As game time approaches, our scouts congregate at the top of the grandstand, where a small press box overlooks the field. The press box—a barely glorified shack about the width of four Porta Potties—has just enough room for a table and chairs for Tim Livingston, a Pointstreak/scoreboard operator, and Trey Dunia, the PA announcer, who treats the Arnold Field faithful to Billy Squier before games and is quick with a shattered-windshield sound effect when a foul ball flies toward the parking lot. But this year it will also have to hold the PITCHf/x operator, who’ll sit at a tiny card table in the corner with a keyboard, monitor, and mouse. The monitor is attached to a desktop computer that sits behind the press box on the roof of the Stompers’ clubhouse, protected from the elements (such as they are in Sonoma) by the press-box roof, two pieces of particleboard, and some netting. To turn it on, the operator has to vault over the wall, much to the surprise of the fans sitting in the top rows of the grandstand, who look up with concern whenever they notice one of us executing this seemingly suicidal maneuver.
Sam is spending game one in the dugout, more to establish a foothold in foreign territory than anything else. Right now, we have nothing to add to the players’ preparation: We haven’t seen Pittsburg play. But at some point in the season, we will want to be in the dugout to discuss tactics and offer information, and we don’t want it to be weird when we’re there. We also want the players—and perhaps more importantly Feh—to realize that there’s nowhere we can’t go. Just by standing in the corner or leaning over the railing alongside players in uniform, we’re breaking a barrier that still stands strong in the big leagues. In major league front offices, statistical analysts have a much louder voice than they used to, but few of them venture into the clubhouse, and no one gets to go in the dugout during games: At most, statheads offer advice or answer questions in pregame meetings before retreating to an office, a luxury box, or a seat in the stands.
This is the way it’s always worked, but it’s a curious use of resources. In many cases, analysts help determine who plays for a team and for how much money. Why should their influence end when games begin, even though they still have insights to offer? During the Stompers’ season, the Denver Broncos of the National Football League announce that the team’s director of analytics, Mitch Tanney, will break the front-office fourth wall in their upcoming games, speaking on a headset to head coach Gary Kubiak to offer his input on which plays the probabilities and percentages support. As managers increasingly come from cohorts that tend to be more receptive to sabermetrics, it seems inevitable that something similar will happen in baseball. Although the major leagues still prohibit electronic communications in the dugout, it wouldn’t be surprising to see teams hire in-game statistical consultants or recruit bench coaches—who’ve historically been cronies of the manager with similar philosophies on the sport—with quantitative backgrounds. Maybe Sam and I will serve as the prototypes. Or maybe we’ll screw up and set statheads back for another few years.
The two of us will switch off on dugout duty, depending on which of us (and which of our scouts) is with the Stompers on a certain day. Today I’m overseeing the advance-scouting orientation, so I cram into the press box behind Tim and next to Goldbeck, who’s going through the pregame setup process for PITCHf/x, entering rosters, lineups, and starting pitchers for both teams. I ask him whether this is the unlikeliest location ever for a Sportvision setup. He doesn’t have to mull it over long. “Yeah, I think so,” he says. The company installed a system to track fast-pitch softball at the 2011 NCAA Women’s College World Series, so that’s saying something. Then again, ESPN televised the softball tournament. The Stompers have to settle for Tim’s Internet-only radio stream.
As I look at the field over Goldbeck’s shoulder, I listen to Tim begin his broadcast. Like Vin Scully, Tim announces solo. Unlike Scully, he carries and sets up his own audio equipment, deals with weak Wi-Fi connections, and does most of the road games at folding tables exposed to the skies, which means that attentive listeners can almost hear his skin sizzle on sunny days. He reads out the Stompers’ lineup, which looks like this:
Fehlandt Lentini, CF
Sergio Miranda, 2B
Gered Mochizuki, SS
Joel Carranza, 1B
Isaac Wenrich, C
Kristian Gayday, 3B
Daniel Baptista, DH
Mark Hurley, LF
Matt Hibbert, RF
It’s not exactly the way we would’ve drawn it up. Moch has hit 6 career home runs in 1,292 professional plate appearances, which makes him a slugger compared to Miranda’s 9 in 2,655. Power isn’t everything—both guys seem selective, and on-base percentage is important. But sabermetric orthodoxy, based on complex run-scoring simulations, says that the number-two batter—who makes almost as many plate appearances as the leadoff man, but bats with more runners on base—should be the club’s best hitter, instead of the high-contact, good-bat-control, move-the-runners-over type that teams have been sticking there since time immemorial. In light of that research, we’d rather see someone with pop in that spot. Major league teams are beginning to learn this lesson: The big leaguer with the most plate appearances out of the second slot in 2015 is the Toronto Blue Jays’ Josh Donaldson, who will go on to win the American League Most Valuable Player award after tying for third in the AL with 41 home runs.
