Matt Hague and Ben Cherington know there is a flaw with the communication between the back office researchers and the hitters in the batters box. They are trying to fix that by telling stories. This article is a sequent to the "Matt Hague Telling Stories" article. If you have not read it yet, I highly recommend it to get a briefing on the Pirates hitting strategy the few years before hiring Andy Haines and during the Andy Haines era.
It seems the Pirates are ready to move forward to the next phase in the data science process. The data science process is a step by step framework to solve problems using data. The data science process is usually broken down with a superset including these steps.
- Defining the problem
- Collecting data
- Cleaning the data
- Exploring the data
- Creating predictive models to analyse the data
- Evaluate the performance of the model
- Deploy the data
- Maintain the data
I'm not going to break down each of these steps, you can google "data science process" and it will return a better description of each than I can describe. I will be using the data science process and describe it in later articles, however. The Pirates mentioned in a past job posting for a data scientist that they work with many terabytes of data (they may have even said petabyte I don't remember). I believe this is beyond statcast, baseball savant, fangraphs, baseball reference, and the many public data sources available to the public either free or for a premium. An advantage of Andy Haines patient approach in the batters box while swinging aggressively at certain pitches in certain locations helps player gain experience on seeing more pitches. It helps players interpret the spin of the ball, release point, break and more to make a prediction on the balls location and movement in the strike zone which then in a split second the hitter must decide where in a 3D space to swing or to swing at all. Andy Haines is known to be a brilliant baseball mind according to Michael McKenry. He is best at hitting mechanics. Players learn where move their shoulder, elbows, wrists, knees, elbows, essentially all the joints to position the bat best to hit the ball. However, what it seems Andy Haines lacks is the ability to communicate with the analytics and relay the relevant information to the players. While Haines is great to help players position themselves to hit the ball, he is worse at helping players identify pitches. Players need to do both in order to hit the ball, and what seems to be a goal for the Pirates office to strike out less.
This is where Matt Hague comes in. He is going to take the relevant data from the analytics department and tell a story to the hitters to make it more clear to the players on how to identify and react to pitches. According to the reputable Data Science bootcamp, Springboard, data storytelling is, "Data storytelling is the process of narrativizing data analysis so that its insights can be understood by a wide audience. While not everyone can quickly comprehend data, most can follow a visual story that summarizes findings from the analytics process." Data storytelling includes a narrative, visuals, and data to engage, enlighten, and explain to players insights the hitters want and insights the team wants the hitters to know.
Haines lacked the data storytelling skill, but Haines approach has helped players like Suwinski make contact at the sweet spot of the bat with the best of them when Suwinski is on. He also has helped Oneil Cruz become a better overall hitter against both pitching hands and a wider range of pitches and breaks. All this is done with positioning the bat in the strike zone which Haines excels at coaching. The biggest downside of the Haines approach is likely by its own benefit. The approach needs patience because the bat can only be positioned in a split second so many ways reducing the type of pitches and locations where a player is looking to make contact increasing patience and increasing strikeouts. The Pirates besides Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds and possibly Nick Gonzales seem to have the physical bat speed or the adjustment traits to succeed adjusting the swing position with many of the pitch types, locations, and break a hitter might see. In my opinion the Pirates need more players that have the traits needed to adjust the bat position for multiple pitch types, locations, and break. Making adjustments to make smart swing decisions and hitting home runs is difficult to do. The Dodgers as a team are on a tier of their own in this regard. However, as Matt Hague has done with the Blue Jays coaching players to identify pitch types, locations, and break while making adjustments and not prioritizing home runs is the best the Pirates can do since they are not the Dodgers.
Haines still wanted home runs and taught players to be patient for their pitch in order to get those home runs. The result was around league average in walks, a lot of strikeouts, and not enough home runs since pitchers know what to throw so the Pirates won't swing. The Pirates need to keep the mechanics learned with Haines and the Pitch recognition stories from Hague.