When Talent Fails: The Importance of Strategy, Sequencing, and Game Theory in Baseball
For a Mets fan, 2020 has the makings of a Greek tragedy. A triumphant band of immensely talented heroes rescuing one of baseball’s most downtrodden teams– all to not even make the playoffs. Now, we’re talking about a season that’s painful to watch unfold– replete with Jacob deGrom pitching and such amazing hitting that would make even Trevor Bauer blush. With an offense with a wRC+ of 123, the 2020 Mets sit within the top eight highest wRC+s’ in baseball history, just above the infamous 2017 World Series winning Astros. Now what is wRC+? I’m no Billy Beane, but wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created Plus) is a normalized metric that measures run creation and takes into account baseball eras and ballpark configurations for pitcher/hitter advantage.
The 2020 Mets roster was nothing to scoff at– McNeill, Canó, Nimmo, Canforto, Smith, and deGrom. Nevertheless, as we watched power hitting and excellent fielding, we were not watching runs. Well, some runs. The Mets scored 286 runs in 2020, the 13th most in the MLB. Oof.
Baseball is a game– a strategically formulaic one, at that. While the Mets wRC+ calculates a certain number of runs scored, it certainly fell short. Game theory speaks about the most strategic and logical choice to make while playing. You can have all the talent in the world, however, incorrectly organizing your pitching and hitting to maximize runs leads to disaster. Dominic Smith might’ve hit the cleanest homer known to man, but if there’s only one runner one base, and then there were two walks and then a strikeout, that doesn’t produce an ideal outcome. If the name of the game is earning as many runs as possible, the organization of these hits should’ve placed the walks before the home run to score a grand slam.
The optimization of hits with regards to runners on base is important, especially as runs are not randomized. Given the information about their fellow teammates and opponents, the Mets should’ve sequenced their plays better and played with less consistency to account for poor luck– possibly with more bunts. Logically, their performance should’ve been dictated by the stage of the game and how it would be informed by their previous games. As the dominant strategy is to hit as many homers and as quickly, the Mets were set up for failure, because they didn’t have any runners on base. If they consistently lacked runs despite excellent hitting, a shuffling of rotation would have resulted in payoff for talent.
At the end of the day, I’m not saying all of the Mets’s opponents have crystal balls and fabulous sequencing. I mean like, if they did, deGrom would’ve not been drafted 272nd overall. No, what I am saying is that the Mets had terrible sequencing and did not logically play. We’ve been bad before, but in 2020 we could have not been. We still were.
Syndergaard also just had Tommy John. Ouch.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_3-nAoa1QE