Hibbert, meanwhile, posted a .408 on-base percentage (with 35 steals in 43 attempts) for the Stompers in 2014, mostly while leading off. Feh likes him at the bottom of the order, where he envisions him serving as a sort of “second leadoff hitter” who gets on base to set up the top of the order. The problem is that the actual leadoff batter comes to the plate far more often than the “second” one. In the Pacific Association in 2014–15, each player after the leadoff batter makes approximately 0.11 fewer plate appearances per game than the hitter ahead of him, which translates to a difference of almost 0.9 plate appearances per game between the leadoff batter and the number-nine guy.
Hitting Hibbert last would cost him close to seventy plate appearances over a seventy-eight-game season, almost a quarter of the trips to the plate he has the potential to make. Our ideal lineup would have Hibbert at the top, Feh following him, and Miranda and Moch somewhere in the bottom third.
Amid my excitement, I can’t help but think that Opening Day is precisely the time when we should take a stand on the batting order, for the same reason that we’re trying to lay claim to dugout real estate from the start. If we let Feh bat Miranda and Moch at the top of the order today—based on seniority, favoritism, an inflated belief in their abilities, or some synthesis of the three—we’ll give our tacit consent to Feh’s sovereignty and also allow him to claim later that we can’t make a change because the players are accustomed to where they’ve been batting.
The arguments against asserting ourselves now are also strong. For one thing, batting order doesn’t matter that much. Although it’s frustrating when managers construct suboptimal batting orders for no reason other than ignorance or distrust of what the stats say—the baseball equivalent of an unforced error—most lineup mistakes don’t matter more than a few runs per season. (Although hitting Hibbert last instead of first is about as big a batting-order misstep as a manager can make.) For another, we might be better off broaching the subject delicately. Unless we want Feh to actively undermine us, we have to finesse our relationship. Invading the team’s territory during an actual game is adventurous enough; invading and cracking down on the natives might foster an organized resistance. Plus, I’d have to act without the support of my partner: Sam—who doesn’t care about the batting order and thinks we have to earn any authority we wield—says he wouldn’t be with me if I tried to protest. Reluctantly, I suppress my misgivings. The batting order will wait.
Sonoma is the sort of small town where moments of silence are actually silent, safe from the sound of some big-city guy going “Woooo.” I don’t hear so much as a murmur from the crowd of more than a thousand fans as the mic cuts in and
out during self-billed “soul singer and future Broadway star” Ceilidh Austin’s rendition of the national anthem, save for the usual swell of support at the pause after “land of the free.” The spectators sustain their applause through a short pregame ceremony, in which Jayce Ray’s family accepts the 2014 Pacific Association MVP Award on his behalf. Ray can’t be here because he’s with the Wichita Wingnuts of the American Association, for whom he’s hitting .394/.459/.576 through his first nine games. It’s as much a reminder to the players that their performance is appreciated as it is reassurance that there’s precedent for escaping from the Pacific Association.
Shadows bisect the field between home plate and the pitcher’s mound, a visibility-killing consequence of the six o’clock start time that hitters hate. It’s 70 degrees at first pitch, with 70 percent humidity, but the forecast calls for the temperature to drop to 55 in the late innings. That’s standard for Sonoma, where one needs a blanket at night even when the temperature touches triple digits during the day.
I’ve always had to fight the feeling that the first pitch of the season is a powerful portent, as if its outcome might set the tone for the rest of the year. So it’s difficult to dismiss the result of Matt Walker’s first pitch to Pittsburg leadoff man Brandon Williams: a fastball dribbled to second, which Sergio Miranda gloves and throws too late to retire the speedy left fielder. After that, though, the outs come quickly: Isaac Wenrich catches Williams stealing, and Nick Oddo grounds out. By the time center fielder Tim Battle flies out to Fehlandt for the final out of the inning, I’ve convinced myself that I’m not superstitious about season-opening singles.
