Big Data Baseball Page 6

  Stark and Fox did not have the data at the minor league level to customize alignment for every hitter. Over the winter of 2009–10 they devised, via e-mail and occasional meetings in the Pittsburgh office, two generic shift and defensive-alignment packages: one for right-handed hitters, one for left-handed hitters. They went back and forth drawing diagrams of what base-level alignment changes and shifts would look like at the minor league level, and they marked off the number of feet players should be from the foul lines or bases. Then on a back field at the Pirate City complex in February 2010, Stark laid the plan out to his perplexed minor league coaches and development staff.

  “This is what we are going to do going forward,” Stark said. They were adopting a radical new approach to defensive alignment, and it was not optional. Hill’s “pegs,” his sawed-off PVC pipes, were one thing, but this was going to be another level of extreme. Over that spring, Stark met one-on-one with every minor league coach to go over the plan and its alignments, explaining in further detail why they were adopting this seemingly crazy and counterintuitive departure from tradition. Of course there was pushback and plenty of “Why?” But the final word from Stark was always the same: this is what we are doing. Not everyone was on board, and some faces changed among the minor league staff.

  “We try to get better all the time and not be bound by conventional wisdom. Sometimes conventional wisdom is right. Sometimes it’s there because it’s the way we’ve always done things,” Stark said. “We said, ‘This is what the information is. Let’s sell out to it.’”

  In April the planning and directions had been given and the training had been done. Now Stark and Fox sat back and watched.

  Stark began seeing results immediately as he toured the Pirates’ minor league stadiums that season. Among sparse crowds in the half dozen minor league labs, far from television cameras and the national media’s antennae, he saw ground balls up the middle that would traditionally be singles converted into outs; he saw ground balls deep in the six-hole—between the shortstop and third—turned into outs. He also saw pitchers become frustrated when a slow-rolling ground ball would beat a shift; but watching objectively, he saw that more balls were being converted into outs than beating the shift, and the stats started to back up his observations.

  Fox did not see the action on minor league fields, but he was measuring it in his modest office on the third floor of Pirates headquarters in Pittsburgh. Fox found the Pirates’ minor league affiliates were turning a higher percentage of ground balls into outs than any other organization in baseball. It was clear: the positioning plan was working.

  By the end of the 2010 minor league season others had begun to take notice. Late in the year, while Stark was taking in the Pirates short-season, A-level club in Maryland, he was approached in the press box by the opposing team’s media-relations director.

  “Are you with the Pirates?” the man asked.

  “Yeah,” said Stark.

  “I’ve watched you guys play however many times this year, and I’ve never seen a club turn so many balls into outs. We’ve never seen a team defend this way.”

  Not only were Pirates executives and coaches seeing the results, but their minor league players, a future generation of Pirates were becoming familiar with and acclimated to extreme defensive positioning. Shortstop Jordy Mercer was drafted in the third round in the 2008 draft, Huntington’s first draft as Pirates GM. When he went to High-A ball in 2009, Mercer was exposed to Hill’s pegs in the infield. Then in 2010, as he arrived at the Double-A level, the team started shifting. “It was a little strange at first … [but then] I just accepted it. I was all for it,” Mercer remembers. “If we are going to play the odds, why not? If it works eight out of ten times, then let’s do it.”

  During the following 2011 season, Hurdle’s first year as Pirates manager, shifts were rarely employed against major league hitters. Meanwhile in the minors, Stark and Fox ramped up the shifts and lessened base-defense usage. Pirates minor league affiliates used their generic shifts against a vast majority of hitters and were again first or second in converting batted balls into outs.

  Mercer saw the results firsthand. When he started playing up the middle against lefties, directly behind the pitcher, he noted that ground ball after ground ball seemed to find him there. Against right-handed hitters, Mercer would play in the hole between the traditional shortstop and third-base positions.

