On the Coffee Table: The MVP Machine

Title: The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Noncoformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

Authors: Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik

via Amazon

Baseball's Moneyball era is over.  Billy Beane's revolutionary concepts for evaluating player talent and how various individual strengths contribute to runs and ultimately wins on the field are no longer the exclusive purview of a select few.  Every team is using data these days and in fact, quite a lot of them are using the information a lot more effectively than Beane's Oakland A's ever have.  The Tampa Bay Rays are probably setting the standard these days.

A new revolution is underway.  Technology allows for the minute examination of player performance - pitch spin, launch angle, etc. - in more exacting detail than ever before.  Pair this newly available data with a far more prevalent growth mindset and player development becomes the new frontier.  A player's capacities are no longer a fixed point, nor do the growth or degradation of such skills follow predictable patterns.  Teams and players who are open to new approaches have gained significant advantages.  Minor leaguers who were never even considered prospects are being elected to All-Star teams.  Seasoned veterans are finding new life late in their careers.  Teams like the Astros have transformed from eternal doormats into perennial powers.  Coaching, scouting and administrative staffs are being overhauled at all levels of the game - out with the old guard, in with the new, many of the new folks having never played even high school baseball.  Shocker: even a few women have made their way into the coaching ranks.  It's a new day and anyone stuck in the ways of the past is quickly being left in the dust.

In their book The MVP Machine, Lindbergh and Sawchik document the sport's new wave, offering anecdotal evidence from all over the baseball world.  In particular, they focus on the journeys of Trevor Bauer, a data-obsessed Cy Young-caliber pitcher, and Kyle Boddy, one of many independent coach-consultants from outside the professional ranks who have revolutionized player development.  Major League franchises are quickly finding that investing in player development is the most cost effective way to improve their teams.  In the more progressive systems, every player, even those not believed destined for The Show, is considered worthy of data-driven training.  And the philosophy goes beyond the physical athletic processes.  For the first time, teams are feeding their minor leaguers on a nutritious diet rather than expecting them to survive on a minimal salary and per diem.  My personal hero in the book is Doris Gonzalez who works with the Astros' many Spanish-speaking players to help them assimilate, learn the language and quite often, stick with baseball when the going gets tough.  Many of her former charges, now Major League superstars, call her "Mom."  In short, learning to play professional baseball has become a more thoughtful, methodical, healthy and humane process.

There are downsides.  The emphasis on technology has made baseball a more expensive sport to play, even at the youngest levels.  With the increased importance of travel teams, more economically challenged families have been gradually priced out of youth sports over the past few decades.  The expensive tech has only widened the gap.

A surprise gift for me: eleven pages of the afterword are devoted to my team, the Baltimore Orioles.  The Orioles now are where the Astros were ten years ago, scraping the bottom of the standings barrel, minimizing payrolls while stockpiling high draft picks in hopes of a brighter future.  Fortunately, they have former Astro executives leading the way: general manager Mike Elias and assistant general manager for analytics, Sig Mejdal.  Both men are quoted extensively earlier in the book, in fact, as pioneers in player development while they were in Houston.  

So far, despite the terrible win-loss records for the varsity team, the O's are headed in the right direction.  The Birds now have the top-ranked farm system in baseball, including both the highest-rated position player prospect - catcher Adley Rutschman, future face of the franchise - AND the highest-rated pitching prospect, righty Grayson Rodriguez.  Meanwhile, a couple of previously undervalued players have reinvented themselves.  Lindbergh and Sawchik write extensively about John Means, a lefty pitcher who learned to use his best pitch, a change-up, more often and more effectively.  Pitchers using their best pitches more often is a major theme of the book.  This past July, Means pitched a complete game no-hitter, the first for Baltimore since Jim Palmer did it in 1969.  2021's biggest surprise, too late to be included in the book, was Cedric Mullins, the Orioles' center fielder and lead off man.  Long a switch hitter, Mullins converted to batting left-handed exclusively and made adjustments to his swing.  The result: a journeyman struggling to stay at the major league level became a 30/30 man, hitting 30 homers and stealing 30 bases.  

Baseball season is drawing near.  I must decide whether or not I want to subscribe to MLB.tv this season which would allow me to watch all (or nearly all) of the Orioles' games.  I did it in 2020, the COVID-shortened season, and thoroughly enjoyed it.   I didn't in 2021 and didn't miss it too much.  But the next stage of the Orioles rebuild is set to begin this year.  Both Rutschman and Rodriguez should debut for the top flight this season.  It may still be a while before Baltimore is genuinely good but the seeds are being planted.  And who knows who this year's surprise might be?  The MVP Machine has provided new perspectives for watching baseball, from the best teams and players to the weakest.  I think I'm in.

Now we just need to get this lockout resolved.