The Diamonds’ starter is twenty-five-year-old Dennis Neal, who played for Vallejo in 2014 and was one of the Pacific Association’s best pitchers despite a fastball that sits at 84. The lefty, who throws from the stretch even with the bases empty, delivers a fastball to Feh on the inside corner for a called strike, then gets him to swing and miss on a changeup and throws a fastball high for ball one. On the fourth pitch, Feh sends a liner into left-center—our leadoff hitter matching Pittsburg’s, single for single. “He’s going to be someone that Neal will have to watch very, very closely,” Tim says, and Neal does: After strike one to Miranda, he throws over and catches Lentini leaning. Feh takes off for second anyway, and slides in safely under the throw—even when he’s picked off, Feh can’t be caught. The next batter, Miranda, a switch-hitter batting from the right side, reaches out and bloops a low and away 0-2 pitch down the right-field line. It falls in front of Nash Hutter, and Feh scores the first run of the Stompers’ season.
The Diamonds answer in the second. With one out and one on, second baseman Jaylen Harris, a twenty-one-year-old former Dodgers farmhand, lifts a fly ball to left-center, in a part of the park where the wall is roughly 365 feet from home plate. Arnold Field has no warning track—what does this look like, affiliated ball?—and Feh crashes into the barrier at close to full speed. He falls down, but the ball stays up and disappears over the fence. The Diamonds take a 2-1 lead.
This lead doesn’t last long, either. It falls in the first highlight of the Stompers’ season that’s seared into our minds, a moment we immediately know will make the summer montage.
Kristian Gayday comes to the plate to the hook of “Turn Down for What,” walking slowly with his head bowed in a way that probably broadcasts calm confidence when he’s hitting and bad body language when he’s in a slump. “Man alive, what a senior season for him,” Tim says, treating his listeners to Kristian’s senior stat line at Fort Wayne, which I’m happy to hear again. (Tim is the only person under eighty who still says “man alive.”) Hands held high and bat angled forward, Kristian watches a fastball in a way that says I don’t touch first pitches. He accepts the called strike. The next pitch, a changeup, just misses outside. The 1-1 pitch is bounced foul, where Yoshi barehands it near the third-base coach’s box. And the 1-2 is another changeup that misses away to even the count.
The 2-2 is where magic is made. Kristian swings, and his black bat shatters under the combined kinetic force of bat and ball. The shards impale the infield, but the ball keeps going. “Fastball broken bat, down the left-field line,” Tim says, abandoning his inside voice as the meters on his soundboard rise into the red. “It’s going, and it’s GONE! WHAT A DISPLAY OF POWER BY KRISTIAN GAYDAY. A BROKEN-BAT SOLO HOMER, AND IT’S 2-2. AND GOOD WORK, BEN LINDBERGH!” He says my name so I’ll stop slamming my palms into his shoulders, carried away by the most exciting solo shot I’ve seen in person since Aaron Boone beat the Red Sox in 2003.
“Unbelievable,” Tim continues, as Kristian rounds the bases. “He’s getting a standing ovation, and he should be. That right there is going to wake up some people to Kristian Gayday. Wow, that is an unbelievable display of strength.” It’s the first professional at-bat and the first professional homer for a twenty-three-year-old who’d probably be back home in Indiana, permanently retired, if Sam and I hadn’t trusted Chris Long’s conclusions and Kristian hadn’t trusted himself. And it’s not just any homer, but one that our HITf/x system tells us left a very broken bat at 89 miles per hour.
The score stays tied at 2 until the fourth, when Mark Hurley starts a rally by singling with one out. Matt Hibbert replaces him on a fielder’s choice, then steals second, and Feh drives him in with a single. This time, at least, the “second leadoff hitter” approach works. But Pittsburg strikes back in the top of the fifth, evening the score on a hit by pitch, a stolen base, a single, and a wild pitch.
