The MVP Machine: How Baseballs New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players by Ben Lindbergh

The MVP Machine: How Baseballs New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players Reviews

• 
  Samantha

  This is a much more technical tome than The Only Rule Is It Has To Work (which Lindbergh co-authored with Sam Miller), but it’s just as fascinating.
  
  If you’re into the effect of stats and tech on the baseball world (and if you’re fascinated by Trevor Bauer and the Driveline approach), this is a must-read.
• 
  Doug

  If you want to understand what is going on in baseball today, this book is a primer. The authors who have previously written in this genre offer a very up to date insight on the changes revolutionizing baseball.
  
  Whether you like the new approach or not, it is here to stay. This book will give you the insight and understanding to appreciate the groundbreaking changes cycling through the baseball industry. Well written with many timely examples,
  it will not disappoint ardent baseball fanatics.
• 
  Lance

  While it is clear the authors know their stuff about the role of analytics in baseball, it pains me to read about all this praise yet again about an organization like the Houston Astros who not only flaunted established rules to win, but treat certain employees so badly. When I read about thier dismissal of traditional scouts who wanted to learn more about modern methods that was the end of my objectivity for this book.
• 
  Michael Martz

  I'd love to be able to recommend 'The MVP Machine' to everyone, but unless you're a baseball fan who's embraced (or at least tolerated) the 'new stats' and technology that have been introduced into the game over the past few years it won't do much for you. However, if you are such a fan......
  
  'The MVP Machine' explains a lot about the origins of the changes to the game that are quite noticeable today. Defensive shifts, exit velocity, launch angle, tunneling pitches, spin rates, 3 outcome players- stuff that almost make today's game an entirely different one- are explained mostly through the experiences of players who have exploited, or tried to exploit, them. The gist of the book is that the Moneyball era of using 'new' stats like WAR to select undervalued players is over and even newer information gleaned from technology (mostly camera based) and training techniques is being used in highly sophisticated ways for player development. It uses the experiences of a well known big league pitcher, Trevor Bauer (a world class putz, by the way) to show how an unathletic kid with a big arm, bad personality, and a lack of fear of unorthodox approaches built himself into Cy Young caliber performer from the ground up.
  
  The book is well written and moves along pretty quickly, mostly because the authors interspersed their more technical sections with real world examples of how well known players were actually using the data and tech to improve. As someone who played into my 20s and have loved the sport for over 60 years, this was a fascinating behind the scenes view into why baseball looks like it does today. I can only imagine 'what coulda been...' had all this stuff been available to me back when I was playing! (Ha, who am I kidding?....).
• 
  Caitlin

  Good read, but enough with the Trevor Bauer.
• 
  Rich Iurilli

  Definitely too much Trevor Bauer but I got post–sign-stealing scandal Astros lols and learned a lot too
• 
  Kevin Deal

  Intriguing from start to finish. The authors’ ability to breakdown complex metrics in an accessible way offers such great insights to the current state of player development. As an educator, the thread of mindfulness (citing Dweck’s work) offered a fascinating parallel between the MLB and the world of education. Any fan of baseball should read this book.
• 
  Heather V ~The Other Heather~

  I started reading this right when we learned that the lockout was over and we would, in fact, have baseball this summer. I'd held it back for that very purpose. While it was decidedly less...fun?...to read than Andy Martino's CHEATED (which was hands down
  one of my favourite books out of everything I read last year), it was impressive all the same. Ben Lindbergh and his co-author Travis Sawchik are massive sports and stats nerds, which will be appreciated by anyone who shares those particular odd fascinations, like me (to a point). It does get very, very stats-heavy at times, though -- and yes, that's what you get on the label, so you probably already knew that -- which can slow your reading time down a bit.
  
  
  They sure did pick an explosive time to start writing a baseball book, man.
  
