The Effect of Better Surfaces

Steven Goldleaf at Bill James Online makes a point about how improvements in playing surfaces has taken an element of luck out of the game, and how that causes more of a reliance on skill:

If groundballs slowly evolve from haphazard events that have a high likelihood of putting the batter on base to almost automatic sure-thing outs, we are going to change our expectations of infielders’ skills. You always want skilled fielders, of course, but in the 1860s, whether you’ve got Ozzie Smith or Kate Smith playing shortstop, there are still going to be a lot of groundballs that don’t get handled cleanly. By the 1960s, though, infields are maintained well enough that a Tony Kubek– or Al Weis-type mishap has become a relative rarity, and by 2010, when grounds-keeping, unnoticed by most observers, has become an art-form, and bad hops have become less frequent every season, it makes a huge difference which Smith is playing shortstop for your team. Every play has become a skill play by the 21st century, and luck plays have almost disappeared.

This small illustration of the disappearance of random events in MLB shows how athletic ability, and skill in general, is at a premium today, and will be at a higher premium tomorrow. Ozzie is going to win the shortstop job over Kate every single time today, whereas maybe Kate would have beaten Ozzie out one time in a hundred in 1960, and three or four times in 1860, when fielding was subject to many, many more random factors than it is today.

I’m being hyperbolic here, in an attempt to be funny, but my point is serious: if you have many, many more bad hops in an 1860 contest, then sometimes a less-skilled fielder will seem comparable to a more-skilled fielder. Occasionally, lesser athletes will get playing time over better athletes.

I’ve been watching baseball for almost 50 years. When I was young you would see a fielder get down for a ground ball. The fielder was doing everything right, but the ball would hit something and bound over the fielder’s head. I almost never see that happen anymore. Baseball fields are engineered to remove water quickly, infields are dragged every three innings, and I suspect the dirt they put down hold few impurities. It’s much safer for the players, even though it made balls in play more predictable. I’ll take the trade-off.

This appears to be an article that leads into another on how small, incremental improvements have changed and continue to change the game. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2p5dY6m