Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 680: Travis Sawchik on the Pirates and Big Data Baseball

Episode Date: May 19, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Pirates beat writer Travis Sawchik about his new book, Big Data Baseball.

🎵 But that's not you, but you know it's true But that won't do Good morning and welcome to episode 680 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives brought to you by Playindex at BaseballReference.com I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi Ben, how are you? Hello, Ben. How are you? Hello. All right. All right. So we have a guest today. Our guest is Travis Sochik, who covers the Pirates for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. We are not having him on just because he covers the Pirates for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, but because he has a book that is out today, if you're hearing this on Tuesday,

which is a pretty big deal for him and a lesser deal for all of us, but cumulatively, I think a pretty big deal for him and a lesser deal for all of us, but cumulatively, I think equally big deal. It's just dispersed, distributed between the whole world. We all get to read his book now. Travis, how are you? Hey, thanks for having me, guys. I'm doing well. The book is Big Data Baseball, Math, Miracles, and the End of a 20-Year Losing Street. It is about the pirates. It is about what the pirates have been doing. Some people will undoubtedly describe this using the word moneyball, and others might use the word, the words, the extra 2%. But it is really about a team that is more modern than each of those books

were about. It is a story about a team that is doing things in this modern era. And so, Travis, I'm curious when it was that you looked down at all the work you'd been doing and at all the work the Pirates had been doing and thought that there was a book there. Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I think my first year on the beat was 2013, which was good timing because they happened to end that 20-year losing streak then. But what interested me is that season went along and

then when it appeared they it wasn't just a fluky start was most of this roster was they were holdovers from 2012 i think it was 90 percent of the roster or 25 man roster a 40 man roster was uh were carryovers so you know what was going on here what was allowing this the the sum of the parts to be better than they they were year ago? How are they adding value? So the shifts were pretty apparent just from watching from the press box or even on television. But I think it was the ground ball rate that first struck me. The Pirates set a major league record ground ball rate that year, at least since industry folks have been recording ground ball rate. And that kind of got my attention, that in concert with the shifts, thinking, okay, there's something systematic going on here. And Ben and others had written, I think, Pitch Framing was starting to become more and more, maybe not in the mainstream, but it's something to this at a systematic level.

And I wrote a few articles for the Tribune Review, but I thought after the season that, and it was such a compelling season too on the field and all the history that kind of washed away with that fantastic wildcard game victory. And I thought, okay, maybe there's something here more than a couple of newspaper articles. And that's kind of what got the ball rolling on the book. What was your impression of the Pirates before you started covering them? What did you think about them as an organization? How would you have described them? And maybe more than that, or I guess the subset of that, what did you think of Clint Hurdle as a manager and as a baseball man before you started covering him? I'm not a Pittsburgher. So I was actually covering

Clemson football, baseball, basketball, for the Charleston Post and Courier when I came to Pittsburgh. So I came in here with no biases and fresh eyes, but I came here thinking, I mean, everybody knew about the history, and the Pirates were one of the more inept franchises in the sport for 20 years, but I had some familiarity. I mean, I knew the prospects, Cole, Tyone, and I thought, okay, there's some interesting things going on here. And I knew Neil Huntington. I was familiar with some of his work with the Indians and that he was more, say, metric leaning. And of course, I was a Baseball Perspectives subscriber. And I have a bookshelf full of annuals. So I knew the

Pirates were trying to do some smart things. They were trying to build an analytics department. And I thought, okay, if I take this job, maybe I won't be covering 100 loss team every year. So that was sort of my mindset going into it. But I didn't expect them to put together a 94-win season in 2013 and then followed up with another postseason berth. So I think just the speed of the turnaround was something that grabbed my attention too. And as for Hurdle, I mean, he just looks like an old school traditional baseball guy. And I think in many ways he certainly was, and he still is to a degree, but getting to know him a little bit and researching this book and talking to him for the book, he is, you can't just pigeonhole him as gray beard, old school guy. I mean, he is, he is his depth he has multiple layers this is a guy who he only had one b in high school and driver's ed so you know he has he's a smart guy and he has

