The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

by Ben Lindbergh, Travis Sawchik

Move over, Moneyball -- a cutting-edge look at major league baseball's next revolution: the high-tech quest to build better players.

As bestselling authors Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik reveal in The MVP Machine, the Moneyball era is over. Fifteen years after Michael Lewis brought the Oakland Athletics' groundbreaking team-building strategies to light, every front office takes a data-driven approach to evaluating players, and the league's smarter teams no longer have a huge advantage in valuing past performance.

Lindbergh and Sawchik's behind-the-scenes reporting reveals:

How the 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox used cutting-edge technology to win the World Series
How undersized afterthoughts José Altuve and Mookie Betts became big sluggers and MVPs
How polarizing pitcher Trevor Bauer made himself a Cy Young contender
How new analytical tools have overturned traditional pitching and hitting techniques
How a wave of young talent is making MLB both better than ever and arguably worse to watch
Instead of out-drafting, out-signing, and out-trading their rivals, baseball's best minds have turned to out-developing opponents, gaining greater edges than ever by perfecting prospects and eking extra runs out of older athletes who were once written off. Lindbergh and Sawchik take us inside the transformation of former fringe hitters into home-run kings, show how washed-up pitchers have emerged as aces, and document how coaching and scouting are being turned upside down. The MVP Machine charts the future of a sport and offers a lesson that goes beyond baseball: Success stems not from focusing on finished products, but from making the most of untapped potential.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Business, Science, Biography

384 pages, Hardcover

First published June 4, 2019

About the author

Ben Lindbergh is a staff writer for The Ringer. He also hosts the Effectively Wild podcast for FanGraphs and regularly appears on MLB Network. He is a former staff writer for FiveThirtyEight and Grantland, a former editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus, and the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team. His next book, The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players, comes out in June 2019. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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?....).

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most essential baseball book since Moneyball. A must-read.

[Kellen Short · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not great. It has aged poorly in the last few years since it was published. The extensive writing on Trevor Bauer is gross. The chapter on the Astros is different after their cheating scandal. While there were interesting ideas explored in the book, I took issue with the presentation of the individuals who are trying to change player development in baseball and it really took away from my experience.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good read, but enough with the Trevor Bauer.

[Rich Iurilli · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[James Lydon · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It's scary not to know things. But it's also exciting because it means there is more to learn."

This book took me a while to read, but after watching the World Series I was reminded why I love baseball. Such a great sport! It was fun reading about the behind the scenes strategies to find ways to improve in every aspect of the game. From psychology to pitch spin rate, this book covered everything. The heavy emphasis on the 2018 Boston Red Sox was also a big plus.

[Heather V ~The Other Heather~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

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:

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It could lose about 40 pages, and it is overly reliant on Trevor Bauer (think the early series asshole version of Sheldon Cooper, but in baseball) especially when the other reclamation stories are better (Rich Hill, Ottavino, etc). Still, very interesting book, and like me you don’t even have to watch much of any baseball to appreciate it

[Danny Knobler · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Caleb Friginal · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great read! People have called this book the “Moneyball” for this generation. It opens the door to the new revolution in professional baseball. One of my favorite things about baseball is that people continue to try and push the sport forward even though it’s been around for over 100 years. These authors get fascinating insight into the people who are on the group floor of the player development movement. From Trevor Bauer to Kyle Boddy to Doug Latta to Brian Bannister. It was interesting to see which minds were pushing the game forward. This is a must read for baseball fans and really anybody that wants to develop a “growth mindset”.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.”

[Dylan Costanzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for multiple holiday weekends on the beach (yes, the start date is correct) and it did its job. Got a little boring and repetitive at times but had enough interesting insights to keep the book engaging throughout. Overall this book was fine, definitely wouldn’t recommend unless you like baseball, and even still I was a little underwhelmed.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re an avid reader about modern analytics in baseball, you probably won’t be too surprised about what you I’m this book. Nonetheless, it’s a great comprehensive look at what has transpired the last 11 years.

I knocked it a star because there’s a lot of fluff in regards to the sticky tack conversation, one of the authors going through the Driveline gauntlet, Trevor Bauer’s off-field drama and various other non-analytics controversies.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Peter Reo · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'll never look at baseball the same way again.

[Ronaldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Crust Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this in the post Bauer exile era is kinda wild. Dude had all the drive, all the talent, and none of the maturity or morality. Also, shout-out Caleb Cotham for fixing the Phillies. