Producing Runs
Capital prizes efficiency and changes the mode of production
The first rule of Baseball states the goal of the game is to score more runs that one’s opponent in a regulation game. The point, then, for those oriented toward overproduction is to produce as many runs, as efficiently as possible. Change “runs” to “value” and we are describing Capitalism. There is a Socialism to team sports in general and being a pre-Modern game, baseball provides regular circumstances where the team may benefit from the value produced through sacrifice: Conceding an out for a base or a run.
The logical end of “produce as many runs, as efficiently as possible” is what we have been watching in Major League Baseball, especially in the 2020’s. Teams have been coaching players to just hit for power, because a .200 batting average with 200 strikeouts in a season has become accepted, provided the player hits enough home runs.
Advanced Sabermetrics theory holds that it doesn’t matter how an out is made, and for that reason having runners on base can be a liability, as it increases the likelihood of an out being made on one swing.
Batting for a high On Base Percentage (OBP. The percentage of plate appearances where a batter reaches base by any means) takes more skill than hitting for power, and the pressure on all employers is to deskill their employees as much as possible. A team with an OBP of .400 will score a lot of runs, but they proved to be too expensive, come the new century.
Now that the league trend is all power, power hitters are overvalued, relative to the high OBP hitters. The question is--will the teams adjust their scouting and development accordingly? It took over a generation for teams to shift in the current direction. Will it be worth it for teams to revert?
The players who bash home runs were literally raised as baseball players to bash, while those who hit like Rod Carew (19-year career, 92 home runs, .393 OBP) were told if they did not learn to bash there was no future for them. It’s not like any of today’s .220 hitters are going to start hitting .285 in their careers. There needs to be a new generation of hitters, coached with a “new” philosophy.
Some folks, like myself, “intellectualize” the game by throwing different forms of analytics into the mix, such as dialectical materialism. This leads to thinking about the game outside of “fan parameters,” and looking at it as an economic entity that operates under certain economic laws. As home runs become the preferred means of generating runs, the home run hitters will become overvalued. This will leave a “Moneyball” opportunity for those teams willing to invest in developing high-OBP hitters, who already seem to be undervalued.
There is more than one way to produce runs in a baseball game, and while the home run is the pinnacle of efficiency, the rapid accumulation of outs that come with low batting averages are the constraint on productivity. High OBP extends the game and requires the opposition to throw more pitches; this can also be turned into an offensive efficiency as pitching is the game’s first line of defense. High OBP teams will place more stress on opponents’ pitching staffs. over the course of a season.
From:
The Remake of Vintage Baseball (from the creator of VINTAGE BASEBALL)Steven Colatrella ·
I hope to find the time someday to explain to you all how, aside from my methodological critique of analytics - its methodological individualism being unable to capture group dynamics in a team game - a fundamental PHILOSOPHICAL limit of analytics and Sabermetrics is their lack of understanding of Hegelian (and Marxist) dialectics. For now, I will post this excellent video which explains the next turn in the dialectic, as things as always turn into their opposite as we readers of Hegel would expect, and economics wins over baseball, as we readers of Marx would expect.
I have always seen analytics as being about money, not effective baseball play, except to the extent that this it is COST effective (exchange value in Marx’s terminology, not the USE VALUE of baseball as a thing in itself, that is not really about baseball as something with its OWN logic and authenticity apart from money concerns), and about those practicing it getting and keeping jobs with teams. Hence the dismay of so many fans for whom baseball is played on the field, and who do seek jobs with teams.
Anyway, here’s the video below. Philosophically, I will say only that the positivism of analytics, and the neoliberal economic theories that Bill James admits inspired Sabermetrics, cannot admit that all their sophisticated theorizing is only in the service of profit.
Fans here who argue for the INHERENT superiority of contemporary strategies will soon find that teams are going to the exact opposite approach, without the BASEBALL Sabermetrics theory changing, only economic one. Then it will be their turn to feel as disoriented as most traditional fans have been lately.