Veteran manager Jim Leyland will serve as the skipper for Team USA in the 2017 World Baseball Classi, reports MLB.com’s Jon Paul Morosi. The 71-year-old Leyland most recently managed the Tigers from 2006-13, leading the Tigers to three division championships and two American League pennants. Though he didn’t capture a World Series in Detroit, Leyland did manage the 1997 Marlins club that won the Fall Classic in just the franchise’s fifth year of existence. As Leyland explains to Morosi, he never thought he would manage again once his Tigers stint concluded, but he couldn’t pass on this opportunity. “I’m never going to manage again after this,” said Leyland. “…I could not turn this down. Not from an ego standpoint, but it’s the honor of being asked to manage for your country.” Leyland is taking the honor seriously, already plotting out which players he’ll seek permission to invite to the club and envisioning possible lineups. He’s also having fun with it though, telling his former prized slugger Miguel Cabrera: “I already told Miggy I’m going to walk him.”
Some more notes from around the game…
- Following the PED suspension of Phillies Rule 5 pick Daniel Stumpf, J.J. Cooper of Baseball America examines if such discipline can, in a bizarre way, give Rule 5 players added incentive to use banned substances. Stumpf is the third Rule 5 lefty in the past year to be suspended, and Cooper points out that because the suspensions make it easier for a club to carry a Rule 5 player through the early portion of the season while still fulfilling his roster requirements, the suspensions can actually be beneficial. By the time Stumpf is activated, the Phillies will only need to carry him for about two months before rosters expand in September. And while Stumpf won’t be paid for his time on the restricted list, even the roughly $250K he stands to make (half the MLB minimum) dwarfs what he would have been paid in the minors this year. Cooper notes that many Rule 5 picks — especially relievers — are older and could be the types of players who will struggle to find work by the time they’re six-year minor league free agents. Cooper looks at the case of Andrew McKirahan, who sat half of the 2015 season with a suspension and then underwent Tommy John surgery this spring, thus landing him on the Major League 60-day DL. While McKirahan’s injury is of course unfortunate, McKirahan will make about $750K between 2014-15 — staggering sum compared to the ~$25K he might’ve otherwise made. Cooper’s column is excellent, and I’d highly encourage MLBTR readers to take the time to read it start to finish.
- The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association has deemed potential No. 1 overall draft pick Jason Groome, a left-hander out of Barnegat High School, ineligible to play due to a violation of the state’s transfer rule, as Joe Zedalis and Matthew Stanmyre of NJ.com report. Groome spent last season pitching at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. and transferred to Barnegat in 2016. The NJSIAA, however, ruled that his transfer didn’t come with a “bona fide change of residence,” thus making Groome temporarily ineligible to pitch. Head coach Dan McCoy tells the NJ.com duo that Groome will be eligible to return around April 24, but Groome still could miss a pair of starts as a result, thus striking a couple of opportunities for MLB scouts and executives to see him.
- Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith explores the rapid expansion of analytics and sabermetrics throughout the game in his latest column for Sportsnet The Magazine. As recently as five to 10 years ago, many clubs only had a lone analyst to keep up with sabermetric trends, but the amount of data-driven research has exploded, with one person indicating to Nicholson-Smith that there may be three to four times as many analytics jobs in the game as there were even two years ago. While there was a point in time where fans who kept up with sabermetric trends were ahead of many teams, those days are in the past. Teams are now building more and more proprietary metrics for player evaluation. Braves GM John Coppolella estimates to Nicholson-Smith that “maybe about 50 or 60 percent of what teams are doing privately gets reported.” Many within the game expect the gap between proprietary metrics and those that are publicly available at sites like Fangraphs and Baseball Prospectus to grow considerably in the coming years as clubs continue to make aggressive hires in statistical analysis.
Sabermetrics sure was a lot cooler when you could impress people with your depth of knowledge, until they went out and bought their own Bill James book.
The stat wars raging now in baseball raise so many questions not addressed by this article or any other I’ve read. First, if all the teams are using advanced stats, then how do any of them gain any competitive advantage from them? Second, if half or more of the statistical models the teams are using are proprietary, then how are the teams using them going to determine if they are useful models?
Or the largest issue of all, if human beings operate on <5% of a conscious brain, then no one should be convinced that statistical analysis has anything more than a marginal impact on professional sports.
Whatever changes are being likened to analytics are not dissimilar to the standard, gradual strategical progression throughout sports history. Which is not to say that teams shouldn't explore every opportunity to gain a competitive edge, but only that Steph Curry and Miguel Cabrera aren't calculating algorithms when it's time to perform, and for every exaggerated shift there's a guy working to correct.
