On Fandom, Leverage, and Emotional Barometers

About a month ago, one of our editors — a certain Mr. Carson Cistulli — had me as a guest on FanGraphs Audio. He asked me questions mostly related to my life, devoting only a small portion of the hour to topics surrounding the subject (baseball) of the site for which we write. One of those questions, however, was about my fandom, and the sort of labyrinthian route to where it currently finds itself.

For those of you who didn’t catch that audio segment, I’m an ex-lifelong Red Sox fan. I know how ridiculous that sounds. I was born in Boston, spent large amounts of my childhood there, went to Fenway multiple times a year: the whole deal. In middle school Spanish class in the Virginia town I spent my adolescence in, everyone had to choose a new name to be called. I chose Nomar. The 2004 season provided an emotional return unlike anything I had experienced in my life up until that point.

But, after 2007, I slowly realized that the identity in which I had gotten so wrapped up with the Red Sox — an identity centered around loss, being out-resourced and outspent, and searching for the subtle catharsis in small moments — was gone. The team had moved on from that identity to one I wasn’t comfortable with anymore, and so I moved on from them. I moved to Oakland in 2011, spent one strange year watching Red Sox games while I guiltily rooted for the A’s, then bought season tickets.

The A’s went 68-94 this year after crashing out of the playoffs in spectacular fashion the past three seasons, and I can honestly say that they have been everything I’d hoped they’d be. Winning, in my damaged opinion, should be an exception, not a rule.

Dave wrote a great piece at the end of August about the nature of fandom while also working as a baseball writer. This is my first year working for FanGraphs, and that piece resonated with a lot of what I’ve felt as the season has unfolded. I’m an A’s fan, but it’s not the same anymore, and I find myself rooting for great moments rather than any particular teams simply because of what baseball represents to me now. I now find almost as much joy in finding novel uses for baseball statistics as I do in watching the games that produce those statistics. I don’t think that’s a bad development, but rather more of an extension of where my love of baseball has taken me. Advanced baseball statistics are simply the latest way for me to enjoy the game.

That brings me to Leverage Index, and why I feel compelled to write about it. Technically, Leverage Index is a measurement of the possible swing in win probability. But it also serves a second purpose: to effectively measure the level that events in a game emotionally matter to us. You could sit and watch the Leverage Index of a game that’s going on and know when the fans in a stadium are quieter, and when they’re louder; know when mound visits are more likely to occur; know when the average heart rate of a player is likely to be higher, or lower. The best trait of Leverage Index is that it mirrors our intuition. We can sense high leverage moments. That fact is rather rare and unique in the world of advanced baseball statistics, and it’s one of the reasons why I think and write a lot about leverage in relation to other parts of the game.

That’s also why Leverage Index and Win Probability are great story stats. They bridge the gap between what’s happening on the field and what we are measuring. For instance, if I were to ask an informed reader of this digital baseball site what the most important moment of the American League Wild Card game was based strictly on how they felt at the time, they would probably say it was Alex Rodriguez’ at-bat in the sixth inning. They would (almost) be right:

Jose Altuve’s two-out, bases-loaded at-bat in the second inning actually produced a higher reading according to Leverage Index than the A-Rod at-bat, but it was by the slimmest of margins — 2.69 to 2.59. The A-Rod at-bat had all the flags we look for in a big moment: a slender lead, a few base runners, two outs, a tiring starting pitcher, the winning run coming to the plate. We knew this was one of The Moments of the game.

As A.J. Hinch walked away from the mound without pulling Dallas Keuchel, we knew this was going to be either an inspired decision or a Grady Little-type error. Increased leverage eliminates a lot of the gray area in baseball, presenting two starkly different outcomes: this happens or that happens. The fans of one team are either going to be really happy or really sad. High leverage moments change games in big lurches, and that’s why they carry the potential for such immense emotional weight.

We see the same thing in Wednesday night’s Pirates-Cubs game. In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Pirates had the bases loaded with one out in a 0-4 game. It looked like they might be finally getting to Jake Arrieta. Check the Leverage Index spike in the bottom of the sixth:

Starling Marte then grounded into a double play to end the inning, and the Cubs went on to win the game. The fans at PNC Park went from 100 decibels before Marte’s ground ball was hit — what might be referred to as pandemonium for a life form not acquainted with professional sporting events — to a quiet murmur in the span of about 10 seconds.

As a jaded baseball fan-turned-writer searching for an emotional return, this is what the game is now all about. Not that we have a statistic that measures how important the outcome of an event is to the expected result of a game, but that it measures in a way how large the emotional response will be for hundreds of thousands of people. This, I think, is where my fandom currently resides: in appreciating a newfound awareness of important moments, in enjoying those moments for the fans of the teams involved, and in thinking analytically about what went into causing them.

There’s a certain sadness in losing the fanaticism that goes into rooting for a certain team: the blind love and belief that causes sports fans to do insane, irrational, wonderful, and sometimes dangerous things. In a way, there’s a part of me that misses that. There’s also a part of me that appreciates how statistics have added to my understanding of fandom, and sometimes, whether intentionally or not, have allowed me to see the peaks and valleys of heartache and exaltation of every moment of a game. That’s what carries me through the playoffs when my team isn’t in them, and it’s what makes every game matter to me, no matter who is playing.