The Fly-ball Revolution

[Babkins]

Interesting essay on swing mechanics, excerpted from The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players, the new book by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik. Not really Orioles-related, but germane to our ongoing analytics discussions and the conversations about what all these new draftees' bats might become with some tweaks. It does deal closely with former Oriole Justin Turner. Mods, please move if you don't want it here; I just wanted people to see it.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/06/mvp-machine-excerpt-mookie-betts-better-swing.html?via=homepage_taps_top

[Camden_yardbird]

Sawchik wrote "Big Data Baseball."  It was worth a read.  Really highlights how far behind the Orioles are in this revolution.  In BDB they talk about the Pirates being 5 years behind the indians, and they did their work 5 years ago.

 

[BohKnowsBmore]

59 minutes ago, Camden_yardbird said:

Sawchik wrote "Big Data Baseball."  It was worth a read.  Really highlights how far behind the Orioles are in this revolution.  In BDB they talk about the Pirates being 5 years behind the indians, and they did their work 5 years ago.

 

Of note, though, the Orioles took a ton of flack for building the 2012 - 2017-ish teams around the long ball, to the point where a lot of the fan base started fetishizing small ball.  Appears that they were ahead of the league on that front, albeit maybe not from any sort of statistical progressivism.

[LookinUp]

Really neat article. More people should be reading it.