At first glance, not to mention second, third, fourth and fifth, Statcast might as well be Greek, as in it’s all Greek to me. I usually don’t like to write about people or things I don’t like because writing about them gives them undeserved notice.
However, in this instance I am making an exception because while I have no use for Statcast, beyond that I don’t understand why it exists. I don’t care for modern metrics, but at least the people who live and die by them think they have some value.
The practitioners of modern metrics need the numbers they create to know who is and who isn’t a good player. They are so busy concocting and using what they arrogantly call advanced metrics (as opposed to old-fashioned statistics) that they can’t watch games and let their eyes tell them who is and who isn’t a good player.
Statcast, however, goes beyond WAR and FIP and UZR. Those metrics supposedly try to tell you who the best players are and how they rank in the firmament. I don’t know what the significance of Statcast is supposed to be other than another silly gimmick to attract viewers to MLB.com.
But I don’t know why anyone, even 13-year-olds, would be lured to the website by Statcast. Maybe 13-year-olds would find some significance in Statcast, but I don’t. I tried to find out something from a spokesman for MLB Advanced Media, but repeated telephone and e-mail messages went unanswered until it was too late for this column. I am thus left to my own devices, which do not think highly of Statcast.
First, I went to the Statcast chart on MLB.com. It has these categories:
Exit velocity (in miles per hour), distance (in feet), launch angle (in degrees), type of hit, the speed of the pitch (in miles per hour) and the pitcher and, of course, the batter. All it lacks is the type of pitch.
Through Friday’s games, Aaron Judge, the rookie sensation of the New York Yankees, dominated the chart. His name appeared on four of the top eight lines, including the top two with a home run against Kevin Gausman of Baltimore April 28 and a double against Kyle Hendricks of the Chicago Cubs May 5.
Scrutinizing the chart more closely, I discovered that the order of players was based on exit velocity so that while Judge might be No. 1 and 2 in exit velocity, he isn’t necessarily No. 1 in launch angle. In fact, Judge hit another home run, against Dylan Covey of the Chicago White Sox April 19, that had an exit velocity of 115.6 but a launch angle of 30.1.
Do not ask me what all of this stuff means. I can understand distance. Teams have been estimating home run distances for years. Exit velocity? I guess that means how fast a ball travels to or over a wall. But launch angle? What does that have to do with anything?
And what does it mean when the launch angle is a negative number? In the MLB.com chart, five of the first nine players, ranked by exit velocity, have negative launch angles. Two of those five players, Mark Trumbo and Manny Machado of Baltimore, stroked singles.
Brad Miller of Tampa Bay ranked fifth in exit velocity, making an out at 118.4 miles an hour, and his launch angle was minus 77.9. What he did was hit a grounder back to the pitcher, Luke Gregerson, who threw him out.
According to the chart, the ball traveled three feet. If there’s some significance to a ground ball to the pitcher, it eludes me.
Trumbo’s single, the chart tells us, went 13 feet with an exit velocity of 118.5 and a launch angle of minus 10.4. What is a minus launch angle? Does the ball burrow a hold in the ground?
Receiving no help from MLB, I went to Google to see if I could find anything there that could enlighten me about Statcast.
As I looked through various sites, the MLB official I had been trying to reach sent me an e-mail, and after I told him what I wanted to know, specifically asking about negative launch angles, he sent an e-mail saying, “Negative launch angle is a ground ball.”
According to Wikipedia, every major league organization has an analytic team that uses Statcast data “to gain a competitive advantage.” An obvious question would be how would teams gain an edge on other teams if they’re all getting and using the same information. The answer is some clubs uses the information more wisely than others. That goes for the annual summer draft as well as Statcast.
I would think clubs use Statcast data to different degrees depending on their emphasis on that newly popular baseball terms metrics. All teams use metrics to some degree, but some still rely more on what their scouts see.
For example, do you need exit velocity to know that Dave Winfield and Gary Sheffield hit the ball hard when they played as Giancarlo Stanton does now? Watch the game, and you’ll see what metrics mongers use their computers for.
Seymour Siwoff, who as the 90-something-year-old president of the Elias Sports Bureau is the dean of sports statisticians, is not a Statcast fan. In fact, when I mentioned it to him, he said he had not heard of it.
“It’s crazy,” Siwoff said. “I never heard of it. Where did they think of it?”
I didn’t have a very good answer for him.
While I am not an advocate of so-called advanced metrics, I am a Bob Bowman fan. Bowman is president, Business & Media of Major League Baseball and president of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which created Statcast among other innovations. I credit Bowman more for M.L.B.’s robust and financial health than Bud Selig.
The former commissioner has always received credit for the stunning growth of M.L.B.’s economy from just over $1 billion to close to, at or beyond $10 billion, but Bowman’s Advanced Media is responsible for the growth more than anything Selig did.
Some people, I among them, believed Bowman was more deserving of succeeding Selig than Rob Manfred was, but he opted out of the running, preferring to remain in his present position. For Bowman, that was probably a wise decision. No matter who the commissioner is, he will most likely have owners taking shots at him. Some owners may not even know what Bowman does other than make them money.
LORIA LIMPS ALONG
Poor Jeffrey Loria. The owner of the Miami Marlins has failed to sell his team for the outrageous price of $1.6 billion and more recently has been unable to get his new asking price of $1.3 billion.
A month ago reports surfaced that a group including Derek Jeter and Jeb Bush had reached agreement to buy the Marlins for $1.3 billion, but nothing has happened since to substantiate those reports.
Another group that has been trying to buy the Marlins is headed by Tagg Romney, son of Mitt, Republican candidate for president before Donald Trump.
One of the problems for the competing groups is they haven’t been able to find one or more prospective partners who are willing to spend hundreds of million dollars for a minority interest in the Marlins. None of the principals in the two competing groups apparently has enough money of his own to do the deal without bringing in a very wealthy partner.
Meanwhile, Loria sits with a poor television deal he made a few years ago because he needed the money to pay off debts, and he can’t get out of it.
He doesn’t have many options. If he gets desperate, he could sell the team for yet another reduced price, or he could take the team off the market and try again next year.
He could get lucky. There is a belief that one of these days Congress will pass a law allowing betting on professionals sports teams. Such a law would send team values skyrocketing. The way Loria has operated his franchise Loria doesn’t deserve such luck.
CALL IT WHAT IT IS
Why are people afraid to refer to someone’s death as death? Jim Bunning’s death last week prompted statements from three baseball institutions, and none of them said he died or referred to his death. It is always this way when a baseball figure dies.
Major League Baseball issued a statement in which it mourned “the passing of the Hall of Fame pitcher.” The Major League Baseball Players Association issued a statement “upon learning of the passing of Jim Bunning.” “The Hall of Fame is saddened by the news of Jim’s passing,” a Hall statement said.
Are people afraid to use the words died or death? If so, what’s to be afraid of? Are people superstitious, convinced if they use the word it’ll happen to them? Superstition or not, I’m pretty certain it will happen.
Bunning, it should be remembered, along with Robin Roberts and Harvey Kuenn, was responsible for bringing Marvin Miller to baseball. The three players were named to a union committee that would interview candidates for the job of executive director of the union.
Miller was ultimately selected for the job but nearly walked away from it before starting to work. The players wanted to make Richard Nixon, the former vice president, the union’s general counsel. Miller quickly and adamantly let the players’ committee know that wasn’t going to happen, and it didn’t. As his general counsel, Miller named Richard Moss, with whom he had worked at the United Steelworkers.