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[Wall Street Journal] The Data Wonk Who Became a Coach

Discussion in 'Houston Astros' started by Bob Barker 007, Mar 29, 2018.

  1. Bob Barker 007

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    The Data Wonk Who Became a Coach
    The data revolution in baseball has always maintained one barrier: the wonks stay in the front office, the “baseball people” stay in the dugout. Now that barrier is starting to break down.

    Article Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-data-wonk-who-became-a-coach-1522234800

    The data revolution that reshaped baseball and sparked innovation far beyond sports also inspired an element of distrust. In marched an army of Ivy League-educated math whizzes, whose devotion to numbers threatened to upend decades of tradition and conventional wisdom that the longtime residents of this hidebound ecosystem held dear.

    The Houston Astros, the defending World Series champions, believe narrowing that chasm could afford them a competitive advantage. True to their reputation as perhaps the most unorthodox organization in the major leagues, they embarked on an unprecedented experiment: They turned a wonk into a coach.

    The Astros sent Sig Mejdal, one of baseball’s most respected quantitative analysts, to spend the 2017 season with the Tri-City ValleyCats, a Single-A affiliate near the bottom of the minor-league ladder. Mejdal, who entered baseball after jobs at Lockheed Martin and NASA, worked alongside manager Morgan Ensberg, offering statistical information to assist in the decision-making process and the development of young talent.

    He filled that role not as a high-ranking member of the front office, but by crossing the sacred threshold of the dugout, serving as a bona fide member of the field staff. In doing so, the Astros provided a proof-of-concept for a potentially paradigm-altering idea with far-reaching implications.

    “Since ‘Moneyball,’ the presentation of analytics in baseball was ‘us versus them,’” said Mejdal, referring to Michael Lewis’s seminal 2003 book. “It’s understandable that with one of the ‘thems’ coming in, there is going to be pushback.”

    Mejdal is cautious about predicting how far the “thems” will advance, but some around him are not.

    “The reality is this is going to be the norm in baseball,” said Ensberg, an eight-year major-league veteran. “We see what the future is going to be. Other teams may see that as something that’s silly. But if other teams really look at what the future’s going to look like, it’s going to be having an analyst on the bench.”

    The idea is indeed expanding around the sports world. During spring training this year, both the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays experimented with putting an analyst in uniform for an exhibition game. In the NFL last season, Philadelphia Eagles coach Doug Pederson spoke with analysts on headset during games to help with strategic decisions. The Eagles won the Super Bowl.

    Upon taking over as the Astros’ general manager in December 2011, Jeff Luhnow quickly learned that the people on the field don’t always respond positively to radical new concepts. The Astros frequently faced what Luhnow described as “implementation challenges that we didn’t anticipate.” An early adopter of the defensive shift, for instance, Luhnow remembers “pitchers that would glare at the dugout” when groundouts in a normal alignment scooted through the reconfigured infield.

    To combat that problem, the Astros added full-time “development coaches” in the minors, a hybrid position between typical baseball training and analytics. The candidates for that job, Luhnow said, needed “to be able to throw batting practice, hit a fungo and program a SQL.”

    That went so well that Luhnow went a step further and tapped Mejdal as a coach despite his unusual background—two master’s degrees earned, zero baseball games played past Little League. A man who initially joined the Astros with the eyebrow-raising title of “director of decision sciences” would now embed himself on the frontlines.

    “So much of our knowledge is still theoretical,” said Mejdal, who the Astros now call a special assistant for “process improvement.” “This was a clear attempt to turn that from theoretical into experiential knowledge.”

    For almost three months, the length of the New York-Penn League season, Mejdal lived like a minor leaguer, not a top official.

    Instead of a polo shirt and khaki pants, he wore a uniform for the first time since childhood, donning No. 21 as an homage to his past as a blackjack dealer. He coached first base, helped with batting practice and hit grounders to anybody who requested extra work. He endured the six-hour bus rides from Lowell, Mass., to Williamsport, Pa., living in cheap motels and subsisting on late-night drive-throughs and convenience stores.

    “The first time we were driving around this tiny town looking for food, where fast food was a plus if that was open, was eye opening,” Mejdal said. “The notes and ideas started.”

    Mejdal struggled to shake the feeling that as an analyst from the front office, he didn’t belong in this world. At first, he compared it to sneaking into a movie theater without a ticket—“you’re half expecting someone to come tap you on the shoulders and say, ‘OK, enough of that.’”

    It helped that he had the unwavering support of Ensberg, who said that a manager put into that situation unwillingly could “completely Deep Six” an intruder like Mejdal.

    Ensberg instead embraced Mejdal and used him as a resource. Frequently, Ensberg would consult with Mejdal for statistical advice about how to handle in-game decisions, such as whether to bring the infield in. Mejdal would then explain what the numbers revealed.

    Sometimes, Ensberg would pose additional questions, asking how the speed of the runners or the style of the pitcher might affect the outcome. In those cases, Mejdal would write everything down and insert the variables into his statistical model after the game, adding better data that would lead to more precise decision-making the next time.

