This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Today, the discussions of sports analytics in the 2011 movie "Moneyball" often seem quaint. The idea of a team using data to find players who may be more valuable than meets the eye (and less expensive) no longer surprises anyone.
"The numbers have won in terms of how sports are trained, practiced and taught," said Alex Speier '98, a Boston Globe sports reporter and author of "Homegrown: How the Red Sox Built a Champion from the Ground Up." "The number of people who are employed as analysts in sports has exploded." One study from MIT found that just 10 data analysts worked across the NBA in 2009. That same year, MLB considered limiting how much teams could spend on areas like analytics, in part to ensure competitive equity between more and less wealthy franchises. That professional sports teams have embraced data analysis is clear.
There is less agreement over whether these analytics have made the games more entertaining. For some, the answer is yes. Stat-oriented fans can now find podcasts, or entire alternative broadcasts, devoted to numbers-heavy analysis.
At the same time, some fans, coaches, players and broadcasters, like Hall of Fame basketball player Charles Barkley, bemoan the role of analytics in the modern game. "That's why the league sucks," he said about the widespread increase in 3-point shots, which Barkley thinks undercuts the role of strategy and spontaneity. "I hate analytics." In his undergraduate course "Sports Economics," lecturer Judd Cramer discusses the relationship between analytics and entertainment as a potential principal-agent problem.
"If I own 30 McDonald's franchises and one of them figures out a new way to make french fries better, I'm super happy," he said. "But if I'm MLB and I find out the Rays are trying to get hit by more pitches to score more runs, that's not good for the league as a whole." The same goes for any league. The success of prolific shooting teams like the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets led to leaguewide imitation. (Teams today shoot more than twice the number of 3-pointers as 20 years ago.) In baseball, teams prioritize extremely fast pitching and home-run-or-bust batting, leading to more strikeouts and home runs but fewer triples and "finesse" pitchers without explosive power.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred agreed with a league owner who said analytics were a "race to nowhere" and has approved rules aimed at making the game more fast-paced and exciting for fans. The MLB pitch clock has cut around half an hour of idle time per game. The league also increased the size of the bases to encourage more stolen bases.
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