The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

In 2015, Bill James said, “My view on the world is we have an ocean of ignorance and a small island of knowledge.” He wasn’t speaking specifically about baseball, but the observation applies, even to one of the most obsessively chronicled and comprehensively quantified human hobbies.

For good or ill, the youth baseball experience worldwide is about to be more information-rich than ever. If anything, though, objective measurements provide fuel for competitiveness and a new way to hook kids on an old game. The same people who say stats suck the joy out of following baseball may also say that launch angles and spin rates suck the

“The dilemma for owners and players and fans may be understood as The Paradox of Progress: we know the game is better, so why, for so many, does it feel worse? I submit that while Science may win on the field, as clubs employ strategies that give them a better chance of victory, Aesthetics wins hearts and minds.” It won’t matter how good players ge

Ottavino countered that the Edgertronic would make him think less, narrowing his focus. “I’m gonna think either way,” Ottavino told the coaches, “but this makes me know what to think about.”

“The man with the information wins,” he says. “The information is king.”

“This is a fairly typical flight session,” Bauer says. “You got to see a good representation of what it is. Generally, you do more fixing than actual flying.”

“There is no one way to hit,” Yelich said in October 2018. Nor is there one way to develop players.

The combination of “the intellectual component of critical thinking and problem solving, alongside the physical preparation and the competition, is one of those things that’s really unique to sports,” he says.

What Bauer was after was a narrow-external focus. Narrow-external shifts one’s attention outside oneself and upon a specific task. That was ideal for pitching or, say, shooting in basketball or sinking a putt in golf.