Opening Pitch
It’s just the end of April and fans already are lamenting the injuries to pitchers in the major leagues. Sports pundits like Michael Wilbon reported five starting pitchers have gone onto the injured reserve list from one team alone. He attributes these injuries to high school coaches emphasizing their teenage ptichers throw hard in every game. However, that symptom reflects an underlying truth. The actual reason these young pitchers throw hard is because that’s the only way to catch the attention of MLB scouts. And why do they want to reach the major leagues? Because that’s where the big money lies. And what determines who gets that big money? Moneyball!
What Is Moneyball?
The term originated in a 2003 book by Michael Lewis entitled, Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game. In it, the author propounds his thesis that the traditional guideposts used to evaluate a player’s value are outdated, subjective, and flawed. Examples of such outmoded measures for hitters are batting average and runs batted in. For pitchers, such measures include complete games and earned run average.
Instead, Lewis advocated the use of sabermetrics, an empirical, detailed, and objective analysis of player performance. Judged by these criteria, a player’s on-base percentage and his slugging percentage provide superior indicators of a his value to his team.
For pitchers, concepts such as WHIP (Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched) and FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching statistics) replace earned run average (ERA) and strikeouts. Though these measures seem arcane, their objective remains the same. That means providing an objective determination of a pitcher’s effectiveness in mastering aspects over which he has complete control, i.e. strikeouts, home runs, hit batters, etc.
A refinement of this latter statistic is DIPS (Defense-Independent Pitching Statistics) developed by Voros McCracken. Using this method, Voros showed that w that there is little to no difference between pitchers in the number of hits they allow or balls put into play—regardless of their individual skill levels. Such a metric quantifies the independent value of each player. However, it also exposes their vulnerability. In short, they’re interchangeable. And expendable.
Why Moneyball Matters
At this point some readers might wonder what any of these metrics have to do with pitchers’ arm injuries. The key lies in the book’s subtitle: Winning an Unfair Game. Ever since the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in 1922 that baseball was an entertainment rather than a sport, the game was not subject to anti-trust constraints. Unlike other professional sport activities, teams based in large metropolitan areas, have enjoyed an unfair advantage in revenue and income. In light of this asymmetric competitive structure, teams based in smaller markets sought ways to erode the more populous’based teams’ competitive advantage.
Ways and Means
One way involves moving to cities and metropolitan areas willing to offer generous terms on stadiums, concessions, and the like. An alternative approach requires reducing overhead, more specifically, player-development. Rather than spend money on scouts and minor league farm systems, sabermetrics makes a convincing case for drafting players out of college. As professional football and basketball realized, college players developed the skills and maturity necessary to compete at the professional level with little cost to the teams that draft them.
Consequences
This development may seem a callous and self-serving way of controlling costs, and it is. But it also provides a way to level the economic playing field between the wealthier and poorer (comparatively) teams. It also factors into why the number of minor league divisions have dwindled from four (A,B, C, & D) to one: A.
Another consequence is fan support. Besides eroding baseball’s wellsprings for players and local fan involvement, it reduces the value of the individual performer. In seeking out those players that “are undervalued in the market,” the Oakland Athletics became baseball’s first team to embody what Lewis characterizes as “the ruthless drive for efficiency that capitalism demands.”
Costs
But at what price? If everyday players are measured by their power figures alone, it’s little wonder they strive only to hit homeruns regardless of their strength, size, or hitting ability. In regards to pitchers, it’s little wonder that they learn to throw as hard as they can for as long as they can. Why? Because another pitcher can be called in to replace him with the same effectiveness. If such is the case, how does management’s attitude toward its performers affect their morale and willingness to play?
What Can Be Done?
It’s been over twenty years since Moneyball hit the market. In that time, numerous baseball general managers incorportated it into their operations with varying degrees of success. While it did enable the Oakland As to identify the value of players other teams overlooked, the impact of sabermetrics reduced performance quality and thus fan enjoyment. Teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and the Miami Marlins did break through to the World Series, but sold off their best players when they renegotiated their contracts for more money.
Recent Approaches
Rob Manfred, the current commissioner of major league baseball, implemented several proposals to upgrade the game’s quality. Most are cosmetic. The most effective of these, reducing the time between pitches, speeded up the game and reduced its duration overall. However, baseball with its defined innings and at bats was never a dynamic ebb-and-flo game like soccer.
Another factor is fan sophistication. Being around for as long as it has, hardcore baseball fans appreciate nuances like the sacrifice bunt or the inning-ending double-play. Such accomplishments require skill, self-sacrifice, and team spirit. Suck emotional and subjective qualities seem lacking in today’s ballplayer. And which are not encouraged by team management.
The best way to rectify the situation may require reemphasizing these finer points of the game. Measure player effectiveness in bunting situations to advance the runner, for example, and reward those sacrifices accordingly in player contracts.
As for pitchers, put an upper limit on the number a squad can carry at any one time. Ten seems a good cutoff figure. Then, reward those pitchers for their efforts to stay in games longer and pacing themselves. If manaagement encourages pitchers to pitch more innings, complete games may again be a useful meaure of a pitcher’s contribution to his team.
Moneyball’s Tenth Inning
In summary, Moneyball wielded a profound impact on major league baseball by providing the means to discover a few hidden or overlooked gems on the playing field. Its truly incisive metrics provided the objective means to value ballplayers by their individual capabilities alone. However, this viewpoint also proved pernicious. Pitchers in particular, suffered. Their careers shortened in many instances because of their combat with hitters striving to make that extra-base hit. Consequently, pitchers learned to throw faster and harder to get these hitters out. This effort put more strain on their arms which resulted in more injuries, removed them from participating, and reduced their value to the team that hired them.
Because pitchers are already in more danger of burnout or arm injury, each team needs more of them. However, more pitchers reduces the relative value of each one, particularly if each pitches fewer innings each season. Already devalued in baseball’s salary structure for not being everyday players, pitchers seen through the Moneyball lens tend to be the units that allow general managers to reduce a team’s salary structure overall. Unlike Filk music musicians of varying abiilities who are allowed to participate for the sheer joy in performing, Moneyball’s metrics provide the means for baseball’s general managers to weaponize sabremetrics for the reduction or elimination of players’ livelihoods. Accepting that fact is what professionalism has come to stand for in the twenty-first century.
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