  “I still to this day look over at [infield coach Nick] Leyva sometimes and say, ‘You sure? You sure I’m supposed to be right here?’ You feel out of place,” Mercer said. “The next thing you know, they hit you a ground ball and you’re in the right spot. I’ll get one right at me, and it’s just weird how that happens.”

  Perplexed opposing Triple-A players began to pepper Mercer with questions. “Why are you playing there?” they’d ask once they’d reach second base and were within earshot of Mercer. “What are you guys doing?”

  Said Mercer, “I just play where they tell me.”

  Through the minor league stress-testing of big data strategies, the idea grew at the major league level. While Hurdle and his staff had still not bought into shifting in a significant way in 2012, the results at the minor league level grabbed Hurdle’s attention; they had grabbed everyone’s attention in the organization.

  Finally that October night in 2012 in Hurdle’s home, Hurdle and Huntington again discussed the data analyzed by the front office, the case for a radical departure from traditional defense. Pirates affiliates had finished first or second in defensive efficiency in their respective minor leagues, and the margin was growing as they ramped up their shift usage. They were turning more ground balls into outs than any other team. What if the Pirates could take that approach and customize defensive positioning to each major league opposing hitter? How much better could they be?

  Hurdle often says feelings aren’t facts, and facts aren’t feelings. Hurdle could not run from the data facing him. He had started to challenge his own beliefs on alignment even before the meeting, but that questioning didn’t mean it would be easy to change his whole philosophy. He was essentially being asked to hand over an aspect of in-game strategy to a man, Fox, who had never played the game. Hurdle would still be able to steer the team, but now he was being asked to trust a navigator who had never played a professional inning. Could he give up that control?

  Hurdle had first met Fox at the 2010 winter meetings at the club’s suite at the World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida. The winter meetings were always a chaotic scene, particularly for Hurdle in 2010 as a new manager, with so many hands to shake, so many people to meet. Much of the entire industry was in one hotel, where ESPN and MLB Network set up live studios and tracked trade rumors and free agent signings in the lobby. On the day Hurdle met Fox, he was just another new face. Hurdle had never worked with such an analyst before during his tenure with the Rockies or the Rangers, and little of Fox’s analysis was implemented in Hurdle’s first two seasons in Pittsburgh. Hurdle admittedly kept Fox at “arm’s length” in 2011. But over time that level of trust changed.

  As minor league reports and statistics kept streaming into Hurdle’s e-mail inbox about the effectiveness of the shifting, and as he began to hear more stories from the minor league managers—with whom Hurdle communicated frequently during the season—he could not simply dismiss the evidence.

  It wasn’t just shifting Hurdle heard about. Fox passed along ideas about lineup construction, baserunning efficiency, and bunting strategy. Fox was similar in ways to the analysts who had helped Hurdle at the MLB Network during his brief but enlightening time there. So in 2012, Hurdle decided he wanted to have more face time with Fox. Before the beginning of every home series, Hurdle asked to meet with Fox to go over the advance-scouting materials. Hurdle felt it was time for him to challenge himself. Hurdle’s office is in the bowels of PNC Park, connected through a hallway to the clubhouse. The drywalled office has no windows, only fluorescent light, the harshness of which is
lessened through the soft, khaki wall color. Hurdle has a number of mementos in his office. Photographs adorn the walls, including a panoramic shot of PNC Park and a portrait of Roberto Clemente. The desk is littered with books on leadership, baseball artifacts, family photos, and a Bose sound system that plays while Hurdle pores over pregame data. Perpendicular to his desk is a leather couch against the far wall of the room. Here Hurdle hosts visitors, including Fox. They were both able communicators. Hurdle wanted information. He asked questions and challenged some of Fox’s findings, but also wanted to size up the man who was giving him this unconventional data. They spoke not just of baseball data but of their families, interests, faith, and backgrounds. They shared an interest in military history. Fox had loved to tour Civil War battlefields, many of which—Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Bull Run, and Antietam—were a day trip from Pittsburgh. Hurdle learned Fox had middle-class, Midwestern roots like himself. Hurdle learned Fox was not some impatient IT guy who seemed to speak another language. These afternoon meetings are when Hurdle was able to put a face, and a person, to the data, and where he learned to trust Fox.

