The entire season came down to this half-inning of play. The Braves had been to the World Series the year before, and a return trip had seemed all but certain when they took a 3-games-to-1 lead on Pittsburgh. But the Pirates had stormed back and now stood on the brink of their first World Series berth in a long time.
Pirates ace Doug Drabek took the mound to try and close out the Braves, facing down the middle of the order. Third baseman Terry Pendleton hit a double, followed by outfielder David Justice grounding to second baseman Jose Lind. Lind misplayed the grounder, leaving the Braves with runners on the corners and no outs. First baseman Sid Bream strode to the plate and was promptly walked by Drabek.
After the walk, Drabek was pulled from the game and set-up man Stan Belinda was called into action. Braves outfielder Ron Gant hit a deep sacrifice fly, caught by pre-muscle Barry Bonds. Terry Pendleton scored from third, cutting the Pirates lead in half. Braves catcher Damon Berryhill drew a walk that reloaded the bases, leaving Justice on third, Bream on second, and Berryhill at first.
Brian Hunter then pinch hit for Rafael Belliard, a man not exactly known for his offensive prowess. Hunter popped out. A second pinch hitter stepped to the plat with two outs and the bases loaded. His name? Francisco Cabrera, a man that had played in only 12 big league games that year.
Belinda threw two straight balls to Cabrera. After fouling off the third pitch, Cabrera made some baseball history on the fourth. He cracked a line drive into left field that fell in front of Barry Bonds. Justice had scored, tying the game. Sid Bream, the slowest man on the team, was lumbering home from second base. Bonds throw raced towards home, trying to beat the plodding first baseman.
Bream slid into home, narrowly avoiding the tag, and giving the Braves one of the most monumental moments in their history. The home television broadcast relayed one of the most famous calls in all of Georgia sports history. “Here’s the throw to the plate. He is……..safe! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win! Braves Win!”
It was a simpler time. Baseball was…well, not pure, by any means, but it was easier. You got up to hit. The pitcher threw the ball. You either hit it or you didn’t. Moneyball hadn’t been dreamed up yet. That concept was still ten years from seeing the light of day.
Now, in 2014, the truth is this: Analytics are smothering the life out of baseball. What was once a fun game to read about and watch on TV is now an endless parade of statistics and numbers. We used to joke about the stats becoming more and more specific, to the point that eventually a hitter would step to the plate and the announcer would say “Here’s Joe Smith, he’s batting .317 on the year, but thankfully it’s a Tuesday afternoon with a temperature between 77 and 81 Fahrenheit, the wind is blowing out of the southwest, there are only three birds in the sky over the stadium at the moment, and the pitcher is blonde right-hander with green eyes, standing less than six-foot-two, and there is a runner on second who is from the Dominican Republic. Smith is hitting a whopping .554 in that situation. Thank goodness that runner on second isn't from Puerto Rico. Smith is 0-for-his-last-24 in that situation.”
The one that pushed me over the edge on this is an article from ESPN (who else, right?) talking about the Marlins walk-off win over the Nationals on 28 July.
One line in particular pushed me over the proverbial edge: “But maybe a night like this goes some way toward explaining why the Nationals aren’t performing as well as their expected record, which is four wins better than their current 57, and five wins ahead of the Braves’ expected record.” The Nationals are currently 57-46. The Braves are 58-48. But that’s not what the author is talking about. She wrote about the teams’ “expected record.” What is that? As Lewis Black once said, in reference to weather reports, “I don’t need to know what the temperature would be if conditions were perfect.” Same goes here. Expected record is, and I quote Wikipedia, a “formula invented…to estimate how many games a baseball team should have won based on the number of runs they scored and allowed.”
In other words..meaningless. There is no point to this statistic, other than to simply make up another statistic. We’re going to eventually reach a point where the games are no longer played; they’re just projected on a spreadsheet and a trophy is handed out to the team that should win.
The fact is the Nationals are 57-46. They are not 61-42, which is their expected record. So why bother talking about their expected record.
This scene, from Clint Eastwood's Trouble with the Curve, illustrates the moneyball philosophy, albeit from a generalized perspective. Even though Eastwood's character is portrayed as a wizened baseball scout who understands the game, and has brought in several of the best players in Atlanta Braves history, he is mocked by younger scouts, given voice by Matthew Lilliard, for his luddite demeanor and unwillingness to look at statistics.
Moneyball as a philosophy is responsible for lowering payrolls around the league, which is arguably a good thing. But it also proposes that statistics, those little numbers on a piece of paper, are more valuable than actually watching a person play. The philosophy no longer exists solely in baseball, though it is most closely tied to the national pastime more than any other organized sport.
At some point, this:
Became more important than this:
And it's slowly killing baseball.
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