This sort of thing has already been covered in FJM, but since I promised to make this a sports blog, let's look proceed. Squawking Baseball interviewed Nats manager Manny Acta last year. He had something good to say.
Manny Acta: Bunting is pretty outdated. Everybody scores so many runs nowadays, it doesn't make sense to play for one run unless it's late in the game and it's close. I hardly ever bunt early in a game, unless it's with a pitcher. A big inning can win you a game. One run in the third inning can't, unless you have Pedro pitching.
But how good really? Well, it looks like Acta picked up on the, er, hit-out-bunt matrix differential, which was covered/invented by Baseball Prospectus. Good, good. But the same fine minds that brought us that little nugget also found that the manager has little-to-no effect on a ball game. At least, not a positive effect. The lineup can be mostly randomized and it won't make much of a difference. And how hard can it be to click the little pitch count counter? It seems like a monkey (a stoic monkey) could run a team. Will Acta come to terms with this realization? Will it be like a computer becoming self-aware and short circuiting/blowing up? This outcome seems at least as likely as any other, which is to say, who knows. I think we need some new metrics, meta-metrics, which should measure the effects of following the new metrics' effects on statistics. Do you follow? That is to say, that the new paradigm of tracking and interpreting the day-to-days of baseball must influence the way it's constituted and played (because of, say, gm or managerial or ownership decisions). And these trends, these meta-trends should also be quantified. By who? By the manager. I mean, you can only chew so many sunflowerseeds before some serious dental work is needed, amiright?
Which would mean that Acta could function effectively as a manager, become self-aware, and not have to get out of The Matrix.