a lot of different interests and i think his personality and the fact that he is kind of i don't know what term i want to use but i mean this is a guy who can reach a number of different people from dan fox the analytics department to aj brunette i mean he can connect with a number of different people from Dan Fox in the analytics department to A.J. Burnett. I mean, he can connect with a lot of different people. And I think that his personality kind of accelerated the buy-in process for the Pirates. So what was his conversion story? Because he wasn't totally a convert before he got to Pittsburgh. I guess how big a part of his hiring was the sense that he could cut into this stuff eventually and then how did it actually come about yeah he credits actually he believes he started the change after

he was fired from the rockies after 2008 or at the beginning of 2008 and the rockies i don't even think they had a full-time analytics staff at that point. And they were very traditional, I guess, as we call it. And he took a MLB network in studio. And that was the first he was exposed to fan graphs and pitch effects data, really, at a daily level. And he became curious. He wanted to dig in more. He's a big reader. You go in his office, and there's always a new stack of books on there.

So I think when he went to MLB network, he said, said okay here's a ton of information there's a bunch of young smart guys working here helping to helping produce broadcasts and things and he just started digging there he started to get curious when he was hired by the rangers as a hitting coach he brought some of that with him and when the pirates hired him i mean that was part of the interview process i think they were intrigued with that but there were, and he was still kind of resistant until they reached a desperation point, which was after a consecutive lose 19 and 20 to second half collapses in his first couple of years here. And I think at that point he said, okay, I really have to change. Why? We have to start adopting because there's no free agent saviors out here.

A lot of these top prospects aren't ready to help. We need to have some creative solutions. So I think it was a mixture of his kind of intellectual willingness to buy into some of this, but I think it was also part urgency and desperation to say, okay, we've got to get better. And even though I'm a little skeptical of some of these ideas and how players might, how willing they'll be to accept them, we need to try something. So that's how I described him in the book.

And he was sort of an unwilling adopter at first, but I think along with the players, he started to buy in more and more. And we've seen the Pirates continue to employ more shifts. The medical staff has been written about, has done a tremendous job, and I think some of that's database. So I think Hurdle's really fully on board at this point. You profile a lot of different people in the organization, and really you cover kind of the whole organization in a way.

There's people who are in the statistics department, but there's also people like Hurdle who are not, but have become part of the program or part but there's also people like Hurdle who are not, but have become part of the program or part of what's happening. And you have players who I assume were also similarly suspicious at first, and you have the scouting, other international scouting director, and so on and so forth. And I've just found Hurdle to be, and I have always, but I especially here, found Hurdle to be the most interesting part of this because Hurdle was, I mean, I feel like when a team that we associate as a stat head team

or when any team hires a manager, we kind of assess them through that lens of like, oh, is this a stat head manager? What is he going to do about sacrifice bunts? And is he new school or old school? And it's really fascinating because Hurdle was not that. He was smart, like you said, but he wasn't associated with any particular ideology really. He was just sort of generic old manager guy. Like he'd been able to tell the difference between him and Eric Wedge if you put him

in a lineup before 2013. And so it's really interesting to think that maybe the, I hate to use it, but the inefficiency isn't hiring the manager who comes in with the ideology that you need so much as it's hiring the manager who brings a rich baseball history and will have a particular leadership quality to him and you can somehow convert. And I guess you have to gamble that you're going to be able to get him to listen to you. Do you know if there was any point that they had to use the stick on Hurdle as opposed to the carrot? Was there any point where they had to have a sort of a come to Jesus moment where they said, look, this is who we are. And if you want to be here in five years, you need to do it this way. We're not asking you to volunteer. We're asking you to be employees. Did that conversation ever happen that

you know of? Not in those terms, but I feel like when, and I opened the book with this scene about Huntington Hurdle meeting right after the 2012 season, there's a lot of public pressure. I mean, if you ask probably most people, if you went up to someone on the street, they would want to Hurdle meeting right after the 2012 season. There's a lot of public pressure. I mean, if you ask probably most people, if you went up to someone on the street, they would want a whole house clearing, a whole regime change. And so there's intense pressure on them. And I don't have every detail of that conversation. Huntington and Hurdle were the only two parties there, and they weren't willing to divulge every detail. But I get the sense that Hurdle had a willingness to change, but I think some of that was front office driven,