  
  Lindbergh and Sawchik's book relies very heavily on interviews with Trevor Bauer, which I understand, because Bauer himself is obsessed with analytics and everything mathematical that could make him the best pitcher in baseball. Unfortunately for those of us who have been following the sport over the past couple of years (after this book had already been published) it's a lot less pleasant to read Bauer's thoughts and feelings since he's been effectively run out of the league for the
  alleged assault of at least one woman. (I'm writing this in April 2022, and word has just come down that his suspension from the Dodgers has been
  extended to at least April 29th. It's been extended many times so far while the league and the players union decide what to do with him, regardless of how the legal side of things is going.) Most of us, the baseball faithful, already knew Bauer was a dick, but it wasn't until last summer that we knew about this stuff, or at least the extent of it. I bring that up only because Lindbergh spends a lot of chapters digging into Bauer's methods and raison d'etre, and he is made to look like the ultimate MVP-candidate-in-progress in that way, so if you're like me and you have a tough time divorcing his fastball from his personal life you might struggle to get as much out of those chapters as you might have in, say, 2020.
  
  
  It might also be worth mentioning that a lot of this book centres around how the Houston Astros were responsible for "revolutionizing" baseball in a way not seen since the Moneyball era. If you've followed a lick of sports news over the past couple of years you probably already know that bit didn't age well, either, as the Astros were eventually proven to have been
  cheating their arses off by banging trash cans in order to win their 2017 World Series title.
  Here's a 2019 article from The Ringer that gives a bit more depth (via an excerpt) to what Lindbergh and Sawchik were going for. Once again, the book was well underway if not completely written before all of this came fully to light.
  
  
  None of that bad timing is Lindbergh's fault, obviously, and aside from that he gives us a lot of interesting baseball geekery to gawk at. And it's not without its shocking moments: There is a lot here about what went on in the Astros' front office when, in just one example, they decided to eschew the moral expectations of practically everyone and take on Roberto Osuna as their star closer, despite him having just been launched out of Toronto for
  assaulting the mother of his baby. (
  Here is another interview with Lindbergh about his observations on that subject and more.) It makes one question just how far an analytics-based team should really go to "get their guy," and at what cost.
  
  
  I think your ability to set aside Bauer's character and the Astros scandal, combined with your level of enjoyment for data science, will inform how much you like reading THE MVP MACHINE. I have to give it 4 stars on research alone, and I'm always a fan of a well-executed passion project, which this very clearly is.
  
  
  
  Potentially of interest to my fellow baseball fans:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Danny Knobler

  Great topic handled well
  
  The growth of analytics has changed baseball, but it has also divided many fans and many of those in the game. It shouldn’t, and the more Travis Sawchik and Ben Lindbergh write, the less it will. They take difficult topics and make them sound simple, interesting and not threatening. A very worthwhile book.
• 
  Mark Stevens

  On the surface, the game of baseball is perfection. It’s the sheer beauty of the way the game is structured around athletes who are attempting to do two of the hardest things in sports.
  
  Pitching a ball past a major league batter.
  Hitting a ball hurled by a major league pitcher.
  
  Baseball is conflict. Pitcher versus hitter at least 54 times per game.  
  
  If you want to dig deep into the current state of Major League Baseball—and how players today are working to get better at those two very difficult skills—check out The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists are Using Data to Build Better Players by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik.
  
  It’s long. (Hey, there’s no rush here; this is baseball.) It’s detailed. It savors data. It splashes around in the muddy, mucky detail with glee. It pokes its investigation-minded nose behind the scenes of the latest training techniques. The book takes us up close and personal with players who are consumed with improvement. Trevor Bauer (clubhouse pariah and all) is Exhibit A on the individual player level, with many other players in supporting roles. The Houston Astros are submitted as powerful evidence on the team level, with other teams in supporting roles.
  
  The MVP Machine gives us all hope—that so-so careers can be transformed through hard work, willingness to learn, and ability to adapt to new coaching and fresh ideas.
  
  Oh, and some fancy new analytical gear doesn’t hurt, such as the Edgertronic cameras, TrackMan, Statcast, Blast sensors, Rapsodo, KinaTrak, and the K-Vest along with (and this is key) smart baseball coaches to analyze the data and suggest tiny adjustments in a pitcher’s arm slot or a batter’s swing motion that can transform average players into potential Hall of Fame players.
  
  That’s the best thing about The MVP Machine—every dollop of data is coupled with a three-dimensional portrait of the human experience. It’s a mashup of Sports Illustrated and Scientific American; the data doesn’t weigh things down, though it wouldn’t hurt to be down with your OBP and know that WAR is not just an endless thing in Afghanistan. 
  