  “The comfort level and acceptance level got better,” Fox said. “I think most of that is from developing relationships. They are going to trust you more, trust your information more, the more they trust you as a person. I think we saw [the trust level] go up in 2012.”

  This relationship was critical. While Fox had driven the idea and pored over the numbers and created the alignment recommendations, Hurdle was still the on-field gatekeeper. He could bar or welcome the suggestions. Fox understood nothing could be implemented from where he sat. He could only provide recommendations, but he had no power to make it happen.

  Hurdle thought about their conversations, and where he had been and how he had changed. He also thought about the Pirates’ limited roster and resources and the daunting challenges ahead. He realized that these concepts Fox had created made sense.

  At the October meeting with Huntington, after the case had been made for the data-based defensive plan, Hurdle turned to Huntington and said, “We need to be as aggressive as we possibly can with this.”

  With their jobs on the line, Hurdle and Huntington agreed to implement perhaps the most unconventional, systematic, and inventive plan the game had ever seen.

  Hurdle was in and knew his challenge was just beginning. He would have to get his coaches and players on board and keep them committed to the idea and avoid a mutiny. But there was also a challenge for Huntington. The roster had holes and they couldn’t expect to add 15 wins just through spinning their returning players into baseball gold. Hurdle needed not just a plan but some players.

  4

  THE HIDDEN VALUE

  Snow had not yet come to Montreal, but the first week of November was frigid. In the biting air, Russell Martin approached his matte-black BMW coupe. He was just leaving his weekly therapy session at a Nordic spa, where he had been jumping from cold tubs to the sauna; the extreme changes in temperature helped his body recover from a long season. He took excellent care of his chiseled, five-foot-ten, 215-pound frame. As Martin scrolled through his smartphone, he saw that he had a missed call from an unfamiliar number. A 412 area code? Where was that? He opened his car door and escaped the cold before he listened to the voice mail. He had heard the unforgettable, booming, rough voice on occasion as a catcher with the Los Angeles Dodgers: Clint Hurdle.

  Martin had first heard that voice when Hurdle was managing the Colorado Rockies. They’d met briefly when they were both on the 2008 National League All-Star team. Days earlier, Martin had been surprised to learn from his agent, Matt Colleran, that the Pirates were the most aggressive team courting him early in free agency, which began soon after the World Series ended. Martin’s season had been over for several weeks now. The Detroit Tigers had eliminated Martin and the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series on October 18. Rather than stick around New York to hear and read the public outcry, he immediately returned to his native Montreal, where he made his off-season home. It was quiet in his hometown, a place to escape sports, at least baseball. Baseball had been gone since the Montreal Expos left to become the Washington Nationals in 2004. Montreal was a cultural and cuisine mecca where sports outside of hockey were not paramount. The second-largest French-speaking city in the world after Paris, it shared much of Parisian culture. Martin speaks French fluently and prides himself on being something of a foodie and an urbanite. He was raised in Montreal to have an appreciation for the arts. His father is an African-Canadian jazz saxophonist, and his white French-Canadian mother, Suzanne Jenson, is a singer and actress. He skateboards, takes the metro, and enjoys Montreal’s cafés and bistros and its European feel. He can relax and escape here.

  That escape was now interrupted as he listened to Hurdle’s voice mail, asking for an opportunity to make his pitch. Martin’s round face, capped with cropped, curly dark hair, broke into a smile, surprised by the call on a number of levels. For starters, the Pirates? They were young and rebuilding, right? They were always rebuilding. They had twenty consecutive losing seasons. Why did Martin make sense for them? He was also surprised his agent said they were willing to go to multiple years and near eight figures per season. The Pirates never paid for free agents, and free agents were not exactly banging down their door to get in. They had become something of a baseball Siberia.

