Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game

This is a kind of update to two influential baseball books — Moneyball (the 2003 Michael Lewis book focusing on Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s’ organizational strategies) and Nine Innings (Daniel Okrent’s 1985 dissection of baseball as viewed through the lens of a single game played in 1982).Since Moneyball was written, there has been an explosion of data and data analysis. We thought that the Moneyball era was heavy with emphases on things like On Base Percentage, Games Won Above Replacement, etc. But now we are in what Neyer calls the “Statcast Era,” after the Statcast technology. As Neyer says, “. . . if it’s on the field and it moves, Statcast is watching. And recording.” Statcast churns out terabytes of data for every game, from the mundane (e.g., speed of pitches) to whole new levels of detail on player performance — pitchers’ spin rates on each of the pitches they throw, those exit velocities and launch angles we see now on baseball telecasts. Old traditional stats like ERA, Batting Average, and RBIs are on the junk pile.What the explosion of data allows is not only judging a player’s actual performance in new ways, but projecting their potential performance. Just as the A’s were the flag-bearers for Moneyball, the Houston Astros are for the Statcast Era. Neyer tells how the Astros recognized unrealized potential in the spin rate on pitcher Collin McHugh’s curveball (2000 rpm as opposed to typical curveballs at 1500 rpm). McHugh was on the verge of disappearing after a couple of high ERA seasons with the Mets and Rockies, but the Astros saw something the other teams weren’t looking at and got themselves a successful starting pitcher.A second big change accompanies the explosion of data -- a single-minded focus on home runs and strikeouts. I don’t know, and Neyer doesn’t tell us, if any data analysis supports that focus — e.g., whether teams score more runs by focusing on home runs, or whether teams prevent more runs by focusing on striking out the opposing hitters. But gone are “small ball” and “pitching to contact.” Teams used to manufacture runs with singles, sacrifices, stolen bases, hitting behind the runner, etc. And pitchers used to try to force hitters to hit “their pitch," reaching for outside and low fastballs or taking weak swings at change-ups. Now it’s power vs. power.Now batters learn to take uppercut swings, to increase the launch angle of batted balls so that they can hit more home runs and fewer ground balls. And pitchers respond with high fastballs that escape the paths of those uppercut swings. And they can both measure it all in fine detail and work to improve the numbers.Maybe a third big change is infield shifts, now used in radically increased frequency. Neyer points out that shifts are not entirely new — they were prominently used against Ted Williams (even called the “Ted Williams Shift”) during his playing days, but they even go back to the 1800s, the beginning of professional baseball.But the frequency of shifting is certainly unprecedented. Neyer gives the percentage increases in shift frequency starting in 2012 — 95, 50, 93, 34, 57. In other words, in 2012 teams shifted their infields, putting three infielders on one side of the infield (right or left, depending on whether the batter is left or right handed), by almost double, and THEN the frequency just kept increasing every year by huge amounts. In 2011, there were 2,350 shifts; in 2016, there were 28,130, an overall increase of over 1000%. And the batters haven’t responded by hitting away from the shifts, even in run=scoring situations. That would be “small ball.”I said that Neyer’s book is also a sequel to Daniel Okrent’s 1985 book, Nine Innings. Actually I was disappointed at the time with Okrent’s book. I expected a book that focused tightly on a single game would dissect that game, each decision, each pitch, with the what and why at that micro-level. It didn’t really, and neither does Neyer’s book. The game (in Neyer’s case a 2017 game between the Houston Astros and the Oakland A’s) serves as a backdrop, a conversational prop, for talking about baseball strategy and the evolution of the game.For the kind of micro-analysis I had wanted, my recommendation would be Bob Gibson’s book, Pitch by Pitch, which takes us through his day on the mound in the opening game of the 1968 World Series, truly pitch by pitch. I would love to see a similar book written by a team’s manager, or maybe a catcher.That’s just not what Neyer is doing (nor Okrent before him).I got a lot from reading Neyer’s book. I admit to being kind of a baseball curmudgeon — I love low-scoring, well-pitched games in which everything counts — a walk, a sacrifice, . . . all the “small ball” stuff. Because every run and every potential run has huge significance — there won’t be many so every one counts.Home runs are exciting, and so are strikeouts. But when they become routine, to me anyway, they lose their edge. When teams trade home runs throughout the game, I always think, well don’t get too excited — there will be more. It’s true that no lead is safe, but no lead even really seems like much of a lead. The dramatic tension lapses (again, for me, anyway).Neyer himself raises the question:“So ultimately the owners and the players will need to answer this question: Do baseball fans really want to spend most of their time waiting for strikeouts and home runs? Or do they still want to see runners stealing bases, hitters hustling for doubles and triples, and fielders making great plays? Do baseball fans still want to see baseball?”We’ll see.

So I’m a Dodger fan. Been so since I was born. Thus, as of 2017, anything related to the Houston Astros has earned my disdain. So let’s just get this part out of the way: In 2017, the Houston Astros cheated by stealing signs via a camera in centerfield. No players received any type of punishment for their involvement. Vacating their 2017 championship is a moot point, their legacy is tainted. I don’t know why they cheated, the 2017 club was stacked with immense talent.I bring up the Astros cheating scandal, because the narrative of this book, Powerball by Rob Neyer, follows a seemingly insignificant game between the eventual champions and a lowly Oakland Athletics. From moments in the game, Neyer veers onto different subjects concerning the history of baseball and the modern approaches to the game.So having the privilege of hindsight, it’s frustrating to read this book and listen to the author gush over the Astros players. Again, the Astros were good because of their talent, and in this book, they were the visiting team so they probably didn’t use their illegal sign-stealing system (as far as we know). Spoiler alert: the Astros lose the game in the book in the bottom of ninth.Additionally, I have grown tired of the baseball game narrative; this approach is stale and clunky now. Neyer usually starts a chapter discussing the pitcher and hitting match-ups then he veers off onto a thoroughly interesting aspect of a baseball. Then, abruptly, he has to switch back and finish the inning, and by this time, I have forgotten what is going on in the game (because ultimately I didn’t care about this insignificant game).All in all, I enjoyed the book, but I just couldn’t tell what the book was trying to say. At times, it felt like an old-school baseball manifesto, and other times it seemed like a sabermetric proselytizer. It’s like the book lacked cohesion in thought.So, a good not a great book.

I bought this for my son for his birthday and he was very happy to get it. He will be passing it along to his dad and our grandson to read as well. Three generations of baseball lovers will enjoy it and the price is very reasonable. It is a great addition to our sports book collection!