The Stompers go down in order in the bottom of the inning, then manage not to score in the sixth despite a Gayday single—98 mph, HITf/x says, even harder than his homer, and one of the ten hardest-hit balls the system would track all season—and a double by Hurley, his third hit of the day. But in the seventh, Lentini singles again, steals second again, takes third on a throwing error, and scores the go-ahead run on a grounder to third despite a drawn-in infield. One out later, Moch follows with a single, and Carranza goes deep to give the Stompers a 6-3 lead.
Feh has tasked two of our pitching recruits with keeping Pittsburg off the board once Walker left after five innings, having allowed three runs on four hits, a walk, and two strikeouts. (It’s just the sort of forgettable, undistinguished outing we expected from Walker, but he kept the Stompers close, which will earn him another chance to impress us.) Paul Hvozdovic is the first pitcher out of the pen.
Paul leads the Stompers in superstition. His hangup stems from his freshman year in college, when he was scheduled to start right after a final exam. A friend drove him from the test to the ballpark, and the game didn’t go well: Paul got a couple of outs, then gave up eight runs. Since then, he’s tried not to take cars to his starts, which is a problem on the road. (The team van is permissible, but barely, and only if he sits in the back.) Soon after Opening Day, I make one attempt to cure him.
“Maybe the bad luck was the test, not the car ride,” I suggest. “In that case, you’ll pitch fine as long as you don’t take a final first.”
For the next twenty seconds, he’s silent; his brow knits, but I can’t see his eyes behind his shades. Then he relaxes and smiles, like he’s worked out a complex equation. “I don’t see it that way,” he says.
Today he’s at home, so he has nothing to fear. His delivery doesn’t look fluid, but it’s quick and compact, without many moving pieces. Mike Taylor pinch-hits for Oddo and takes a knee-high fastball for a called strike, then swings at and misses the next two for the first out. Paul also strikes out the next batter, Battle, and gets DH Joe Lewis on a grounder to second. The first successful inning leads to a second, and the second leads to a third. All told, Hvozdovic fires seventeen four-seamers at 85, fourteen changeups at 80, and three sliders at 81, almost all of them in or around the strike zone.
A higher-level team might tee off on Paul’s stuff in such enticing locations, but living in the zone serves him well today, just as it did during college. The only hint of trouble he encounters comes in the ei
ghth, his third inning of work, when he allows back-to-back one-out singles. Facing Taylor for the second time, Paul gets the big righty to fly out to Hibbert, who guns down Diamonds shortstop Chris DeBiasi trying to tag and advance to third. The final line: three innings, two hits, no walks, and four strikeouts. We wouldn’t trade one Hvozdovic for any number of Walkers.
After Paul escapes the jam, Sam suggests that we buy the team beer to celebrate what’s looking likely to be an Opening Day win. So as not to spoil the surprise (or give superstitious players any cause to claim that we jinxed the Stompers), we do this in secret, asking Theo to help us ring up a case of Coors and carry it into the clubhouse. We stash it in the freezer next to an old TV, where we’ll be able to remove it with a flourish once the players have filled the room.
We make it back to the sidelines in time to watch Sean Conroy, our sidearming, occasionally over-the-top Division III recruit, take the mound. Conroy, a starter in college, enters the game in baseball’s easiest save scenario: a three-run lead with no one on and three outs to go. His first pitch, like Paul’s, is a swinging strike—a beautiful sight, since no outcome predicts success more reliably than the ability to miss bats. He works quickly, appearing to stick to the same pitching approach he used in spring training: pounding hitters with low sinkers and then spotting sliders on either edge of the plate, using his unusual release point to hide each pitch’s true nature until it’s too late.
Battle, the leadoff man in the inning, flies out to right, but lefty Joe Lewis—who stands on the side of the plate that allows a longer look at Conroy—singles to center. The Diamonds need base runners—down three runs, Lewis can’t tie the game by himself—but Lewis tries to stretch his single into a double. Lentini cuts off the ball and throws on a line to second, where the ball and the tag beat Lewis. Two outs. The Diamonds’ last hope is Hutter, the big guy with the baseball butt, who’s 0-for-3. Sean starts him with a slider high, followed by a fastball foul, a slider swung on and missed (his tightest breaking ball yet), and another slider that Hutter swings through. “Slider swung on and missed, and that’ll do it!” Tim says. “A great first outing for the Stompers. And in this seventy-eight-game season, each one counts a little bit more.” The Stompers have a 1 in the win column.
The Only Rule Is It Has to Work Page 14