Finding +EV in Baseball Player Development Part 1

You cant just be good.

When it comes to competing in the game of baseball or anything for that matter, decision making processes need to be centered around finding positive expected value in all aspects of your program or organization. From player acquisition to Development or injury management, EV (expected value) is able to be found everywhere. While these techniques specifically apply to professional organizations, college programs can and should utilize the ideas to find EV in their own environment.

Scouting departments for decades have adjusted techniques to best gather the necessary information in order to best evaluate players. Write ups, video, and player data have all changed over the years in order to help scouts paint the best picture they can in order to properly and accurately evaluate players before acquisition. It isn’t about how good of video a scout gets, or how well they hold the radar gun, the best scouts in the game have always found an edge in some way. Whether it be in understanding data, biomechanics or connections that allow you to find players who may be undervalued, the expected value is in the details and the processes, as it always will be.

Expected value can be had in many areas:

• Player Development

  • Acquiring talent based on prior capabilities

  • Monitoring Biomechanical changes and performance fluctuations

• Acquisition

  • Seeing what players do well that is being underexploited

  • Teaching new pitches based on prior tendencies

  • Players who had bad luck

  • College adaptation

• Injury management

  • Measuring biomechanical data to leverage injury prevention

  • Properly using biomechanical data to manage workout

  • Throwing workload management across minor leagues

If the plan is simply: “I'm going to try and be better at my job than others” with no specific plan of action, then you might want to rethink your strategy. The world of baseball is incredibly competitive and is filled with tons of very talented people who work very hard. If you want to get a leg up, you're going to need to find an edge. Something that gives you a leg up on the competition. Let's break down where you can find a competitive advantage in baseball.

Player Development

One way that teams are able to get a leg up on the competition is by taking players' past performance into account. Every team does this in one way or another, but there is a certain group of teams that are willing to take risks on players who have struggled recently but before that showed extremely high levels of success. These teams are willing to take this chance because they see a possibility to return the player to former glory. Obviously it is one thing to sign players that fit this bill, but it's an entirely different thing to do tons of research and digging beforehand into a player's training history, off-season, habits, work ethic, and see if there is anything you can really do to help them get back to what they were. Blindly signing players who are struggling and hoping they get back to what they were is not a winning strategy.

Another way teams are able to do this is by monitoring biomechanical changes and outputs throughout the course of a season and cross checking it with that player's performance. If “Player A” has struggled with hamstring issues in his lead leg, it's worth looking into biomechanical data to see if there were any changes right before the point of injury. it's likely that over the course of a season nagging injuries simply got worse to a point where a player can no longer fight through them, rarely is it something where a nagging injury like this comes completely out of nowhere.

Another example would be using biomechanical data to warn teams medical staff of incoming injuries and highlight decreases in performance. One example of this is when a pitcher's arm slot lowers over the course of a season, it is oftentimes a predictor of a shoulder or lat injury. Many times a power arm has not been properly built up to throw 2-3x a week and over the course of the first month or two of the season they see a severe drop in arm slot, only to find themselves on the IL soon after. It is a tale as old as time, but sometimes the players don't find themselves on the IL, they just find themselves struggling and losing velocity/effectiveness.

What if we took said player who had shown mechanical degradation over the course of a few months, signed him to a low risk deal and offered him the proper guidance in order to get back to former glory? I know a 100 MPH bullpen arm who experienced this exact thing in the minor leagues this year. Lit it up in his first year, showcased a fastball up to 102, shot right to AA and fell apart midway through the year, velocity dipped hard and found himself injured and released the following season because of a lingering shoulder/lat strain.

That player was in one of the most loaded minor league systems, so what if a team looking for MILB depth signed him, hoping to rebuild him? Likely, that is a very high EV opportunity for said club. They don't have much to lose, minor league contracts are cheap and you don't find players capable of throwing 102 very often.

Player Acquisition :

Seeing what players do well that is being underexploited

The easiest way to get better without actually getting more skilled at anything is to simply do the thing you are best at more often. All too often, we are caught in a cycle of following a base strategy rather than having one custom tailored to your strengths and weaknesses. Sure, if the hitter is really good at hitting sliders, then you probably should take that into account. But too often, we as pitchers stay away from the singular thing we do best in the name of “following the flow of the game”. So the hitter struggles with fastballs, but your fastball is by far your worst pitch; does this mean that you should simply scrap what you are the best at? No, it doesn't. If your best pitch is your slider, and your worst pitch is your fastball, the hitter would have to be very disproportionately better at hitting sliders than fastballs in order for you to justify throwing predominately fastballs.

Don't get me wrong, you have to play the game. Sequencing and having a strategy is important. However, in order to truly have an effective strategy you must take your strengths into account first.

How does this relate to player acquisition? Simply, if you see players who are consistently throwing the wrong pitches to the wrong hitters it would suit you to acquire that type of player, given that he will most likely be available at a price lower than the price of a player you believe you could get him to perform at.

All over the place, there are players who have outlier pitches that they don't throw enough. Pitchers have a pitch that can be lethal in certain scenarios, and are either not thrown in those situations enough, or are in the situations but choose to go with a different strategy. Having better than replacement level relief pitchers is a huge advantage over the course of 162 games, and this is one of the ways you can find an edge.