where, look, we have to do some of these things, or we don't have any, we're limited in the solutions we had to get better in 2013, and we need to get better. So I have to think there might have been some of that in that meeting, because there was such a dramatic, dramatic turn. But I don't want to shortchange Hurdledle and I think you hit on some important parts which is which includes that Hurdle he looks because he looks like an old school guy because he looks so traditional because I think players

accept him as hey this is what a manager is supposed to look like his bullhorn voice this is what he's supposed to sound like when a guy like that he starts adopting these things maybe it's a little easier to to absorb and to get on board with and say okay if it makes sense for someone who i can relate to then you know i can stomach that a little better it's not quite as simple as that they did a lot of other things from data visualization and scouting reports to a whole host of things to make this pivot easier. But I do think Hurdle's personality and just who he is, and again, his ability to touch different sorts of personalities and people, I think that was a huge part of it. The previous books that Sam mentioned in the intro

about teams trying to win without spending much money or trying to turn things around with advanced analysis were not written by beat writers. They had different levels of access and different levels of involvement with the team. How did your cooperation with the pirates compare? You already had relationships with these people from covering the team, but how did the transition to writing a book change things? How open were

they in general? What subjects were they willing or not willing to talk about? I think the one advantage I had was I didn't have a, when I started this, I didn't have a book deal in place. I just believed it. And I remember talking to Jonah Carey. He said, I would have never written a manuscript on speculation, but I guess I was stupid and I just started doing it anyway. So I think it helped that it wasn't even a real thing when it started and then it became a real thing. And I had built some level of trust, I like to think, with certain people in the analytics department, with Huntington, with Hurdle, with some players. So I think that helped gain access. I mean, I wasn't granted behind-the-scenes access like Michael Lewis was,

and I think that we're not going to see that too often going forward, I wouldn't think. But the Pirates were good enough to... I was able to speak to the people I wanted to speak to for the most part, and for the most part, folks like Dan Fox and Mike Fitzgerald, I felt they were pretty open and candid. They weren't willing to so much give away their current secrets they're working on, whether that's preventative health or what they might be thinking of doing with StatCast numbers. But they were pretty good about talking about the specific ideas we identified and talking about things they had done in 2013. So yeah, I'll always be indebted to those guys and a number of people in the organization.

And it really is an organization-wide story, which I think is cool. Even though Hurdle might be the face of this book, as Sam mentioned, you have Rene Gallo, Latin Scouting Director for minor league fielding coordinators. There are a lot of people involved because the shifting really started at the minor league level. And I think that also helped Hurdle's acceptance level go up when he saw the results of the Pirates minor league affiliates leading the leagues in defensive efficiency in 2011-2012. So it was an organization-wide story, and I think that helped me sell it to the Pirates too. Hey, this is something that put your whole, or most of your organization, in good light this this book idea yeah so i mean the things that were responsible for their turnaround or that played a big part in their turnaround

they're they're still doing you know all of those things that were part of the 2013 story are very much part of the 2015 story that pirates have the fourth most shifts this year so the shifting is one thing they still have an extremely high Ground ball rate with sinkers And pitching inside Francisco Cervelli is at the very top Of the BP framing Leaderboard right now so the

Names have changed it's not Russell Martin anymore It's Russell Cervelli it's always Some other Yankees catcher but The way that They are winning or trying to win is sort of similar. So how is it possible that, you know, these, these cutting edge things or things that were kind of cutting edge at the time, we've all known about them for a couple of years now, you know, in part because of your writing and reporting.

So we are aware of these things going on and thus every team should be aware of these things going on, and thus every team should be aware of these things going on, and yet the Pirates are still doing them, which I suppose suggests that they think there's still an edge and that hasn't changed and yet they're still trying to win that way they still think it is giving them an edge after a couple years of that stuff being known yeah uh i mean i guess the big reason is they still think it works a i guess burnett would be now burnett is hell he wasn't healthy last year he's healthy this year but hell burnett even came to spring training saying, hey, I have an appreciation of the shifts now. After spending a year in 2013 in Pittsburgh, 2014 in Philly, he understood their value. And it works.

