My dad can go on for hours talking about Moneyball. Back when he was doing his MBA, he read Michael Lewis’ book since it had to do with market inefficiencies. Back then, everything was focused on OBP (On-Base Percentage). “Get on base to score runs.” Simple as that.
But the hemisphere of the baseball world now would be unrecognizable from the 2002 A’s. Just like the title of the famous song End of Beginning by Djo, Moneyball was just the end of the beginning. We now enter the Statcast Era, and it is beautiful.
MLB teams today don’t simply focus on results (did the batter get on base?); they focus on the process, trying to replicate positive results and take away the negative ones (what angle was the homerun hit off of? did the batter take swings at good pitches?).
The Rising Fastball and Spin Rates:
When I first started learning about baseball pitches, I thought a fastball rose in the batter’s view because the pitcher threw it really hard. Physics tells us the “rising” fastball can’t actually rise (gravity is a thing), but analysis indicates that pitchers can make it seem like the pitch is rising with a high Spin Rate (2500+ rpm). The Magnus effect, which is when the ball carries extensively in the air longer than the batter’s expectations, tricks the brain and creates the illusion of the rising fastball. The Dodgers, known for their strong depth in the mound, utilized this against batters in the postseason. Instead of telling pitchers to “keep the ball down” they began focusing on training high-spin guys to throw up in the zone. Why? Data tells us it works. Batters swing under it and miss. It’s counter-intuitive, but numbers certainly don’t lie.
The Optimal Launch Angle:
This brought back the era of homerun hitters and sluggers. Baseball coaches used to teach kids to “swing level!” Now, coaches encourage players to get an “upper swing,” or a swing with a Launch Angle between 10 and 30 degrees (the “Barrel” zone). This is perhaps the biggest reason why home run counts skyrocketed. Teams began thinking that hitting one home run is better than getting on base three times (assuming they’re all walks). I referred to this idea when building the TruthReview. I would instruct students, “Don’t just make contact with the ball (write a fact). Hit it at the barrel (write a sentence that drives the audience towards the truth).” Data tells us where to hit the ball.