Read this story by Jayson Stark about how detailed scouting information on hitters in baseball is stored, analyzed, and disseminated. It’s a great piece of writing that dives into one of the big reasons that scoring in baseball is down. Teams now know so much about individual hitters’ tendencies that they can craft a specific game plan geared to exploiting each player’s weaknesses and getting them out.
Stark is a longtime Philadelphia resident, so it’s not surprising that he uses an example that’s familiar to most Phillies fans. Ryan Howard had a couple of gigantic offensive years when he first became a regular. But as teams gathered more data on him, they realized what a phenomenally bad idea it was to throw him a fastball, so they’ve done it less and less often. They also move their fielders from where they traditionally would position themselves to the spots where Howard usually hits the ball. The result is that while Howard has had good numbers since his early years, they haven’t been as good.
As Stark says, more and more teams are using “unconventional” defense on more and more hitters. Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon sits down with an iPad each morning and combs through the statistics his organization has compiled in order to devise defensive positioning and pitching approaches for that night’s game.
There are a couple of things that fascinate me about this story. One is that I like the example of a way that technology has made specific information available and accessible. We hear a lot about how the Web and Google put a lot of general information at everyone’s fingertips, but this is much more detailed information than you find on Wikipedia or Retrosheet, and it’s easier for people to process because it can be presented using the iPad.
The other is that Stark suggests that even as Maddon’s Rays have shown a lot of success with their defensive shifts, many teams don’t replicate his aggressiveness because they’re too comfortable with traditional approaches. It’s an interesting example of how information can help you – if you’re willing to use it. That lesson applies to a lot more than just baseball.