The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

by Ben Lindbergh

In April 2016, a study Ben coauthored for FiveThirtyEight, a website that specializes in statistical analysis, charted the rapid increase in analysts employed by teams over time. By then, more than five full-time front-office members per franchise, on average, were working in research and technological development (a figure that’s still swelling, topping 7.5 per team by spring 2018). Every team in the majors employed at least one analyst, and every team but the parsimonious Miami Marlins employed more than one. Although the study found that the early adopting data-centric teams had reaped rewards worth as many as several wins (and tens of millions of dollars) per season from mining baseball’s big data before their competitors could, those benefits have shrunk as the front-office brain race has intensified. As baseball analyst Phil Birnbaum once observed, “You gain more by not being stupid than you do by being smart.”