As an Entertainment Product, Baseball Analytics Are Hurting the Game
By Ken Reed
I don’t hate baseball analytics, or the use of them by crafty baseball operations folks. I look at analytics gurus like Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, and Andrew Friedman as smart guys who have figured out how to exploit market inefficiencies in the game of baseball.
But what they’ve also done is inadvertently damage the game as a fan experience and entertainment product. There’s a lot of standing around on the field as players and fans watch a bunch of strikeouts and walks while waiting for a long ball to happen. As Chicago Cubs manager David Ross said, we are no longer playing baseball, we’re playing home run derby.
Baseball is action-challenged. A typical 2020 game featured 33 percent fewer balls in play than an average 2005 game. The impact of analytics on baseball strategy is the biggest reason why.
The numbers folks have told players they can hit more home runs if they swing with a bigger launch angle (read: uppercut). Moreover, they’ve told players to forget about choking up with two strikes in an effort to increase their chances of actually putting the ball in play. Keep swinging for the fences, strikeouts be damned!
Pitchers, on the other hand, have been told to worry less about walks and more about increasing their spin rate so they can fire fastballs up in the zone that the uppercutting hitters can’t easily get to. We want more strikeouts!
Moreover, the analytics department has told managers to quit attempting stolen bases because the risk/reward tradeoff isn’t good enough. Third base coaches have been discouraged from pushing players to take the extra base. Better to be safe, run station to station, and wait for the homerun. As such, triples are increasingly rare.
From the fan’s perspective, what we’re left with is an increasingly boring game.
“Executives like me, who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures, have unwittingly had a negative impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game,” said Epstein when asked about the impact of analytics on the fan experience.
Epstein, a former GM for the Cubs, has been hired by baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to explore ways the business side of baseball can neutralize the negative effects analytics have had on the game as an entertainment product.
Let’s wish him luck.
Analytics have turned baseball into a game of computers and robots. The art of the game, the gut feel of managers, and the human element are all being eliminated by data scientists.
In fact, for some teams, the manager in the dugout really isn’t needed anymore. According to the folks in the data den, a starting pitcher must be pulled at 100 pitches no matter how strong he looks, how great he feels, or how effective he’s been at getting the other team out to that point.
Another new analytics “rule” for managers is to take starters out before they face the opposing lineup for a third time. Because of that, we got the fiasco of Tampa Rays manager Kevin Cash pulling starting pitcher Blake Snell out of a 2020 World Series game he was dominating against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Snell had a one-hitter going through five innings and had struck out nine. In the sixth, he got another quick out and then allowed a single. Despite only having tossed 73 pitches he was pulled with his team leading 1-0. Snell’s replacement struggled and the Rays went on to lose.
Former Atlanta Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone, the mastermind behind one of the best starting pitching staffs in history, gets upset about managers making decisions strictly by numbers.
“If you have to have a number for an inning, or a number for a pitch count, to determine whether you leave somebody in, then you shouldn’t be coaching,” said Mazzone.
And Mazzone doesn’t agree with the current wisdom in the game that pitch counts keep pitchers healthier.
“What professional baseball is doing now with pitchers clearly does not work because baseball has set a record for DLs and arm surgeries,” said Mazzone. In fact, he believes pitchers need to throw more between starts, not less, to keep their arms strong and healthy.
Analytics are here to stay, and they should be. They have a legitimate role to play in baseball operations departments when it comes to player analysis and strategy formulation. But there has to be a better balance in the game between science and art.
As for the business operations folks in the game, like Manfred, there needs to be an ongoing effort to develop new rules and policies that neutralize the negative impact of analytics on the game’s fan appeal.
Baseball, as a whole, will be better for it.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans

Sports Forum Podcast
Episode #29 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: The Honorable Tom McMillen Visits League of Fans’ Sports Forum – McMillen is a former All-American basketball player, Olympian, Rhodes Scholar and U.S. Congressman, and has a long involvement with the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sport (now called the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition). We discuss the state of college athletics today, given the pressures of NIL, the transfer portal, sports gambling and huge media contracts. McMillen then provides great perspective on the poor state of physical fitness our young people are experiencing today.
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Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world. We discuss problems in youth sports today.
Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
Episode #25 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Physical Education Should Be a Critical Component of K-12 School Design – Michael Horn is co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Episode #24 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Mental Health and Athletes: Ending the Stigma – Nathan Braaten and Taylor Ricci are the founders of Dam Worth It, a non-profit created to end the stigma around mental health at colleges and universities through sport, storytelling, and community creation.
Media
"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- Reed Appears on Ralph Nader Radio Hour League of Fans’ sports policy director, Ken Reed, Ralph Nader and the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner discussed a variety of sports issues on Nader’s radio show as well as Reed’s updated book, How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan. Reed's book was released in paperback in February, and has a new introduction and several updated sections.
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
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