  More than anything, The MVP Machine is about getting better. “Veterans who’ve looked lost are reclaiming careers, while an emerging generation of information-friendly players is seeking out from the get-go, fueling a youth movement in the majors and contributing to a constantly increasing level of play,” write Lindbergh and Sawchik. The age of steroids, says Seattle Mariners director of player development Andy McKay, has been replaced with a craving for “new information.”
  
  That’s the essence of this book—the players and coaches who find new ways to develop data, take it seriously, make adjustments, and get better through improved swing mechanics, pitch grips, and other adjustments that (usually) require additional insights from a sideline guru like Brian Bannister or Dick Latta. The adjustments might also involve the intricacies of Laminar Flow (you just wait) and designing a new pitch.
  
  The underlying theme is intensity. Focus. Belief. Grit. Determination--all that good old apple pie stuff. Why take the winter off when you can pitch even more (hello, Trevor Bauer) than you do during the regular season? Bauer, whose innate athleticism is measured as subpar, has reached the ranks of elite pitchers through hard work, intensely practicing the right skills, recording and analyzing every practice, and thinking hard about the results.
  
  In other words, as Lindbergh and Sawchik point out, it’s not just the 10,000-hour rule—the idea that the sheer volume of practice will lead to improvement. “No strategy matters at all in skill development unless it’s your passion,” says Kyle Boddy, the guy who built his own biomechanics lab (called Driveline) from scratch. “He’s not that athletically gifted, but he’s nearly unbreakable when it comes to volume. That’s a blessing and a curse … He doesn’t belong in the big leagues but he’s there because he’s delusional.” (Bauer reveres Elon Musk so there you go; the detailed list of Bauer-related topics in the index takes up nearly a page on its own.)
  
  Believe me when I say I’m only skimming the surface of The MVP Machine. But the bottom line is player improvement. What will baseball look like next year? Or next decade? The strikeout rate has climbed for 13 straight seasons. Where does that lead? Will the game remain entertaining? As the writers point out, “it won’t matter how good players get if fewer people want to watch them.”
  
  The game’s rules, after all, are artificial. They evolve. (Once upon a time, batters could request pitchers throw the ball to a certain spot.) Lindbergh and Sawchik offer up some interesting suggestions for how to restore the essential hitter-pitcher conflict at the heart of the perfect game. 
• 
  Allen Adams

  
  https://www.themaineedge.com/sports/b...
  
  One of the longest-standing truisms in the athletic realm is that nothing is more important than inborn natural talent; while practice can make you better, there’s no amount of practice that can compensate for a lack of inherent ability.
  
  But in baseball’s brave new world, with reams of data available at the press of a button, perhaps that truism isn’t quite so true after all.
  
  “The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists are Using Data to Build Better Ballplayers,” by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik, is an exploration of the rapidly-blossoming notion that there’s more to it than that. Teams are turning their vast data-collecting capabilities toward the field of player development, trying to find ways to maximize the talent of their players in new and sometimes unconventional ways.
  
  It’s a new frontier, one awash in high-speed cameras and swing gurus. It’s all about spin rates and launch angles and elevating the velocity of the ball, be it thrown or batted. And the people who are the earliest adopters, from the front offices to the fields, are reaping the rewards.
  
  Since baseball’s beginnings, there has been a way that things are done. The conventional wisdom (and there was no room for any Unconventional wisdom) was that talent would always win out; the cream would always rise, etc. For a century or more, that’s how it was. Certain skills and behaviors were considered important because they always had been important.
  
  But after the seismic shift of Michael Lewis’s book “Moneyball,” the unconventional wisdom started appearing in the front offices of more and more teams. The value of analysis in the acquisition of players – drafts, signings, trades – became common knowledge, with each team building their own in-house analytics team … and when everyone has an advantage, no one has an advantage.
  
  However, there will always be those who seek an edge. And it turns out that that edge is in the realm of player development. It’s no longer about finding undervalued assets and exploiting them, but rather about maximizing the talents of the players already in your system.
  
  Linbdbergh and Sawchik go deep, talking to figures up and down the game. They dug into data-driven development philosophies on levels ranging from broad to granular, looking at how things are handled on an organizational level (they spent a lot of time on the Astros, which makes a ton of sense, considering the forward-thinking nature of that team) while also talking to individual coaches (the stuff with Brian Bannister is fascinating) and players (ditto Trevor Bauer) about what they have discovered buried in the numbers.
  
