Random Thoughts

This will run a little longer than my previous posts, so make sure you have a little bit of time to really read through. Hopefully it will make sense.

Lately in sports every team has gone to great measures to try to find the latest way to get an advantage. With video everywhere and constant analysis of games, it is harder and harder to hide your weaknesses and tendencies. In baseball this is hardest of all. Teams scout games in person, assistants watch every frame of video over and over looking to see what a team does, how it does it, and when it does it. With all of this video espionage happening, is there any way for a team to prevent the world from knowing what it is going to do? Perhaps. If you have a basic knowledge of poker and baseball you will likely be able to follow the discussion with no problem. Even if you don't but enjoy numbers and new ideas, read on. If you have no inclination towards either poker, baseball, math, numbers or theories, then I won't be offended if you don't read this. Just check out my archive. I'll wait while you click the archive on the right. Still with me? Ok, let's begin.

In poker, the great players will randomize their play. Especially before the flop in no limit Hold 'Em, you want to disguise your play so your opponents will not know what cards you are holding. For instance when you are dealt a great hand like pocket aces, the tendency is to put in a good sized raise. If your opponents were not paying attention to what you were doing this would be the optimal play because you are putting in more money with the best hand. However, being that your opponents do pay attention to your play, if you raise every time with pocket aces your opponents may suspect that you hold aces whenever you put in a big raise. To counteract this you will need to just call with aces to disguise your play. Conversely, with marginal hands you will occasionally have to call or raise instead of folding so that opponents will not be able to know that you always have a good hand when playing. Pretty basic so far, right?

Going a step further, when do you decide to raise, when do you decide to call and when do you decide to fold? Well, you can try to mix up your play, but being human we tend to fall into patterns and eventually we will become somewhat predictable to the very observant. The way we get around this is to randomize play. For instance, you might decide to raise 75% of the time with aces and just call 25% of the time. How do you randomize? You look down at your watch and if the second hand is between 00 and 44, you raise. If it is between 45 and 59, you call. Even if your opponents knew you were doing this, unless they could see your watch, they still wouldn't know what you had on any given hand.

How does this relate back to baseball? Suppose you were in a situation with a runner on first base and 1 out. A manager might decide that with a runner on base he would want to have the runner steal 200% of the time and 30% of the time try to advance the runner with a hit and run play where the runner takes off on the pitch and the batter tries to hit the ball fair. So 50% of the time he will make some sort of move with the runner. So how will the manager decide which times to run and which not? If he tries to mix it up he may fall into a pattern. The best way is to, when the decision is made, glance at a watch and use the second hand to randomize the decision. Then, the opposing manager will never know fully when the move is coming and will have to either choose to be conservative and always play for the move, thus giving up position, or decide to ignore the possibility and make an attempt more likely to succeed when tried. It may be a slight advantage on any given time, but added up over the course of a season, it can amount to quite a lot.

This can also be applied to other situations such as picking a runner off of a base, bunting, or even whether to take the first pitch or swing. Many hitters either swing at the first pitch more than average or take the first pitch more than average. Knowing this, pitchers will throw more strikes to those who tend to take the first pitch and throw bad pitches to those tending to swing at the first pitch. Hitters will sometimes go against their own trend but this can lead to unintentional patters pitchers can pick up on. If a hitter randomizes this decision pitchers must make a choice. Let's look at some sample scenarios. We will ignore the idea of a pitcher throwing a ball when he intends to throw a strike and vice versa. These scenarios will likely cancel each other out.

The pitcher decides to throw a strike on the first pitch. The batter is swinging. The batter will either get a hit, end up with a strike, or hitting into an out. Let's give odds to each. Getting a hit will happen 50% of the time, ending up with a strike 25% and hitting into an out 25%.

The pitcher decides to throw a strike on the first pitch. The batter is not swinging. The pitcher will be ahead in the count. This will be a strike 100% of the time.

The pitcher decides to throw a ball on the first pitch. The batter is swinging. Either the batter will hit into an out, get a hit or will get a strike so the pitcher is ahead in the count. Odds of an out are 50%, getting a strike 40%, and getting a hit 10%.

The pitcher decides to throw a ball on the first pitch. The batter is not swinging. The pitcher will be behind in the count 100% of the time.

Adding up the percentages, and supposing the pitcher throws half strikes and half balls on the first pitch, a hit will happen 15% of the time. An out will happen 19% of the time. A strike will happen 41% of the time. A ball will happen 25% of the time. Outs happen about three times more frequently than hits on average during a game. During our scenario outs happen only about 30% more than hits rather than 300% more. And even if the ball is not put into play, the batter will only be behind in the count in 60% of those times. Not a bad result. Increasing your odds of getting a hit and not giving up a huge advantage in the count certainly puts you ahead of the game. This is a huge advantage which cannot be ignored.

Not to be lost in all of this is the psychological advantage you gain in the process. Typically, pitchers are deciding what is thrown and the batters must react. In this scenario, however, the batter knows what he is going to do and the pitcher must try to react to what he thinks the batter is going to do. This small distraction can cause bad results for the pitcher.

Not to say that this has not been explored before but I've never seen it and all of this is off the top of my head and based on the years of baseball I have watched. I do feel that there is a large upside to this approach and when utilized properly can swing a game and possibly the season. Just as a small edge exploited time after time can turn a losing poker player into a winning poker player, such can be the results in baseball. Whichever team can use this to their advantage will find themselves that much closer to a World Series Championship.