Stop me if you’re familiar with this narrative…
- A yellow-and-black-wearing baseball team from a blue-collar city has fallen out of postseason relevance for two decades.
- A new manager comes in, makes necessary adjustments, and the team experiences a revival of sorts, luring people back to the ballpark once the snakebitten fairweather fans saw that the product on the field was actually good again.
- In spite of a return to relevance, the team never won the big one, and ultimately fell back into mediocrity.
While the above describes the 1986-2020 Hanshin Tigers quite well (laughingstock from 1986-2002, pennants in 2003 & 2005, and a lot of finishes in the middle of the pack ever since), I bring it up because the 1993-2020 Pittsburgh Pirates have had a similar fate across the pond (under .500 from 1993-2012, playoff appearances in 2013-15, mostly mediocre since). Neither team finished what it started, and the pieces that were in place for both teams back then have basically all been replaced.
Obviously, this book is about the latter team. Manager Clint Hurdle was given a third season in 2013 to put up a winning record after coming quite close in 2011 and 2012, but he needed some outside help and an open mind in order to make it happen. Big Data Baseball tracks the people and the factors that went into turning this once-embarrassing franchise into the talk of the town, if only for a few fleeting years.
So, what were the big “behind the curtain” changes that the Pirates made that led to their short run of quality baseball?
- Signed a premium pitch-framer. Russell Martin is, in many ways, the focal point of the entire narrative. Not only was he a huge upgrade at catcher for a bargain price, but he also improved the clubhouse atmosphere, communication and trust with the pitching staff, and was a fan favorite. Not bad for someone who was written off by nearly every other MLB team when he became a free agent after the 2012 season. Martin saved tons of runs with his elite pitch frame and game calling, two skills that were previously not quantifiable or recognized as crucial to the game. Finally, a Canadian baseball player featured prominently in a book — talk about easy to cheer for!
- Tweaked their pitchers’ approaches. Instead of relying heavily on the standard four-seam fastball, pitchers were encouraged to use a similar two-seam ball, because it had better late movement on it, which led to more balls being pounded into the ground for easier outs, especially since they also…
- Shifted their infield defense (and to an extent, the outfield, too). This obviously required the players themselves to buy in and believe that it didn’t matter if there were a few outliers that, had the defense been set up in the traditional way, end up as hits. The number of hits (and runs) prevented with the shift were far greater than the few that it allowed. The shift grew in its complexity as the season went on, looking not only at the hitter’s tendencies, but also how he did against particular pitcher-types, particular pitches, particular counts, and more. This was all enabled by…
- Hiring full-time data analysts and allowing them to attend team meetings, travel with the team, stay in the dugout (?) during games, and basically have influence far greater than had ever been allowed before. These were guys who had never played the game, but did wonders with the data they culled from PITCHf/x, Statcaster, and later Trackman. These guys were given full respect from the players and coaching staff, largely due to Hurdle’s insistence that they be heavily involved in day-to-day decisions and the implementation of new ideas.
On the whole, this was an excellent read. The fact that I read it in 2020 was both a positive and a negative, in that, as a casual MLB fan, I had forgotten how these seasons had played out for the Pirates so I was kind of on the edge of my seat as the author retold the postseason runs in 2013 and 2014. However, on the flip side of that, the analytics that have gone into baseball since 2015 (when the book was first published) have changed and evolved so much, that a lot of what was written in here does not feel revolutionary anymore.
That being said, I wonder if anyone on the Hanshin Tigers coaching staff or in the front office has ever picked up this book or considered implementing a little more data and a few unconventional ideas into what the team does on the field. After all, it’s not like these Tigers have anything to lose at this point. I mean, since 1985, they have two pennants (in a 3-year window) and nothing else. Next year will be 16 years since the last pennant, and fans are starting to lose patience with the club. (Perhaps attendance figures beg to differ, but come on, Hanshin! Let’s win a pennant or two while I’m still into the team!)