  Bauer is one of the stars of the book. He has long been a proponent of the power of data, unabashedly sharing his thoughts with pretty much anyone who will listen. Of particular interest is his work with the Washington-based Driveline, a baseball performance training facility led by Kyle Boddy, a data scientist who built his development model on a foundation provided by former MLB pitcher Mike Marshall’s ideas and expanded upon through rigorous research.
  
  Bauer’s usage of unconventional training methods – particularly throwing weighted balls – was initially viewed with skepticism at best and outright ridicule at worst. But as technological advances have made their way into the game – high-speed cameras and biometric monitoring devices from companies like TrackMan and Rapsodo and the like – someone like Bauer, already analytically inclined, can start using that information to their benefit. We watch him use the information provided him by Edgertronic cameras – cameras that capture thousands of frames per second – to gradually craft a pitch that breaks the way he wants it to. There may be no one currently in baseball who has so single-mindedly devoted themselves to full maximization of his abilities.
  
  And then there’s Bannister, who’s a fascinating case himself. A former pitcher who put up middling numbers over a four-year big-league career, Bannister was someone who recognized the possibilities of data early on. Even during his playing days, he espoused the importance of statistical analysis and sabermetrics; he wound up in the Red Sox front office starting in 2015.
  
  He became something of an organizational shooting star, rapidly rising in the ranks. Bannister is one of the still-rare people who can bridge the gap between the numbers side and the on-field side; with his experience as a player, he brings a credibility that those who haven’t played the game simply can’t match. One can argue whether playing experience should matter, but it undeniably does, so having someone like Bannister – Lindbergh and Sawchik call them “conduits” – is vitally important in ensuring that the lines of communication are open and flowing in both directions.
  
  (There’s a moment where Bannister – a gifted photographer – basically ascribes his development philosophy to an understanding of the work of the famed photographer Ansel Adams and it is unexpected and fascinating and one of the coolest bits of what is a very cool book.)
  
  Honestly, I could go on and on. Want to learn something about how little guys like Jose Altuve and Mookie Betts turned into MVP-level hitters? Or more about the revolutionary data-driven approaches that led to World Series titles for teams like the Astros and Red Sox? The fascinating details just keep coming – we’re watching a developmental revolution take place in real time and this book serves as an effective chronicle of that sea change.
  
  “The MVP Machine” is an incredibly well-reported look at one of baseball’s bleeding edge frontiers. And for a book addressing a dense and fairly wonky subject, it proves remarkably readable as well – Lindbergh and Sawchik are both talented writers who have a particular knack for finding engaging, understandable ways to present complex ideas.
  
  (Note: This is where I stick my plug for the “Effectively Wild” podcast that Lindbergh co-hosts for the website FanGraphs; it is a repository of delightful dorkiness surrounding baseball, exploring subjects that are silly or sublime or sometimes both. They dig into the numbers but also embrace absurd hypotheticals and the simple on-field beauty of the game. It’s good, is what I’m saying.)
  
  Anyone with a desire to learn more about how baseball’s future is being built in the here and now should really check out this book. The ways players learn and the ways we learn about them are changing. “The MVP Machine” is a magnificent exploration of what those changes mean for the game we love.
• 
  Kyle Johnson

  Awesome baseball book co-authored by my favorite podcaster, Ben Lindbergh. The hype around this book is supposedly that it will be a Moneyball 2.0 of sorts. While the book itself cannot and will not even approach the fame of Moneyball, Moneyball did for sabermetrics what MVP machine could theoretically do for player development. Pretty intense book with lots of technical jargon, but at least for avid fans, this should be a must-read.
  
  “These new peaks in performance aren’t just the product of better technology. They’re a manifestation of a new philosophy of human potential. Increasingly, teams and players are adopting a growth mindset that rejects long-held beliefs about innate physical talent. One of the only innate qualities may be how hard players are willing to work.”
• 
  Harold Walker

  Excellent! I should’ve expected nothing less from two of the brightest baseball minds writing today. Just like their previous books, The MVP Machine changed not just the way I think about the game of baseball but also the way I think about how I pursue my own work and passions.
  
  I couldn’t recommend this book more. If you love baseball and want to know what is happening on the cutting edge of the sport you need to read this.
  
