THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

He’s also passed Ross Ohlendorf as “guy who gets tons of press despite not being a very good pitcher at all.”

I wish the best for Hayes, but I think he’s also probably blown past Ross Ohelndorf in terms of “Publicity in Inverse Relationship to Actual Ability to Pitch.”

I’ve been meaning to write about this. It’s like the sabermeteic version of “grit.” The “little guys” like Pierre, Eckstein, etc. get love from the press because they make people think, “Hey, I can do that, too.” Bannister, Ohelndorf, and Hayes get the same sort of love from the sabermetric set.

While I like the crawling trend towards having saber informed ballplayers, and that this guy is very very bright and can think outside of the box....I personally am not in favor of the things he suggests--all of the defensive shifting. Whether it might help if done wisely in isolation is one thing, but once everyone is doing it, the advantage has pretty much dissipated, and the game is now ‘uglier’, IMO.

That’s what you have to look at, IMO--the state of the game after all teams have incorporated these ‘improvements’, and the advantage has pretty much balanced out to whatever extent it will, because every team is doing the same thing. Not every sport is the same. The modern specialization aspect has probably made football more interesting and exciting, perhaps because of the wider number of skills that are important in football, and the fewer number of players who are well-rounded. But to me, baseball has fewer sub-skills, and therefore the present arrangement is the optimal blend....
It’s all a matter of opinion, of course. I would even go for less specialization than we have now, in the pen primarily.

Dave:

I can definitely see where you’re coming from, it would make the game longer and be a bit annoying. However, a manager should use anything he can to give his team an extra advantage, and some of Hayes’ ideas look like they could do just that.

I love how he approaches the issues and presents enough analysis to show that his thinking definitely has some merit, but then also knows enough to know the simplifications and the potential pitfalls and where to look more in-depth to see where optimum strategy would lie.  He not only has a sense of the game and how to think objectively about its strategy, he has a sense of how much his thinking means and of what it doesn’t cover.

I do agree with Dave, though.  It strikes me as a sort of prisoner’s dilemma (the hypothetical problem of whether you take the rational path of what is best for you in that instance or cooperate for the benefit of everyone).  If this strategy is optimal (and I assume that at least some of the time, it is), and you use it, you benefit.  But if everyone agrees to not use it for their own benefit, no one loses out and everyone benefits from the game not getting longer and uglier.  It’s not really a prisoner’s dilemma situation since there is already an established cooperation and you aren’t really at risk of falling behind if you don’t use this strategy, but I think it’s a decent parallel to help think about the issue.  Even if teams have entertained these ideas (and they have been used very rarely, so it seems at least some in the game acknowledge that they probably work), they are willing to ignore the advantages to be gained for the most part because they understand that by collectively leaving this aspect of the game alone, they are preserving the aesthetic of the game, and they all benefit from that.

Another thing I think that complicates the issue is that if switching positions became commonplace, I think there is a decent chance MLB would change the rules to limit these sorts of moves to speed the game back up.  The written rules are flexible here because it’s not an issue, but if it became an issue, in MLB’s eyes, then that could change.

I haven’t ever timed it but I’d think that since so many teams are accustomed to playing the shift on lefties like Ortiz, that they don’t really have to slow down the game to get into position. I can see how perhaps having the corner outfielders swap places every two or three at bats would slow things down, but for an infielder to move less than 100ft even less often can’t have much effect on game length.
And even if it did, it would also encourage viewers to be more engaged in the whole game including the strategies and therefore perhaps whatever loss you’d accept from a game being 5 minutes longer would be gained back from increased viewer engagement.
Similarly, I would rather watch a good movie that’s 120 minutes than a bad one that’s only 90.