{"id":625780,"date":"2023-04-05T09:50:04","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T14:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/05\/how-the-relentless-drive-for-optimization-made-baseball-impossible-to-watch\/"},"modified":"2023-04-05T09:50:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T14:50:04","slug":"how-the-relentless-drive-for-optimization-made-baseball-impossible-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/05\/how-the-relentless-drive-for-optimization-made-baseball-impossible-to-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"How the relentless drive for optimization made baseball impossible to watch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Here\u2019s a question for major league baseball\u2019s opening weekend: What does Philadelphia Phillies left fielder Kyle Schwarber have in common with artificial intelligence?<\/p>\n

At first glance, not much. Schwarber \u2014 who has the rough physical dimensions of a human keg of beer \u2014 is best known for hitting the baseball really, really far when he hits it. Counting the regular season and postseasons, he hit a National League-leading 52 regular and postseason home runs last year \u2014 Schwarbombs<\/a>, as Philly fans like to call them \u2014 including one against San Diego in the National League Championship Series that may have been able to achieve orbital flight<\/a>. <\/p>\n

GPT-4 is capable of doing many things, but mashing a baseball 119.7 mph for a total of 488 feet<\/a>, as Schwarber did against San Diego\u2019s Yu Darvish, is not currently one of them. <\/p>\n

But viewed another way \u2014 and I say this as a lifelong Phillies fan \u2014 Schwarber is the roly-poly human incarnation of an out-of-control AI. He\u2019s Skynet madly swinging a 31-ounce Louisville Slugger<\/a>. He\u2019s HAL from 2001<\/em> in custom Home Run Derby cleats<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And he must be stopped.<\/p>\n

The relentless pursuit of optimization<\/h3>\n

Allow me to explain. <\/p>\n

In 2022, counting the regular season and the postseason, <\/strong>Schwarber had 743 plate appearances<\/a>. Along with those 52 home runs, he walked 101 times and struck out a truly mind-boggling 218 times. That means that almost exactly 50 percent of the time Schwarber came to the plate, he achieved one of baseball\u2019s \u201cthree true outcomes<\/a>\u201d: a strikeout, a walk, or a home run. <\/p>\n

A true outcome means that the ball isn\u2019t put in play and no member of the defense is involved beyond the pitcher throwing the ball and the catcher attempting to catch it. That means no fielder trying to make a Gold Glove play on a batted ball. It means no speedy runner trying to go first to home on a ball hit in the gap. <\/p>\n

The three true outcomes are baseball at its most bloodlessly \u2014 and boringly \u2014 efficient. And over the past 20 years or so, efficiency as represented by the three true outcomes is precisely the direction baseball has been headed.<\/p>\n

On the defensive side, that has meant teams loading up on pitchers capable of throwing the ball really, really hard, in search of strikeouts. A ball put in play, after all, could fall for a hit. The average four-seam fastball last year was 93.9 mph<\/a>, up from 93.1 mph in 2015, the first year such data was collected. <\/p>\n

It used to be that only freaks of nature like Nolan Ryan<\/a> could hit triple digits on the radar gun, yet last year there were 3,356 pitches thrown at 100 mph or higher<\/a> \u2014 nearly twice as many as the year before, and far and away the most in baseball history. <\/p>\n

On the offensive side, the emphasis is on the other two outcomes: walks and home runs. I never believed it when my Little League manager used to tell me that \u201ca walk is as good as a hit\u201d \u2014 kids like to swing the bat \u2014 but that\u2019s now gospel in the majors, especially if that walk is followed up by the next batter hitting it out of the park for a multi-run homer. <\/p>\n

With pitchers throwing harder than ever, just making contact is difficult enough, so batters have tried to compensate by focusing on raising the launch angle generated by their swings<\/a>, increasing the chance that when they do put wood to ball, it has the lift to leave the park. Schwarber\u2019s titanic shot off Darvish, for instance, had a launch angle of 25 degrees<\/a>, well above the league average, which is higher than it used to be. <\/p>\n

The downsides of taking all those Ruthian uppercuts, especially if you\u2019re facing a guy throwing 100-mph gas, is that much of the time you will swing and miss. That means lots of strikeouts<\/a> and considerably fewer balls put into play in the field<\/a>. In addition, the recent adoption of advanced defensive positioning<\/a> has meant that managers are moving fielders before the pitch to where they think a hitter is most likely to put the ball, what\u2019s known as a shift. <\/p>\n

No batter in the National League faced the shift more often last season<\/a> than Schwarber, who would often see three infielders on the right side \u2014 where a left-handed power hitter like him pulls the ball \u2014 with a second baseman essentially playing shallow right field. Those tactics meant that even when hitters like Schwarber made solid, non-home-run contact, they were less likely to result in a hit. Partially as a result, league-wide batting average fell to .243 last year<\/a>, the lowest since 1968, while the humble base hit is practically an endangered species. <\/p>\n

The result is a game that is highly efficient and highly boring, with lots of strikeouts and way fewer hits, punctuated by the occasional burst of dingers. Just look at last year\u2019s World Series, which featured Schwarber\u2019s Phillies against the Houston Astros. Game 3 saw<\/a> the Phillies win 7-0, with all seven runs coming on five homers, including one by Schwarber. And then came Game 4, when the Phillies became only the second team in baseball history to be no-hit<\/a> in the World Series, with an incredible 14 strikeouts. <\/p>\n

Yes, as a Phillies fan, it was considerably more fun to watch the glorified home run derby that was Game 3 than seeing them be no-hit the next night. But even in their win, the Phils struck out 11 times. All in all, the Fall Classic, baseball\u2019s crown jewel, mostly involved watching pitchers throw the ball really hard, batters swinging really hard (and generally missing), and everyone else pretty much just standing around.<\/p>\n

The upshot is that the most efficient, effective way to win baseball \u2014 a strategy basically every team is pursuing \u2014 happens to have produced as a side effect the most boring kind of baseball to watch, as evidenced by declining ratings and attendance<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the relentless pursuit of optimization, baseball may be killing itself.<\/p>\n

Unaligned on the diamond<\/h3>\n

So what does this have to do with AI? It helps to go back two decades to the Moneyball Oakland A\u2019s and their general manager Billy Beane, the Miles Dyson<\/a> of baseball\u2019s Skynet situation. <\/p>\n

The A\u2019s had a problem: They were broke. (As Beane, played by Brad Pitt, put it in the movie Moneyball<\/em>: \u201cThere are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there\u2019s fifty feet of crap, and then there\u2019s us.\u201d) Unable to compete with rich teams like the Yankees for free agents, Beane had to compensate by using statistical analysis derived from the work of maverick figures like the statistician Bill James<\/a> <\/strong>to identify players who were undervalued for their actual production. <\/p>\n

This meant going against the conventional wisdom, which valued players for things like speed and batting average, and pursuing players who could reliably get on base any way possible, as this scene from the film shows:<\/p>\n

\n