    “If I were ever blessed enough to become a major-league manager, I would have an analyst on the bench,” Ensberg said. “The person that needs to push this through and believe it is the manager.”

    With Ensberg’s blessing, the players—many of whom had been drafted days before arriving—bought in. The Astros chose the ValleyCats for this project thinking that prospects at an introductory level wouldn’t question Mejdal the way more seasoned players might.

    In reality, most of the players knew little about Mejdal. Parker Mushinski, a 22-year-old pitcher, said that he learned about him during a particularly long bus ride, when sheer boredom prompted him to punch Mejdal’s name into Google.

    Mushinski can speak personally to Mejdal’s value and how traditional baseball coaching and data analysis can work in tandem. During the season, Mejdal presented Mushinski with data showing that he took upward of 1.5 seconds to deliver the ball to the plate with men on base, frequently allowing runners to steal.

    Armed with that information, Mushinski worked with the ValleyCats’ pitching coach to speed up, altering his mechanics in response to Mejdal’s data. By the end of the season, his delivery time had dropped to around 1.2 seconds—enough of a difference to deter prospective base-stealers from running wild.

    “It’s amazing the things somebody who may not have a background in baseball picks up on,” Mushinski said.

    Before long, the team brought Mejdal into their inner sanctum. Mushinski said one running joke was to goad Mejdal into arguing with umpires so he would become “the only guy in the front office who ever got tossed from a baseball game.” That never happened, but Mejdal confessed to hollering at one particular ump over his strike zone.

    Earning the trust of players also enabled Mejdal to survive when he messed up. He recalled a game in Batavia when, during a long inning, he forgot the number of outs while coaching first base. When his erroneous instructions to a runner led to a double play, Mejdal said he “felt sick.”

    It is exactly that kind of experience Luhnow wanted for Mejdal at Tri-City, hoping to create a better understanding between the field staff and the front office. This season, Mejdal will spend time at all four of the Astros’ full-season minor-league affiliates to continue the learning process.

    Whether that ultimately leads to somebody like Mejdal joining the major-league staff remains to be seen. But it doesn’t seem so crazy.

    “The idea is not to have this separation between us and them,” Luhnow said. “Just because one person stopped playing baseball in middle school and another person played 10 years in the big leagues doesn’t mean they can’t work together collaboratively to help players get better.”
     
    SLRokJok, bigdaddy, arkoe and 5 others like this.
  2. RunninRaven

    RunninRaven Contributing Member
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    Cool article. I remember when Mejdal was hired as "Director of Decision Scienes" and wondering what in the world that meant. Nice to see that hire is making a difference.
     
    Bob Barker 007 likes this.
  3. Buck Turgidson

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    Here's another one on Mejdal, who is spending time with all the minor league clubs this year. He's with Corpus right now.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/sports/baseball/houston-astros-analytics.html

    “There was one team last year that got to live in the future, and that was the Tri-City ValleyCats,” Ensberg said. “We got to experience what a major league bench is going to be like in a few years. There’s a bunch of information that I couldn’t possibly know.”

    To take advantage of it, Ensberg said, he would consult Mejdal at least five times a game, asking what the numbers suggested in a given situation. He would also ask his hitting and pitching coaches for their input, then weigh his options and make a decision.

    Players, likewise, sought out Mejdal to dig deeper on their performance.

    “They ate this stuff up,” Mejdal said. “There was no surprise or skepticism. It was like: ‘Wow, really? You guys can measure that? I didn’t know that.’ ”
    ...
    “There is an ivory tower effect, if you will, where great ideas are being thought about and discussed at headquarters, but until you roll them out into the field, you don’t realize all the challenges involved,” [Luhnow] said. “Amazing ideas find all kinds of issues when you try to roll them out with human beings because that’s all we are, a collection of human beings trying to do things to help players perform on the field.”

    In past years, Luhnow found, it was easy for executives to visit a minor league affiliate for a week but difficult to form more than a surface-level bond with players and staff members. In Mejdal, whom he had first hired with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2005, he had a trusted confidant with intimate knowledge of the Astros’ culture.
    ...
    The experience sharpened Mejdal’s baseball acumen, highlighting nuances of the game he had never noticed before: the footwork of catchers, the acceleration technique of base runners, the drop steps of outfielders. As for specific ideas he passed on to Luhnow, Mejdal would rather not say, beyond greatly improved food options for players.
     
    #3 Buck Turgidson, Apr 30, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2018
    Hustle Town likes this.
  4. RunninRaven

    RunninRaven Contributing Member
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    Dang, that's the first article I've seen that gave the pronunciation of his name. I hate it when I find out that I've been saying it wrong in my head all this time.
     
    Buck Turgidson likes this.
  5. Joe Joe

    Joe Joe Go Stros!
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    “We get strange looks,” he said. “I’ve noticed that. I bet we’re the most disliked organization, if you were to survey experienced baseball people. I think we have the Yankees beat — by a healthy margin, maybe.”

    I'm surprised this is still the case, but hate doesn't die easily.
     
    Buck Turgidson likes this.
  6. Buck Turgidson

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    Same here, he's always been May-doll to me.
     

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