Exactly. If everyone is playing by the same statistical book, then the impact of stats essentially cancel out, and the difference-maker comes down to human judgment, just as it always has. Maybe a lot less has changed about the play of the game than some believe.
jbravo17;
A lot of people got a lot of jobs, and moved out those that knew the sport.
The same people that decided that it was OK for their batters to get light bats and “mash” as opposed to make contact and hit the ball where defenders aren’t playing, are now falling all over themselves patting one another on the back for their genius in using computer data to position their fielders to catch the batted ball because 90%-plus hitters hit the same pitch the same place on the field. These same people also decided that K’s don’t matter to their batters, but they are essential to their pitchers. So we have had an explosion in strikeouts for over 15 years which grows every year, pitchers have to but more break on the ball and throw harder, and TJ surgeries have exploded as the pitching injuries have. And if one is watching a game (in person or on a device), 95% of strikeouts are boring to watch – most fans would rather see one exciting defensive play over 8 strikeouts.
I could go on, but it’s not an understatement to say that the soul of baseball has been lost to a large degree the past 20 years (the foul balls to work a count are simply ridiculous to sit through). Fortunately, the cycle is beginning to come to an end, as the teams that are winning are doing it the old fashioned way – by using experienced baseball people to make sound decisions and demand fundamental play, or by overspending money on players.
Um…
The Cubs, Mets, Dodgers, Cardinals and Pirates have analytics at the front of what they do. The Giants GM Evans is quite familiar as well. Who are these teams?
In the AL: The Rangers, Astros, Rays and Jays did (with Alex). So your evidence is the Royals?
And just because Ned Yost uses old school tactics doesn’t mean that roster isn’t deliberately constructed in a very specific way.
The one thing going for analytics is that there ultimately is not “the” way to build a team. There’s always a new approach, always a new way to put the lineup together, always an exploit in the opposing team’s system.
You’re asking the correct questions.
Perhaps you can join Dorothy on the yellow brick road to talk to the magician that has been working behind the curtain since the moneyball book came out and this myth was propagated.
Too late, the Great and All Powerful Oz has already been hired by the Dodgers.
LOL
I noticed. Did they build a new facility to house all the ex-GM’s and former player “advisers”?
A concrete bunker under the stadium.
I worked with computers and data all my life. Sociologically what has been going on in MLB perfectly follows the patterns….
o The first to put the data to use gets a leg up and are seen as “innovators” for years.
o Some (usually big and/or well-financed) businesses start investing more and more in computers, systems and skilled people. They get a bit of an edge – though not a large one.
o Suddenly the dam explodes and everyone can’t get into it fast enough (it is here that sharp Wall Street traders sell). People are studying those skills in colleges and trade schools as well as sharing information at seminars and retreats. Pretty soon there are a glut of people with the requisite skills available, which causes salaries to drop.
o About the same time the “proprietary systems” take hold (a fancy way of saying that businesses have their in-house people write customized systems / spreadsheet macros). Established people move around to other businesses to get promotions and more money. 80% of the overall data comes from the same sources (i.e. sold by those that have license to it) with the other 20% coming from what that business is doing internally. The end result – almost everyone is seeing the same thing, sharing the same information, another level of bureaucracy has been created, and no business has a decided edge using this information. The mystery of the new science is no longer much of a mystery, so management / ownership steps in more and more in the decision making process and does things as they always do them – based on their preferences, egos, favors they owe others, and politics. At some point it gets too expensive and cumbersome for what the department is producing, and the empire is cut back as all processes are simplified through technology. People working in other positions take on some of data management as well; a few from the original department work their way up to management; a few (like Cherrington) see the handwriting on the wall and get into something related in which their skills can get them some sort of job security for another 10-15 years.
Here’s my recommendation Mr. Leyland !
1.Gordon 2B
2.Trout CF
3.Harper RF
4.Donaldson 3B
5.Davis 1B
6.Tulowitzki SS
7.Schwarber DH
8.Posey C
9.Pollock LF
10.Kershaw SP
Bench: McCann C, Bryant 3B, Goldschmidt 1B, Cain OF, Brantley, Jones OF, Heyward IF, Zobrist UT.
If by Pollock, Brantley, Jones or Heyward you actually meant McCutchen…then Ok. And Schwarber? No thanks.
The 50% proprietary info won’t be available to the public, but team X will hire people away from team Y and the knowledge of what team Y is doing, measuring and calculating will now also be with team X. This will happen again and again.
And in the end, the team that “statistically” should’ve won it all will be left explaining why they lost on the field. That’s why analytics will only take teams so far.