  While surprising and perplexing, the phone call was also reassuring. Entering free agency, having produced a career-worst .211 batting average in 2012 and .143 mark in the postseason, he was worried about the level of interest from other teams. His speed was in decline and he was going to be thirty in February. When the Yankees discussed the possibility of resigning Martin immediately after the season, during the window that the clubs had to exclusively negotiate with their own free agents, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman shockingly told Martin’s agent that money was tight. Money tight for the Yankees? It wasn’t as if Martin were seeking a nine-figure contract. Wasn’t it more likely they didn’t want him back after his ugly offensive numbers?

  The Texas Rangers were the other club that had showed interest. Martin and his agent were to fly to Dallas soon to meet with the Rangers executives, but the Rangers were not offering the years or dollars he sought. Martin thought he might have to sign a one-year, lower-dollar deal to build back his value. The Rangers were a talented 93-win team the previous season, losing in the wild-card game to Baltimore. But the Rangers weren’t as aggressive in courting him. Not only had the Pirates aggressively entered discussions as free agency began, offering two years and more money than the Rangers, but now the club’s manager was calling him directly. It as an all-out recruitment.

  But the Pirates? Why were they so interested? He was coming off his worst season as a pro and, according to traditional statistics, had generally been in a six-year decline in offensive performance. As Martin drove along an open expanse of highway that ran along the St. Lawrence River on Montreal’s south shore, the city’s skyline became visible to the north. He freed one hand and reached for his phone.

  Back in Pittsburgh, Hurdle knew Martin might not be interested in the Pirates and might not return his call to listen to his pitch. But the Pirates had been so aggressive and Hurdle had reached out so quickly not only because of their interest but their desperation. Hurdle had agreed to implement a radical defensive plan. The beauty of the plan was that the shifts and what the pitching staff would be asked to do had not required adding a single dollar to the payroll. The Pirates thought they could create wins without spending additional dollars; they had to. But that plan couldn’t fix all the team’s issues; it wouldn’t push them into the playoffs. They also had to somehow find hidden value externally and pay for it.

  After their organizational meetings several weeks earlier, the Pirates had universally agreed that their situation at catcher was untenable. They did not have a starting-caliber major league catcher within the organization, and without one they would be in d
ire shape. They also agreed they had to bolster their starting rotation. The problem? The Pirates had roughly $15 million to spend on major league free agents in the 2012–13 off-season. Those dollars might seem significant, but an average starting pitcher or position player was then going for $10 million per year on the free agent market. The Pirates would not be able to afford obvious, proven, top-of-the-market commodities. So to reverse their fortunes, for the coaching and front-office staff to save their jobs, they would have to maximize every dollar. They had to find value on the free agent market in places where others did not.

  Still, they knew Pittsburgh was not a free agent destination and that other teams would be attractive to Martin. Hurdle’s phone had been silent for an hour when Martin called.

  After some initial catching up, the sales pitch began. Hurdle sold the city, the park, the team, noting how the Pirates had carried winning records into the second half of each of the last two seasons before Epic Collapses I and II. But what Martin really wanted to hear about beyond the contract details was what they saw in him. Why did they value him? Hurdle said the clubhouse needed a veteran presence. He thought Martin would be great working with young pitchers, who would be less likely to shake him off and go with his game plan. Hurdle said the Pirates liked Martin’s toughness and throwing arm since they had been woeful at controlling their opponents’ running games.

  There was also the contract. It didn’t hurt that the Pirates were also offering more money than Martin’s other suitors: $17 million for two years. The Pirates had never spent that much for a free agent.

  After Martin and Hurdle amicably concluded the phone call, Martin was intrigued. “He helped me shape my decision,” Martin said. “I thought, ‘Maybe there’s something I can do to help them get over that hump.’”

  But the Pirates were withholding information. During their conversations, they never revealed a key discovery that had led them to Martin.