move the runner into scoring position. In a vacuum, yes, a runner at second is better than a runner at first, but we must also factor in outs. You only get 27 outs to play with, so giving your opponent a free one must beg the question what do you get out of it?

Now we bunted: in exchange for a runner in scoring position we give away an out. The run expectancy is now 0.644. Proponents of the sacrifice bunt will say that sure we won’t score as much, but we are more likely to score one run at this point. But with this mindset you are in the long run still scoring fewer runs. In certain situations, yes, it could make sense (the hitter is really REALLY bad or late game situations), but having this mindset to start a game is against the goal to win.

Not only does sacrifice bunting not align with modern analytical philosophies of winning, but it’s just not entertaining, at least to me. We as fans are robbed of big exciting innings. Sure, noone is gonna tell Aaron Judge to bunt the ball but 20 years ago perhaps a guy like Marwin Gonzalez would be told to. Instead of lacing a double down the line, we watch a repetitive bunt play and a competitor give up the fundamental competition with the pitcher.

The only time bunting ever makes sense is when you bunt to get on (i.e. a drag bunt) and I personally find those entertaining. Keeping the defense on its heels and watching a competitor try to beat the throw.

The stolen base has dropped in the rise of analytics but not nearly as much as the sacrifice bunt, and for good reason.

Why is that? Going back to run expectancy, we should go through risk reward situations. If he decides to stand there and let the hitter swing, his team is expected to score 0.831. If he steals second, that number jumps to 1.068. If he fails and gets caught, it drops to 0.243.

The stolen base is fundamentally different from the sacrifice bunt as the run expectancy in a “successful” sac bunt is worse than doing nothing, versus the stolen base where it is a clearly better situation.

With this in mind however, that drop in RE if the runner is caught is significant. We’d like to have a pretty high probability of success before stealing. This number winds up being around 75%. For reference, Rickey Henderson, the Man of Steal and all time stolen base leader, stole bases at an 82% rate at his peak and at an 81% for his career.

And sure these are league averages. To make sure the bunt or the stolen base is worth it you have to take into account who’s on the bases, the pitcher’s speed to the plate, the catcher’s pop time, who’s next in the lineup, the list goes on. Be smart in the situation, but in general it makes no sense to square up for a sacrifice bunt and the standard for a stolen base green light is much higher.

The sac bunt is only worth it for the absolute worst hitters: pitchers. Even Mendoza line hitters should be swinging. Guys like Jose Altuve, Billy Hamilton, and Byron Buxton make stealing a bag worth it, but guys like Dustin Pedroia? He used to steal at a solid rate but in 2013 he stole bags at 53.1%. He doesn’t steal nearly as often anymore, generally waiting for the right game situation and the right batteries to steal off of. Sure, this can be attributed to older age and injuries but I think the Red Sox have noticed and adjusted.

To some, the death of small ball may be awful. I disagree. While I do think the stolen base is still very entertaining, and the decline there is a little disappointing, teams still steal. Not nearly as often as before but they still do.

And the small loss in stolen bases? I’ll take it if it means we see players stop squaring up for bunts. The next step to removing the stupid sacrifice bunt? Bring the DH to both leagues (but this is a very touchy subject that I’ll get to another day).

But what about the ringer’s assertion we don’t get as man at bats with runners on the base paths?

Looking at this graph there seems to be some merit in his statement.

We can also look at looking at the number of plate appearances based on leverage. Leverage bases the “intensity” of a situation with more than just the baserunners. Sure there could be bases loaded but if you’re up by 15 and there’s 2 outs, it’s still not as high pressure as if the game were tied.

We can see there wasn’t much of a trend with high leverage situations until a steep drop last year. There has been a general trend downward with medium leverage situations. So there seems to be merit in what the Ringer said.

So the picture is very murky. In some ways the game is less entertaining but in some ways the game is more entertaining. This should not surprise anyone. Like all things, nothing is perfect (baseball is close though). The issue lies in how we look at the games of yore: through rose colored glasses. The game of the past had its issues too.

In the end, it’s really up to you. I personally find the game just as entertaining as it has been, and beyond just the game, analytics has given me a new way to look at the game; It has given me a plethora of information to process every game.

My analysis, admittedly, simplifies the game a lot. Is there a formula that says “have this many strikeouts this many plays with RISP, and a home run and you got a good game”? No, but nothing is ever that simple. All I know is that the greatest game ever played were played between two of the most analytically driven teams ever.

And in the great words of Ilya Bryzagalov, “Is only game, why you have to be mad?”