THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

That was a great interview.

But I don’t think it illustrates—as some of the FG commenters are implying—that there’s anything wrong with players knowing advanced stats.

The real problem here, IMO, is that Bannister knew too little about player development and therefore didn’t know his own limitations.

McClure’s instincts toward player development, in which you take what you’ve got and just focus on improving one big thing at a time, is in line with how humans actually learn and improve.

It sounds like Bannister’s attempt to completely remake himself—developing a sinker from scratch when he’d never thrown a sinker before, etc.—was totally out of line with how humans operate. Absolutely nobody, no matter how talented, can just pull a new pitch out of nowhere and immediately starting throwing it at the major league level. His existing pitches were major league caliber because he’d been working on them for many years.

Of course, it’s natural for young men who reach the top of any field to be pretty cocky and assume that any talent they have is just their own god-given greatness, and I know Bannister isn’t the only one to make that kind of mistake. But it’s sad that it went far enough to tank his career.

The sinker is a different grip on a fastball, agreed? It’s not like he’s learning to throw a splitter or something of that nature. Hell, Justin Verlander shelved the spike curveball for a traditional grip on a curveball in about a week between starts in either his first or second season. I think him ‘developing a sinker from scratch’ is kind of a misnomer. Pitcher’s don’t throw 100% four-seamers or sinkers; they usually are mixing both.

Sorry but I’m not impressed. He goes on about what a great year Bannister had in 07 and then he tanked after that. Look at his FIP in 07. It is decidedly mediocre. And then look at his FIP in 09. It is better.  If a pitching coach can’t tell when a pitcher is actually pitching well (or not) and when he is benefiting from luck or good defense then who can?

We all remember Greinke referring to FIP in SI. I recall Banny taking it one step further in an interview referring to FIP and BABIP and saying that his performance was not sustainable due to his low BABIP.

Maybe this is when he started trying new things to combat regression, while McClure was thinking “if it ain’t broke ...”.

It’s possible that BB over-reacted. It’s also possible that BB was preparing for needed improvement. There are a wide range of personalities in baseball. Some guys over-think everything, some guys don’t think at all. Most others are in between.

BB was aware that his talent is fringe MLBer. It seems reasonable, given survival thinking, that he was often thinking of new “tricks” to fool hitters, instead of relying on strengths. Some guys always change bats, or stances, or arm angles, or grips ... Especially when struggling or low on confidence.

If I had made it to pro ball I could see myself being like BB knowing that my stuff is bottom shelf, aways waiting for regression to set in during good times, and always thinking I need a new wrinkle ... rather than being one of those guys that just goes out there with confidence and does what I do best.

It can’t be easy being a thinker in baseball when you have marginal stuff. When you do well you think it’s luck and when you do poor it’s regression or true talent. Kind of a curse, so to speak.

McClure, himself, was a type of tinkerer that changed some things to fill different roles. I think he probably understands BB well and thought that he was getting in his own way. Pitching coaches generally don’t look at advanced or traditional stats, but in pitch quality, contact quality, and how batters approach the pitcher. It’s tough to know who is right, given a few quotes.

Ok, reading your comments, I see that it wasn’t as black and white as McClure made it out to be.

In reality, an already-mediocre pitcher, with some shoulder problems, was unable to improve enough to really make it anywhere. And I guess I can’t say how difficult it should be for an MLBer to learn a sinker, or how much we can rely on McClure’s assertion that Bannister wasn’t taking advantage of his own strengths.

But as a poker player, I definitely identified with the idea that a young guy who’s seen as an “overthinker” is thinking too much about how a theoretically perfect player should look and too little about how human players learn and improve.

(And I don’t like the term “overthinking”—except in the context of in-game choking, which is often caused by too much conscious thought—because in the context of planning a practice strategy, there’s really no such thing as too much thinking or too much knowledge. The real problem is a too-narrow knowledge base, which leads to too little knowledge in the most important areas.)