  Thank you Ben and Travis for all of the work that went into this book and for the work you are doing every day. You make me love the things I love even more and I couldn’t be more appreciative. Keep on being awesome.
• 
  Kyle

  While quite technical at times, there is enough of a story to keep your interest if you’re a baseball fan. This is where the sport is heading and it is quite clear that some teams and players are way ahead and others are WAY behind.
  
  “We haven’t done anything yet to compare with potentially what we could do.”
  
• 
  Dan

  One of the most interesting books that I've ever read about baseball. It gives me a new appreciation for how players try to improve themselves using the latest technology and analytics.
• 
  Andrew Wolgemuth

  A fun read for baseball fans interested in the dramatic player development improvements of the last five years or so.
• 
  Ronaldo

  Just fantastic. I find learning about the internal workings of MLB endlessly fascinating
• 
  Rich W

  Great book - much bigger than baseball.
• 
  Dan

  Fantastic look at how we've gone from Moneyball to our modern era that prioritizes player development.
• 
  Peter Kelly

  Fascinating. Amazing to dive into where baseball is headed - highly recommend
• 
  Colin Cox

  The MVP Machine is a timely and necessary intervention that explores newfangled player-development practices in baseball. Within a generation, the way to win has changed. On the whole, teams have transitioned from plucking older, expensive players from the free-agent market to enhancing young, inexpensive talent in their farm system. By doing so, teams are not only allocating resources differently; they are also shifting organizational priorities. That is to say, this new understanding of efficiency is the guiding ethos for professional baseball franchises.
  
  For anyone familiar with baseball books, words like "efficiency" hearken back to this generation's seminal baseball book: Michael Lewis' Moneyball. But since Moneyball, the terrain has changed. To varying degrees, every team in baseball has eschewed antiquated methods of player evaluation. For example, there are fewer, if any, 10-year contracts for 32-year-old players and teams universally recognize the superiority of on-base percentage over batting average as a means of assessing a player's hitting ability. Therefore, teams cannot expect to extract surplus value by simply identifying and exploiting market inefficiencies. Instead of uncovering the next great player, teams must make them.
  
  The MVP Machine explores how teams emphasize and utilize deliberate practice (i.e., efficiency) and technological advancements as a means of making great players. To be clear, The MVP Machine does not suggest that teams ignored player development in the past (although, some teams and especially some players certainly did). Instead, The MVP Machine illustrates how the marriage of efficiency and technology create the conditions for more reliable and predictive player development practices. In this respect, a player's ceiling is not as static as once assumed; the ceiling can shift.
  
  Unlike many baseball books that dramatize the practices of particular teams, authors Lindbergh and Sawchik follow no such pattern. They eschew this model for a broader, player-centric approach. For example, Lindbergh and Sawchik feature Cleveland pitcher Trevor Bauer and use him as a metaphor for the book's thesis. As Lindbergh and Sawchik effectively suggest, Bauer not only uses new and dynamic technologies, but he employs deliberate, exhaustive, and even irregular practice methods as well. In this respect, The MVP Machine reads not unlike the Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers. This is where The MVP Machine appears limited. There are certainly parts and pieces of The MVP Machine that are fascinating, but unfortunately, the book, in its totality, fits into a predictable and tired genre.
  
  But to both Lindbergh and Sawchik's credit, this critique may have little to do with either the authors themselves or the book they wrote. The pithiest way to say this is to say, well, I don't think I like baseball books. I like baseball, and I like essays and editorials about baseball, but I cannot help but notice that once an author, or in this case two authors, stretch an exciting and thought-provoking idea out, they lose something.
• 
  Jim Blessing

  This book started very interesting, but got bogged down and I wasn't able to keep reading after the mid-point of it.
• 
  Frank

  I got about a hundred pages in and simply got bored. It functions as a history of the current baseball "revolution" and does an okay job telling the history but not that well explaining it. The writing is pretty dry and often feels really repetitive in style and tone ( perhaps the lack of Sam Miller is really felt here). Mostly follows Trevor Bauer, who some may find interesting but I find him mostly annoying. Then it gets packed with the shallow "growth mindset," "grit," and other Gladwell bullshit. This would all probably read better as just one or two long form essays instead of trying to make it a book, especially because a lot of the topics, people, and stories covered are written about in many other places just as well if not better.