Friday, October 13, 2017

Does data make baseball duller?

Let's not talk quality of life and data, lets talk baseball and data. Moneyball was an eye opener in the rise of big data analytics as a popular meme. And why not? It had Brad Pitt. Well the movie did. It showed a guy thinking outside of the box could re-imagine the game. The hell with 'he looks like a ball player' hello to can he take a walks? For a small market team - a tonic. But now we are seeing a great downside of worshiping at the altar of data: Really boring baseball. Removing too many pitchers too soon...Embracing strikeouts...Avoiding ground ball and liner hits...focus on homer... Still one wonders if some of these move do auger obvious counter moves for those outside of box thinkers of today... in the face of elaborate boring shifts... why not bunt?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-downside-of-baseballs-data-revolutionlong-games-less-action-1507043924