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

by Ben Lindbergh

“Every once in a while [Barnes] goes, ‘What do you got for me?’” Bannister says. One of those times came on October 14, in the pitching lab in right field before ALCS Game 2 against Houston, with the Sox trailing the Astros 1–0 in the series. “I just said, ‘[Lance] McCullers and [Ryan] Pressly are going out there and, for lack of a better term, McCullers-ing us to death with breaking balls,’” Bannister recalls. He suggested to Barnes, “Why don’t you just go out there and just mirror them and do it right back?” That night, Barnes relieved David Price with two outs in the fifth inning, runners on first and second, and Boston up by one run. Facing Marwin González, he threw four consecutive curves to end the threat: called strike, swinging strike, foul, swinging strike three. The next inning, he threw ten curves in eleven pitches, going groundout, pop fly, groundout. He’d thrown 93 percent curves, easily exceeding his career high in an outing of more than two pitches. “That just said [to the Astros], ‘Hey, if you’re going to do that, we have guys that can do that too,’” Bannister says.