A friend sent me that piece from The Atlantic accusing Moneyball of ruining America (the next logical step in the argument that it ruined baseball), and…We need a collective reeducation on what Moneyball was. Moneyball, the concept, was not to boil everything down to microscopic numbers. Moneyball, the concept, was to find competitive advantages in order to win a lot of games while spending only a little bit of money. The book is not about statistics. The book is about innovation, competition, and courage. Statistics was a character. It was not the moral.
That said, Moneyball did kick off an era of optimization within the game of baseball. Groupthink didn’t go away, but it pivoted in such a way that analytics grew gigantically in stature. It’s true as well, I believe, that Moneyball accompanied a societal statistical revolution. Whether it caused it is up for debate, and I’m not concerned about that revolution ruining America (I’ve got blog posts to write, no time for empire-death-by-on-base-percentage), but we live in a statistical age! For better. Not really for worse.
Moneyball kicked off an era of optimization within the game of baseball, and the effects are still playing out, but one seems to be that the game isn’t as fun to watch. Home runs are great, but it turns out you can have too many of them, especially if they come with spikes in strikeouts and walks, which are generally boring. Aggressive bullpen usage is time-consuming and tiring, with carbon-copy relievers trotting out one after another just as they head up and down from the minor leagues together, much less fun role players than a stolen base threat who spends 95% of his time on the bench. The shift looks weird.
Thankfully, this doesn’t mean baseball will forever be boring, or that baseball is even boring right now. This World Series certainly seems, to me at least, to be an indicator that playoff baseball remains electric, even if regular season games can get tedious these days. My heart hasn’t pounded during a sporting event like it did during the tenth inning of Game 1 since…March? Good luck to the NBA and NFL in recreating that kind of magic. Looking ahead, too, changes are on the way, and this is the real answer to the optimization puzzle: If you create a game, and someone optimizes it, and that optimal strategy isn’t one you like…change the game. Change the rules. Make the competitors find the new optimal.
I don’t believe we’ve really arrived at steady-state optimized baseball under the current rules. These teams are decidedly distinct, their players are decidedly distinct, this is not a board game. But the innovation’s happening behind the scenes more than it once did. The competition is, in some instances, lacking. The courage isn’t always there. That isn’t Moneyball’s fault. It just means it’s time to change the game. And changing the game they are.
Game 3
The current series probabilities, from two FanGraphs models and the markets:
- Depth Charts: 52.7% Astros
- ZiPS: 56.0% Astros
- Betting Markets: 61.5% Astros
Noah Syndergaard used to be something, man. 2.29 FIP in 2016, a great start in the Wild Card Game, all kinds of magic in 2015 before it, both regular season and postseason. Even in 2018 and ’19, when he got healthy again, he was a good, good pitcher. But he’s aging, and he’s spent more time on the shelf, and we don’t really know what to expect from him night in and night out. Wouldn’t it be fun if he turned back the clock tonight, even at the young age of 30? Wouldn’t Philadelphia get loud? Wouldn’t Mets fans be pissed?
The guy didn’t have a bad year. Over 135 innings with the Angels and Phillies, he sported a 3.83 FIP and 4.43 xERA. That’s rotation material, though you’d like it to come with a better bullpen than the Phillies might have. Still, he gives the Phillies a chance, and it feels rather reasonable that he’s risen to this status in the pecking order, even if we might see some piggyback action this evening.
Across the aisle, Lance McCullers is just now coming back from injury, and he’s been good, but he’s not that much better than Syndergaard. His FIP was 3.49 in 47 regular season innings. His xERA was 3.57. He’s been great in two postseason starts, keeping the walks much more in check than he did in August and September, but he’s vincible, even if he does give the Astros the edge.
What we’re really looking for tonight does come down to these two, until it comes down to the bullpens, which it very well might. We’ve seen it already: Both teams can bop, and teams that bop can come back fast. The series, as all series do, hinges on every game, and this one is no different, and just like every game these two teams play has been and is going to be, it’s just about a tossup. The Astros are slight favorites. That doesn’t mean that much.
Trying/Housekeeping
Will there be beefier notes tomorrow? God, I hope so.
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Viewing schedule:
- 8:03 PM EDT: Houston @ Philadelphia – Game 3, McCullers vs. Syndergaard (FOX)
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UPDATE:
It got rained out right as I finished the last sentence. Hilarious timing. Maybe we’ll just copy and paste it all tomorrow. Just kidding. This changes the series a lot. Welcome back to the bullpen, Ranger Suárez.
