MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
The story of baseball in recent
years mirrors narratives across many industries. A visionary like Bill James,
founder of baseball's sabermetrics, for example, invented entirely new ways to measure
and value performance in his sport. In the process, owing in part to the use
and misuse of James' controversial innovations, the business of baseball fundamentally
changed. Those changes ushered in all manner of consequences both intended and unintended. Some observers
argue that excessive, almost cultish devotion to data analytics has contributed
substantially to baseball’s decline over the past 30 years.
The key for assessing change outcomes in any organization is individual and collective reflection that honestly answers these seven questions: 1) what actually happened, 2) why did it happen, 3)
what consequences were intended and not, 4) what consequences were predicted/predictable
and not, 5) are the consequences positive, negative, or somewhere between, 6) how did the organization fail to anticipate certain consequences, and 7) what has been learned as a result about managing change and unintended consequences for future application?
These questions were rattling
around my head as James joined The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh, Houston Astros’
R&D Director Sarah Gelles, Fan Graphs’ Editor Meg Rowley, and Minnesota
Twins Advanced Scouting Analyst Josh Ruffin on a “Sabermetrics v. The World”
panel here at the annual Sloan gathering. Right out of the gate, James confessed that he “never envisioned
sabermetrics would have the influence it’s had,” and that “it’s a been a big
shock to me.”
The concern among many thorny
issues in baseball is that the growing reliance on esoteric statistical measures
– many of which really do deepen our understanding of individual and team
performance – has dulled the sport. Baseball is drowning in walks, strikeouts,
and home runs born of widespread defensive shifts, catcher framing, and batting
strokes engineered for the fences. On the other hand, stolen
bases that delight fans are a thing of the past because, well, their relative ineffectiveness
has been proven mathematically. For the moment, it seems that the science of
baseball has topped the art of the game.
James agreed with Lindbergh after
the latter said many of the changes some believe are “flattening the game” and ruining
the sport’s “aesthetics” were well underway before sabermetrics sunk its claws
into baseball’s seams. “A train going downhill builds up speed,” James said in
underscoring what was already an accelerated trend toward strikeouts, walks, and
home runs, though he added, “I do wish we could slow it down.” In a call to
action, he further stated that, “It’s not an option to sit on our butts and
deny (the decline of) the aesthetic issues in the game.”
So, the genius-inventor laments what
some see as the monster he birthed, doing so honestly albeit selectively, in considering
all manner of unintended consequences. Of course, sabermetrics has a causal
relationship with some of the decline of the joys of baseball, but much of the sport's aesthetic demise is merely correlated over recent decades with the growth of analytics. As is
sometimes the case, people do not always discern between causality and correlation
as they work through answering the seven questions above.
The young panelists then delivered a
massive, positive, and somewhat unforeseen consequence of sabermetrics. The
Astros’ Sarah Gelles pointedly said, “Sabermetrics is what got me into baseball.”
Meg Rowley added, “Metrics, this way of thinking, changed my engagement with
the sport.” Indeed, two super-smart women and a super-smart African American
man all spoke to the appeal of data analytics in a sport bereft of sufficient numbers of women and African
American men. It was a glorious insight, countering the “nerds” label some Boston
sport-talk hosts use to denigrate them. And besides, the Twins’ Josh Ruffin
added, “The flattening of style has not been problematic for the team's performance," which is his primary concern.
It was at that stage of the session when James
pointedly added,” You (younger generations of analytics professionals) have
pushed a lot of the sabermetrics beyond my understanding or even my interest.” New ways become old ways that invite new ways.
Image courtesy of Strategic Talent Management.