The New Numbers Game

Scott Nover
Aug 23, 2017 · 3 min read

Wrapping my head around numbers and baseball.

I recently dug through the The Atlantic archives and discovered this Scott Stossel piece — “The Numbers Game” — asserting that “baseball has been appropriated and distorted by the overemphasis on statistics, by the fetishization of the number.” This was in October 1998. The juicy, muscular, home-run era of Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds (the big necks of baseball) was on the horizon, if not yet in full swing.

Today, baseball has laughed at Stossel’s warning, tossed it out, launched it out of a t-shirt cannon. Recently, Major League Baseball has doubled down on its numbers proclivity with Statcast, MLB Advanced Media’s complex high-accuracy tracking system, introducing new high-caliber statistics every year, tracking every twist, turn, and curve the ball makes.

“baseball has been appropriated and distorted by the overemphasis on statistics, by the fetishization of the number.”

With Statcast, new statistics with flashy names like exit velocity and launch angle have captivated baseball audiences and perhaps re-upped Stossel’s question about how much is too much? Do we lose something human by quantifying every aspect of our American pastime. Is it natural when batters hit into distorted infield shifts, surmised by advanced sabermetrics? Is it philistine to enjoy the chaos of the strike zone, perhaps the one area where the umpire can reign unhindered by the possibility of instant replay correcting their mistakes?

Tune into any baseball game, on TV, on the radio, on your over-the-top platform of choice — commentators are having this debate most nights.

This year, there’s a face of Statcast: Yankees rookie all-star Aaron Judge. The 25-year-old leads the American League with 37 home runs, but he also leads Statcast marks in home run distance (495 ft.), exit velocity (121.1 mph), and average exit velocity (96.2 mph).

And without Judge, I might consider Stossel’s point, that we’ve become so fixated on numerology that we have “lost sight of the drama and the humanity of team sport at its best.”

Tune into any baseball game, on TV, on the radio, on your over-the-top platform of choice — commentators are having this debate most nights.

Regardless of my inherited affiliation as a Yankee fan, Judge has brought an excitement to the game that’s equal parts beautiful and statistical. Yes, he raked in new audiences for the Home Run Derby last month, but he also gets crowds early to every stadium he visits just to watch his batting practice. What’s more fundamental to the sport than that?

Even with Judge’s recent slump, Marlins’ slugger Giancarlo Stanton has climbed to 46 homers, hitting six in consecutive games this month. And just last night, Yankees youngster Gary Sanchez hit 493 ft in Detroit, second only on Statcast to Judge’s June bomb.

For skeptics and progressives alike, statistics have always been a part of the baseball experience. And while I loved playing baseball as a kid, I was never disappointed sitting around, etching a scorecard either.

For the spectator, advanced statistics are a natural progression of this idea. How good is Aaron Judge? Well, we’ve quantified every facet of his swing, every micrometer of his opponent’s pitching motion, and we’ve got a good idea.

Luddites will always complain, but if they’re watching baseball, chances are they’re also checking the stats.

If only Statcast existed for Bonds, for A-Rod, for Canseco when the game was dirty. I grew up in that time, when long balls left the park like they were never meant to stay. And, of course, it all came crashing down.

If only Statcast existed back then, we could see how natural talents like Judge or the Stanton stack up, how they can redefine the next home-run era, blasting us there with a higher exit velocity and a greater launch angle.

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Scott Nover

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Journalist writing about the future of news, media, and technology. Let's chat on Twitter.

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