The Pirates have done a really good job rehabbing pitchers and the park environment, framing the ground balls. And I think they keep doing it just because this is, they feel like every club should be doing it. It's just an effective way to add value without adding. You can't add a 95-mile-an-hour fastball if a pitcher doesn't have it necessarily. You can't add a plus-plus slider if a pitcher doesn't have it. But you can spike up his ground ball rate.

You can have the defense position more smartly behind him. And you can have a catcher who steals a few more strikes. So I think they feel like these are just things that will always make sense and i think they feel their collaboration between old school and new school camps i think they feel like they do a better job of that than most organizations and they they get some value that way that other organizations don't and going back to the ground ball philosophy you look at at, I was just talking to Jim Benedict in Philadelphia, who he's a special assistant to the GM. And he's really the pitcher whisperer in the organization.

And he deserves a lot of credit for the rehab jobs they've done. And he sort of blends traditional scouting and analytics. He says, look, you know, I look at all the numbers. I see if a batter's hitting, say, 400 against a certain pitcher, but I'll also see, hey, maybe this batter hasn't been hit once by a pitch by this. Maybe this pitcher hasn't hit a left-handed batter once. And I guarantee you, if he drills a left-handed hitter in the ribs with a four-seam fastball, that batting average is going to go down if he's willing to pitch inside. And it was from Fox and Fitzgerald being embedded with the players with the staff

where they started to ask better questions or they had a better idea of where the coaches would ask questions and this is part of the way they enhance the ground ball philosophy trying to what was the psychology of pitching inside on the bat earlier and then going outside and they found that helped the ground ball rate so while this might make sense for every organization to do, I think the Pirates have a better way to, a better collaborative spirit and a better way of extracting this, just do their acceptance level throughout the organization, if that makes sense. It does seem like a lot of what the Pirates do is visible.

It's particularly visible if the team is covered by a smart beat writer, like the Pirates are. And of course, I mean, a lot of the data that, I mean, we have an insane amount of data, so we can see a lot of what they can see and the spin of every ball and all that sort of stuff. Is there value? I don't know. Is there really any need for clubs to be as secretive as they even are? Do you think that any of this stuff that you reported, do they lose anything with it being out there, with it being public? The Rays are so paranoid and secretive about everything they do, and some other teams are as well.

I don't know. It just sort of feels like looking at the Pirates. They're not that closed off about any of this stuff. It doesn't seem to me. It doesn't seem like much of what they do goes unnoticed and yet like you guys have both noted they still manage to be a little bit individual in the way that they do these things and it still depends on execution more than probably ideology or or access to any particular data at this point anyway so does it even really really matter? That's a great, it's a great observation. And going back to an earlier point, I think that also helped me sort of get them to open up and talk about issues because the data is right there. Hey, look at your ground ball rate. Hey, look at your shift rate. Hey, look at Russell Martin's pitch training runs above average. I

mean, these were just facts and there's a clearly a reason why they're doing this. And every other team has the same access to data, hobbyist bloggers, we all have this. So yeah, I mean, this is all out there. And when you frame it that way, there's really nothing, there's no reason to hide for this because it's publicly available. But I do think they had some level of concern in this book. And okay, what are our best practices? And are those going to come out? When you talk about the execution versus the idea, I think the execution part is very nuanced and it takes the right personalities and skill sets

to have a go from an ideology to being executed. So I think that's where they did damage. And I think maybe that's an area where they could have been a little more open and weren't or maybe they're a little more protective there. I think some of the preventative health stuff is they were not willing to talk about what went into Gary Cole's workload and some of those things and how they determined how long he would pitch in 2013. So the things that were out there, they were more open about. But I'm sure they're doing some really smart things behind the scenes that haven't been reported on and more protective of those areas. It's interesting that they weren't willing to talk about how they managed Garrett Cole's workload.

