Wednesday 1/31/24
I was reading this piece where the writer was asserting that a walk is as good as a hit in baseball, that he had become enlightened to modern analytics. It was kind of this put down piece to people who hadn't evolved like he had.
There's more and more talk about analytics of late because of what happened--or didn't--in the Lions-Forty-Niners game the other day. Strategic decisions in sports are increasingly made by people who don't understand the human side of sports, and they're made in advance based off of mathematical probabilities without factoring in pressure, environment, the nature of that particular game, a player's mindset, a team's psyche, the stadium--a lot of variables.
When the Lions were stopped on that fourth down, the game turned. Had they kicked the field goal, they probably would have won, but analytics says that you go for it in that situation, whereas a brain and understanding of that game, in that situation, says you don't.
I'll often see--as I did in this piece--the claim that in baseball, a walk is as good as a hit. It often isn't, though.
Let's say there's one out, and there's a runner on first. Batter comes up, hits a single to right field, and the runner on first advances to third. Next batter hits a fly to center, the runner scored.
Now, that runner would not have scored on that fly ball if the second batter had walked. This is such a common baseball occurrence. A perfectly normal, regular one. I'm certainly not reaching for some rare example. We see this all the time, and anyone who has the most basic understanding of the game should understand this.
Walks are great. You're on base, which is where you always want to be. Well, almost always. There are times when a sacrifice is in order, and times when one is essential. But base hits move runners over more stations, which is always better than going station to station.
Runner on second, base hit to the outfield, runner scores, doesn't score on a walk. Analytics people also say that RBI don't matter. Of course they do. All of the traditional stats matter. So does OPS+. One thing doesn't have to rule out another. If you actually watch baseball, you know that there are guys who have a knack--an ability--for driving home that man in scoring position. They're adept at finding a way to do it.
Sports are human games. They're not robot games. There are things about us in life that affect us. How we deal with stress, pressure, fatigue. Setbacks. These same human realities exist in sports. That's what's often best about them. It's human drama. Not for high stakes, sure--after all, these are games.
The manager goes to the mound, thinking he'll take out his pitcher, but he'll talk to him first because he's thrown a great game, he's carried the club, and what he hears from the pitcher--and what he sees in that pitcher's eyes--tells the manager to leave him in, that he's the guy to finish this thing. I don't believe that people who don't like that, who don't want that--that such a decision is wrestled with, and not automatic because a Yale grad who never played any sport says you automatically do this one thing--really like sports at all. I definitely question what they could possibly be getting from them.
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