Chris Marinak (MBA 2008), Executive Vice President for Strategy, Technology, and Innovation at Major League Baseball
(photo by Alex Trautwig/MLB Photos)

Chris Marinak (MBA 2008), Executive Vice President for Strategy, Technology, and Innovation at Major League Baseball
(photo by Alex Trautwig/MLB Photos)

If you haven’t picked up a pack of baseball cards lately, you might be surprised by what’s on the back. Listed there among the usual statistics—like home runs, batting average, and RBIs—is WAR (wins above replacement). What was once a weird new metric, which caused panic among traditionalists, has become industry standard shorthand for assessing player value.

“If anyone tries to explain how WAR is calculated, it will make your head explode,” says Chris Marinak. “But it has a lot of value from the standpoint that it is a universal statistic that’s applicable across players and positions. It’s really easy from a topline perspective to explain to someone: This is how many wins a player got you.”

Explaining statistics has long been the bane of the stat nerd existence. Just try to convert someone weaned on ERA—earned run average, a calculation of how many runs a pitcher allows per nine innings, and a long-favored way to evaluate efficacy—to FIP (fielding independent pitching), which helps evaluate a hurler independent of the defense behind him. But as metrics become more and more commonplace, they help provide a richer context for intelligent and nuanced conversations about the game. And to Marinak and the MLB, a more enlightened fan is a more engaged fan. “You have to have some sort of processing to make it usable for people,” Marinak says. “How do you package it in a way that’s consumable?”

One easy way to do this: Measure the flashy stuff. A program called Statcast calculates hitters’ launch angles and exit velocities on batted balls, while capturing spin rates for pitchers. Those metrics are also fed to the broadcast teams, who use the information to paint a deeper picture of what we’re all seeing on the field—and leave modern fans obsessing over advanced metrics like defensive “route efficiency” and “barrel rate,” the way they used to lionize home runs and strikeouts.

It’s not just fans who benefit from all this data. Hitters have reprogrammed their swings to turn sinkers into home runs, forcing pitchers to work higher in the zone with greater amounts of spin on their fastballs. In other words, if you’re not up on the latest statistical trends, you might be missing a great game. “It just comes down to what kind of fan you are,” Marinak says. “A lot of people want to go to a ball game and unplug and disconnect and rewind the clock. Then there are other people who are more interested in following the game at a deeper level. Our goal is to cater to all fans.”

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