Atlanta Braves New World: Let us embrace our new overlords

Change has come – and with it comes word that advanced stats will now rule the day.

In theory, the Atlanta Braves had already been in the advanced statistics business… certainly more than some teams in baseball.  But with Alex Anthopoulos in charge now, it seems that the numbers game will be ramped up to a whole ‘nother level.

Anthopoulos is still one of the young-gun General Managers in the game – and getting a taste of life in Los Angeles under Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi would have done nothing to temper his own enthusiasm for Advanced Statistics… otherwise referred to as Baseball Analytics.

He warned us that this was going to happen:  we quoted this tweet in November from the first A-List breakfast Q&A session that Anthopoulos held for Braves season ticket holders (note the 2nd tweet of this sequence):

Mark Bowman, in his story yesterday, cited quotes about several things that are already changing (emphasis added):

"Anthopoulos lured Alex Tamin from the Dodgers to serve as his director of Major League operations and oversee the analytics department. Tamin was on the field late last week providing information to third-base coach Ron Washington about how he could alter some defensive drills for outfielders. He has also suggested that the Braves join the growing list of teams who push back the start time of their Spring Training workouts to provide the players a chance to get more sleep."

"Tamin will remain in constant contact with players and coaches, providing analytical information in a manner that could help them make beneficial changes to a variety of things, including lineup construction, a pitcher’s two-strike approach or a hitter’s swing plane."

This is going to take some ‘getting used to’… the idea of non-baseball people giving direct instruction to baseball people sounds a lot like the sport’s equivalent of outright heresy.

And with that, you’re probably not going to find anyone in the entire organization who’s more “old school” than Snitker.  So if he’s buying in to all of this, then everybody else will probably fall in line.

Of course the cynic in me would also have to wonder if he was told “we’re doing serious analytics starting now – are you in or are you out?”

Still, it’s going to be interesting to see some lineup moves in 2018 and have to wonder “is that a ‘Snitker decision’ or a ‘computer decision’?”

Player reactions are going to be fun, too:  “Yes, I know that you’ve been playing in 200 straight games, Freddie, but this guy we’re facing today?  You’re 1-12 against him lifetime with 4 punchouts.  So be ready to pinch hit later.”

Yeah, that will go over well.

Grudging Transition

This is a case in which I’m close to being that “Get off my lawn!” guy, for I am cautious about several advanced stats.  I generally save more of my ire for BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) and FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching)… and it’s devil-spawn stepchild xFIP (Expected FIP).

Fortunately, I do believe that a lot of these ‘non-baseball people’ such as Tamin really do understand exactly how to use these stats properly.  Here’s an example:

Just yesterday, Fred was discussing Hunter Renfroe and his terrible .275 BABIP.  But Fred went the extra step and noted reasons for the low number.  It wasn’t simply a good luck/bad luck stat (as many seem to use it) – this number was indicative of bad hitting, especially against right-handed pitching.  More about that at the link.

On the flip side, I don’t know if there’s anybody who keeps track of how many times a manager has a ‘hunch’ about some match-up – and whether it works or not.  But just from the very nature of the word, I tend to believe that ‘hunches’ are long shot bets to begin with.  If analytics can reduce the number of those kinds of decisions being made, then I’m in, too.

This was bound to happen eventually… and I blame the old Strat-O-Matic baseball cards.  Really.  That was the first system that allowed you to play the sport at home with credible outcomes simply by rolling dice and checking cards.  And what was that based on?  Baseball stats.

We’ve come a long way from that… so much so that we now have PECOTA, Steamer, and ZiPS projections (to name a few) that predict the entire season.  We had Billy Beane and MoneyBall.

Now it seems we’ll need a name for the Braves version:  Alex Ball?  Tamin Flew?  Snit-alics?

Next: Are the Braves a Hunter Gatherer?

Regardless, the game is now more about the numbers than it’s ever been, and it’s likely that there’s no going back.  Especially when it works.