Because if there's one thing that might be argued as in the public good to have teams sharing, it's their data on how to keep pitchers healthy. But apparently they want everybody else's young pitchers to be heard. Although maybe they just, probably more likely they just want not as much scrutiny when Tyon comes up and everybody's going, oh, well, they had him throw two more pitches than the Cole plan or whatever. It's probably more about that, huh? And they certainly didn't want to do the Strasburg. They didn't want to have a public red line out there

that they would cross or not have to cross. So they certainly didn't want to do that. Maybe it was as simple as that. But I do think, and Ben wrote a great piece about their fewest days lost to the disabled list last year. So I think there is something going on there that is maybe a competitive advantage. They just are trying to keep a secret at this point. like Moneyball, the book, was sort of re-litigated every year for many, many years after based on how the A's were doing. And it seemed like whether they were winning or losing was used as ammunition to defend or decry the book. I don't know if Jonah felt protective of the Rays after his book came out, if he wanted to see them win so that his book's thesis would be upheld. A, do you feel like at this point, whether the Pirates succeed this year, next year, the year after is significant to how well you

think the book holds up or will hold up in your mind and the public's? And B, how much of a bummer is it that this hits when they're 18 and 20 instead of maybe next month when they might be 32 and 26 or something. Right. I was actually very worried when they were last year, right after, it was like a month after they actually signed the deal, book deal, and they were eight games under 500. And things looked awful for them on the field at that point. I think they're 12 and 20. It's like, this is really poor timing. So yeah, I think if you're trying to sell a product, it'd be better if they were doing really well. And maybe the book holds up over time

if they really sustain the success. But I would say that I think we understand shifts are, they're there for a reason. Pitch framing, it's been quantified for a reason. Ground balls are generally good because they can't be hit for home runs. I think all those things are going to remain true. But I do think some of the lessons that regardless of how the pirates, some of the best practices,

perhaps the book, regardless of how the pirates do over the next five, 10 years, it's with any organization. I think when you can get different types of people together with different backgrounds, they're going to have different ideas. And that's where creativity comes from. And you have two people talking with completely different backgrounds, and that leads to a better question. And when you have such a huge pile of data, I think the teams who ask the better questions, especially with StatCast now, they're going to arrive at some better answers. So I hope that's one thing that is maybe timeless from this book.

Walter Isaacson had a great book out last year about the innovators in the information revolution. So I think that was apparent in that work as well. So I hope that's one thing that does stand up and that people take from the book. And coming into the year, I thought the Pirates were, you know, outside of the kind of Nationals, Dodgers, Cardinals trio were as good as any team in the league. And they've maybe played a little bit better than their record suggests. But they are at this point under.500. They're seven games out in the Central. They have the same record as the Reds. And maybe there are some things that are more worrisome now

than they were in the spring, whether it's Andrew McCutcheon and his health status or Josh Harrison's struggles or Jordy Mercer's struggles. So is this team, is there any reason to think of it differently than we would have six weeks ago or so? Or do you think that this team is still um you know going to be right there at the end yeah i still think they're they're going to be a competitive team gara cole's emerging as a top of the line top of the rotation force lariano looks like one of the better

free agent bargains as does burnett at this point i'll be curious i'll be interested to see what charlie morton brings that he's getting ready to come off the disabled list. The outfield's still athletic and talented, assuming McCudgeon's knee's okay, and he's played better over the last couple weeks. But yeah, I think I was in Chicago for the Pirates-Cubs series over the weekend, and it's a tougher division this year because the Cubs, they look like they're ahead of schedule, and the Pirates don't have the commitment from ownership to go spend nine figures to fill a rotation void with a John Lester. So I think there are some short and long-term concerns because this is still one of the smaller markets in the game. But I still think they like their under-25 talent base.

And I feel like the Pirates feel like they are still in a position to be competitive year in, year out through the end of the decade. So it'll be interesting to see because the division, at least the top of the division, looks to be pretty competitive going forward. All right. Well, the book is out right now. You can go buy it in bookstores. You can buy it online. It's called Big Data Baseball.

You can follow Travis on Twitter at Sawchik, S-A-W-C-H-I-K underscore trib, and you can find him in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Thank you, Travis. Thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. This is esteemed company, so thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. All right, and we will be back tomorrow with emails,

so send us some at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. Support the podcast sponsor, Play Index, by going to baseball prospectus.com support the podcast sponsor play index by going to baseball reference.com using the coupon code BP and getting the discounted price of $30 on a one year subscription. We'll be back tomorrow. Hey, I'm Skyping. This is,

this is cool. You are like completely caught up with like 2008. Nothing in person from 2008 can say about you. That's kind of embarrassing to admit. You've never Skyped.