Rosenthal on how the Cubs became contenders

[Brock Beauchamp]

Here's a pretty nice piece from Rosenthal at The Athletic. As always, here's a plug to subscribe if you're not already a member, it's well worth the price.

https://theathletic.com/4767256/2023/08/11/chicago-cubs-schedule-playoff-odds/

The quotes and bits about Swanson were the most interesting. He appears to be quite vocal about... well, everything.

“The message still has to be to everyone that the expectation is this,” Swanson continued, raising his hand above his head. “I just kind of said now is a real important moment in culture setting. If we want to be winners here, we can’t just say, ‘All right, we’re going to turn our winner mindset on next year when we feel like we have everything right.’ No. The winning mindset stays at all times.”

[champaignchris]

I’m betting a clip of Dansby’s quote, “Golly, if they get rid of people, I’m going to be upset,” is up in the locker room somewhere with a picture of Captain America saying, “Language!”

[Stratos]

Hoyer deserves a lot of credit for building this team with a different culture than the Theo/Maddon group, putting an emphasis on teamwork and a team-first attitude (along with Ross and the coaching staff/players he's brought in) and bringing in players who are proven winners and great competitors.  Swanson is the kind of ballplayer you can build a team around because they can help set the culture and expectations of a club, not just being the guy with the best WAR.

They've also put more emphasis on fundamentals and built one of the best baserunning and defensive teams in baseball.  They like hitters who put together good AB's, and have moved away from the walk+HR approach under Theo and seem to emphasize better all-around hitters.  They also prioritize catchers who can gameplan and work with a staff over offense.

These are the kinds of things that teams (like the 90's Braves) used to emphasize a lot more decades ago, so it's interesting to see things come full circle after the whole sabermetrics revolution and this org putting more value on things that don't necessarily show up obviously on stat sheets.

He hasn't always been perfect (ie: Mancini contract) but I've been a big supporter and defender of Hoyer's and like the way he approaches things generally, including free agency and contracts.

[soccer10k]

I can't speak for the baserunning but the 2016 Cubs were an incredibly good defensive team that also ground pitchers down with very good PA's. They were 2nd in OBP despite being 14th in BA and were 13th in HRs. They were also 4th in pitches seen per PA. The Fowler-Rizzo-KB-Zobrist combo was brutal for pitchers. They did lead the league in walks but there's nothing wrong with not making an out.

[Rex Buckingham]

5 hours ago, soccer10k said:

I can't speak for the baserunning but the 2016 Cubs were an incredibly good defensive team that also ground pitchers down with very good PA's. They were 2nd in OBP despite being 14th in BA and were 13th in HRs. They were also 4th in pitches seen per PA. The Fowler-Rizzo-KB-Zobrist combo was brutal for pitchers. They did lead the league in walks but there's nothing wrong with not making an out.

I felt like they were a good baserunning team too. Shoot, Game 7 had KB scoring from 1st on Rizzo's single, Almora tagging and going 1st to 2nd on a deep fly ball, and KB scoring in a shallow fly ball.

[Rob]

6 hours ago, Stratos said:

These are the kinds of things that teams (like the 90's Braves) used to emphasize a lot more decades ago, so it's interesting to see things come full circle after the whole sabermetrics revolution and this org putting more value on things that don't necessarily show up obviously on stat sheets.

There's this misconception that sabermetrics was all about walks and homeruns. That was never the case, but a lot of people who read Moneyball missed the point.

Billy Beane was operating on a shoestring budget compared to his peers. The whole schtick about Moneyball was that Beane needed to spend his limited funds very wisely. To that end, he utilized sabermetrics to find qualities that were undervalued by the marketplace at the time. And, at the time, OBP wasn't valued appropriately. So Beane found himself getting bargains on that type of player. Moneyball was just a philosophy to use sabermetrics to find something undervalued and snatch it up.

Sabermetrics is still in use by just about every club in baseball today. But sabermetrics is, by its very nature, an evolving field. It's an attempt to understand and quantify a player's contributions on a baseball diamond. More than ever, teams are gathering all sorts of data looking for the next edge. We've moved on from OBP to average exit velocity, pitchers spin rates, and catcher framing metrics. And each team is trying to find undervalued qualities in the marketplace. I don't see that changing any time soon. Sabermetrics is here to stay.

[I owned a Suzuki]

1 hour ago, Rob said:

There's this misconception that sabermetrics was all about walks and homeruns. That was never the case, but a lot of people who read Moneyball missed the point.

Billy Beane was operating on a shoestring budget compared to his peers. The whole schtick about Moneyball was that Beane needed to spend his limited funds very wisely. To that end, he utilized sabermetrics to find qualities that were undervalued by the marketplace at the time. And, at the time, OBP wasn't valued appropriately. So Beane found himself getting bargains on that type of player. Moneyball was just a philosophy to use sabermetrics to find something undervalued and snatch it up.

Sabermetrics is still in use by just about every club in baseball today. But sabermetrics is, by its very nature, an evolving field. It's an attempt to understand and quantify a player's contributions on a baseball diamond. More than ever, teams are gathering all sorts of data looking for the next edge. We've moved on from OBP to average exit velocity, pitchers spin rates, and catcher framing metrics. And each team is trying to find undervalued qualities in the marketplace. I don't see that changing any time soon. Sabermetrics is here to stay.

