The Seattle Mariners made it into the American League playoffs for the first time in 21 years, and after a stunning two wins over the favored Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto in the first round, they faced off against the Houston Astros in Houston Monday afternoon. One ominous sign during the second win in Toronto was ignored because an algorithm – of all things – led the Mariners’ astray.
Robbie Ray started the second Toronto game for the Mariners. He came to Seattle from the Blue Jays after winning the Cy Young Award last year and was looking like a strong addition to the Mariners’ bullpen of starting pitchers. But the Blue Jays blew him up with 6 hits and 2 home runs before Mariners’ Manager Scott Servais pulled him after three innings.
His last start against the Astros in Seattle was even worse. Servais pulled Ray after three innings when he gave up a career-high 10 hits and career-tying 6 runs.
“Unfortunately, they’ve got his number,” Servais said about that one.
So what, one might ask, possessed Servais to call left-hander Ray in as closer in the bottom of the ninth inning with a two run lead, two Astros on base, and Yordan Alverez at bat in game 1 against Houston? No team in baseball has hit Ray harder than the Astros. And Ray had never come in as closer. Why not try something new, right?
Wrong. Alvarez is batting .321 against left-handed pitchers with 13 doubles, 10 homers and 33 RBI’s. You didn’t need a crystal ball or the fanciest algorithm invented to predict what happened next. Did Houston still have Ray’s number? Well, Alvarez blasted Ray’s second pitch into deep right field for the walk off home run win.
According to Servais after the game, he uses the Mariners’ proprietary analytics and algorithms and a very large committee who met several times to plan the game. According to Ryan Divish’s report in Wednesday’s Seattle Times, the Mariners have more daily meetings that any team in Baseball.
If a camel is a horse built by committee, then the loss against Houston shows a team led by Hal, the disembodied voice of the spaceship’s computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
And how fitting is it that the Mariners rely in part on a freaking algorithm in a city that gave us Microsoft, Amazon and enough software engineers to fill a baseball stadium?
Fuhgeddabout the algorithm and committee meetings, let the Manager decide who to play. The greats like Billy Martin, Joe Torre and Lou Piniella didn’t need no stinking algorithm
Ever since the Moneyball film popularized heavy analytics in baseball, we’ve seen a lot of this phenomenon. It’s made the game a lot more boring, especially with the “Three True Outcomes” style that sabermatricians claim is the end result of analytics. As an Angels fan, I’ve seen the Mariners play a lot, and it’s clear how young guys like Julio Rodriguez are the future of your team, not some stat crunchers trying to maximize OBP.