Under The Knife 8/4/23

The Probably Edition

Ever watch F1 and hear about simulation staffs that are back in England (or Italy, for two teams)? They have hundreds of people and supercomputers running every scenario to get them the best pit stops, the cleanest air, to know what’s likeliest to happen in the next few laps well before it happens. They show a bit of it on Drive to Survive, but it remains one of those posh British accent “very secret things” for the most part.

A few years back, there was a very geeky thing around certain baseball circles about what baseball team bought a Cray supercomputer and why. Knowing the who wasn’t hard, but the why was a bit more confusing. I asked someone very involved in that sort of thing whether today’s distributed technologies like AWS and the vaunted achievements with AI in recent years have helped baseball.

I am paraphrasing the following answer because this source has a very distinct manner of speaking and I’d like to keep him anonymous. ‘The clear answer is yes, but you always say baseball is ten years behind soccer when it comes to sports science so I will say we’re probably the same behind in terms of simulation, AI, and the like. Things like pitch sequencing have been cracked and we’re doing things like swing plane and pitch design - how they interact, but getting the players to do it is harder. If he swings like this, throw like that is nice in theory and impossible in practice.’

He continued. ‘Where I think we’re getting better is figuring out the most common things. If most players swing like X, we should pitch like Y, which is something we can work on in the offseason, in the minors. I’m very invested in some research about how quickly players can adjust and whether that can be optimized or is innate. One of the key disadvantages is that we can’t communicate to the dugout. They get some info on the choke-collared iPads, but they don’t get real-time data and we don’t get real-time feedback when something works or doesn’t.’

‘There’s one team that is doing a lot of work on intent,’ he said. ‘The pitcher is being told to throw this pitch to this location. Does he do it and if not, how much did he miss? There’s a better definition of command that can come from this, but there’s variables like the umpire and catcher that are confounding them. Umpires say framing doesn’t influence them, but it clearly does, so what does that mean for a hitter, or a pitcher?’

I asked him what the one change he’d like to see would be. ‘The gap now is in communication, not information. We get more and more inputs to the model now, but the additional complexity makes it harder to communicate that. I’ve been pushing for a data coach on the staff, who has that skill set. It’s likely a former player. [A team] is doing something similar now and if they end up going deep in the playoffs, I think more will do it.”

The data revolution in sports is ongoing and in baseball, there’s still a bit of an asymmetric advantage to find if you know where to look. Injuries remain the low hanging fruit, so let’s get to those:

MARCUS STROMAN, SP CHC (inflamed hip)

The question asked across Chicago is whether or not Marcus Stroman and his “tight hip” were known ahead of the trade deadline. The answer is “yes but.” Yes, this condition has been managed very conservatively - stretching, heat, ice, and the very basics of the arsenal - which has worked well and kept Stroman functional. That’s changed and he hits the IL as the medical staff gets a bit more aggressive with it. He’ll have two weeks off, which usually indicates an injection.

The symptomology and timeline suggest some sort of bursitis, which can be painful but is usually temporary. If so and the injection takes, the minimum stay that David Ross indicated was the plan is likely. The injection doesn’t necessarily fix the problem, so follow up injections are possible.

The other question is what in his mechanics caused this. That’s going to have to be fixed, likely over the off-season, in order to keep this from becoming a chronic issue or getting worse. It’s certainly an explanation for why Stroman has been flat bad over his last few starts leading into the trade deadline, which scouts I spoke with soured his trade value even before the Cubs decided not to sell. If fixing this gets him back to what we saw for most of his Cubs career, it’s a big positive for them down the stretch.

ANTHONY RIZZO, 1B NYY (concussion)

The situation around Anthony Rizzo going on the IL due to symptoms from a collision on May 28th is important enough that I’m doing ‘bonus coverage’ above the fold. A lot will be surprised that Rizzo, who was cleared at the time, is experiencing symptoms now and that he could go to the IL.

First, he’s going to the 10-day, not the 7-day Concussion IL, which is designed to make sure that a player who suffers a concussion isn’t rushed back, isn’t in play here, despite this being the outcome of a concussion. “Residual concussion-like symptoms” is probably closer to the truth. No one can say for sure why Rizzo is experiencing the “fogginess” as he described it, but it’s reasonable to think it’s that collision.

Second, the symptoms are severe enough to push him to the IL, even in the short term. I couldn’t confirm that Rizzo was subject to the concussion protocol, which would mean all symptoms would have to be clear before he could return. It’s somewhat reductive, since most of us would think that’s the case with any injury, but it’s not. Functional is the goal, not completely healed, but that doesn’t work for the brain like it would for a “healed-enough” fracture.

There are certainly some questions that need to be answered here. My first is what kind of testing the Yankees are using to say that Rizzo is below standards.

BO BICHETTE, SS TOR (patellar tendonitis)