Mike Scioscia on Analytics

Mike Scioscia has a reputation as an old-school manager who has little interest in analytics. He doesn’t want you to believe that. The extent to which you should is subjective. Scioscia certainly isn’t cutting edge — at least not by today’s standards — but he’s by no means a dinosaur. His finger is on the pulse of what’s going on in today’s game, even if he isn’t always pushing the same buttons as his more progressive contemporaries.

On Monday, I had an opportunity to ask the Angels manager for his thoughts on analytics. Here is what Scioscia had to say:

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Scioscia on analytics: “Analytics have been around forever in the game of baseball, from when Connie Mack would use spray charts and move guys around from the dugout, to now. Analytics for projecting player performance have mushroomed over the last five years. Analytics in dugout probabilities have increased. We’ve had data, we’ve had analytics, since I’ve been in the game. And they’ve evolved.

“Early on here with Buddy Black, Joe Maddon, Ron Roenicke, we would use whatever data we could. Moving forward, with some of the really interesting things that are on the board — they can’t help but help you, and we will apply them.

“The last three or four years, certainly, spray-chart analytics have come into play as far as shifting. Those have been really advantageous for all of baseball. There are some things that are happening in projecting pitching performance — not only start to start, but within a game. That’s very exciting. Billy Eppler, our general manager, has a lot of things that I think are going to help us with that equation of when a pitcher has crossed that line of being effective. Your lineup, your batting order decisions. Those as well.

“I think spin rate serves a purpose. If we can get spin rates analyzed during a game, that’s going to help us within the scope of, ‘What’s a pitcher’s performance?’ Spin rate is more of a diagnostic tool as to maybe why a curveball isn’t as sharp. OK, the spin rate is down; is it the grip? So it’s applicable in a game, but the broader application is as a diagnostic tool.

“There are a lot of applications for spin rates. There are a lot of applications for exit velocities. There are applications for catchers’ receiving, which is quantifying a lot of stuff we had to do by scouting up until the last four, five years. So there are a lot of things being quantified that we believe are important.

“Everything we’ve gotten over the course of, not just last year, but any years, we’ve looked for a way to apply them. If it could make us better, we applied it. There are always new things on the horizon, and there are some things that are being redefined as we move forward. There is no doubt they can be advantageous.

“Why [do many people think Scioscia’s not into analytics]? I don’t put much thought into that, to be honest with you. It’s neither here nor there.”