A new generation of video equipment produced massive amounts of granular data on every pitch and every batted ball. As a result, some long-held assumptions about how to win games were challenged. Now batters were instructed to hit the ball to certain parts of the field, and to swing up to produce more home runs. Pitchers were told to spin the ball more, creating movement that made the ball more difficult to hit. The most extreme practitioners of baseball analytics believed that the entire game could be reduced to numbers, uncontaminated by human sentiment, emotions, or, as it would turn out,
...more