I think a great example of this is defense.  For a long time Sabermetrics didn't have good enough tools to really quantify players defense.  So the perception was that Sabermetrics did not value defense or think that it was important to a players overall value.  But as tools have progressed to to help judge and quantify defense better, the value of good defensive players shows through so much better in Sabermetrics or advanced statistics and analysis.

[Rob]

37 minutes ago, I owned a Suzuki said:

I think a great example of this is defense.  For a long time Sabermetrics didn't have good enough tools to really quantify players defense.  So the perception was that Sabermetrics did not value defense or think that it was important to a players overall value.  But as tools have progressed to to help judge and quantify defense better, the value of good defensive players shows through so much better in Sabermetrics or advanced statistics and analysis.

Yup. In fact, I'd venture to say that defense is the area that sabermetrics has made the biggest strides in since Moneyball came out.

I imagine most people here didn't know that the Cubs used to have agreements with some junior colleges to have exclusive access to their amateur TrackMan data so that they could get a better grasp on amateur fielding analytics before these guys were even in the minors. [MLB changed the rules as of 2020 to make these exclusive arrangements void, and all amateur data is now shared].

Teams are using all of this data to get far, far more accurate insights into players defensive qualities. Reaction time, sprint speed, pathing accuracy, etc...  And that data is cross referenced with exit velocity and launch angle and even wind speed.

Twenty years ago, our best approximations of defensive quality were something akin to "on average across MLB, most guys would get 'x' number of outs on 'y' opportunities. This player made a few more outs on a similar number of opportunities, so he must be pretty good."

The improvements in defensive quantification have been frankly incredible. It's no surprise that smart teams have been able to make some serious headway with all this new information.

[Brock Beauchamp]

On 8/11/2023 at 11:08 AM, TomtheBombadil said:

Didn’t know this but nice:

Yeah, the 2021 Braves were nothing special for four months. And they mostly picked up scraps at the deadline, IIRC.

[Stratos]

18 hours ago, soccer10k said:

I can't speak for the baserunning but the 2016 Cubs were an incredibly good defensive team that also ground pitchers down with very good PA's. They were 2nd in OBP despite being 14th in BA and were 13th in HRs. They were also 4th in pitches seen per PA. The Fowler-Rizzo-KB-Zobrist combo was brutal for pitchers. They did lead the league in walks but there's nothing wrong with not making an out.

Yeah 2016 was a very good team obviously.  I'm talking more about the later 2018-2020 teams.  Walks are good but some of those hitters had clear areas of weakness which were eventually exposed that they couldn't often adjust to which over time became easy for many opposing teams to gameplan for.  Schwarber hard stuff up and in, Heyward pound him inside, Russell soft stuff away, Happ fastballs up out of the zone and breaking balls low out of the zone,  Baez just don't throw him anything near the strike zone, KB sliders low and away.

Cubs still have a few guys like that (Morel on soft stuff low and away, similar with Swanson, plus Wisdom and Suzuki) but I think they've improved on it.  We've seen guys make adjustments too, like Happ changing his approach since last year, Madrigal seemingly swinging harder and changing his launch angle since going down to AAA, Nico recently hitting balls with more lift.

[Stratos]

13 hours ago, Rex Buckingham said:

I felt like they were a good baserunning team too. Shoot, Game 7 had KB scoring from 1st on Rizzo's single, Almora tagging and going 1st to 2nd on a deep fly ball, and KB scoring in a shallow fly ball.

2016 yes, but they were a terrible baserunning team some of the last few Theo years.

[Stratos]

13 hours ago, Rob said:

There's this misconception that sabermetrics was all about walks and homeruns. That was never the case, but a lot of people who read Moneyball missed the point.

Billy Beane was operating on a shoestring budget compared to his peers. The whole schtick about Moneyball was that Beane needed to spend his limited funds very wisely. To that end, he utilized sabermetrics to find qualities that were undervalued by the marketplace at the time. And, at the time, OBP wasn't valued appropriately. So Beane found himself getting bargains on that type of player. Moneyball was just a philosophy to use sabermetrics to find something undervalued and snatch it up.

Sabermetrics is still in use by just about every club in baseball today. But sabermetrics is, by its very nature, an evolving field. It's an attempt to understand and quantify a player's contributions on a baseball diamond. More than ever, teams are gathering all sorts of data looking for the next edge. We've moved on from OBP to average exit velocity, pitchers spin rates, and catcher framing metrics. And each team is trying to find undervalued qualities in the marketplace. I don't see that changing any time soon. Sabermetrics is here to stay.

I agree with your description about the Moneyball approach.  I never said sabermetrics was all about walks and homeruns, but but I think Theo's approach did overemphasize those 2 stats to the detriment of others.  Theo did value OBP but I think undervalued the batting average component of it and didn't care enough about K%, and the hitting philosophy of the organization even throughout the minor leagues reflected that.

My main point was that sabermetrics undervalues things that either don't show up or can't be isolated easily in statistics, like a catcher's ability to gameplan, or leadership and team culture.  I'm not anti-sabermetrics/analytics in any way whatsoever, but if you only look at analytics and ignore or undervalue other intangibles then some things important to winning can be missed, and I think the Theo/Maddon teams after 2017 reflected that.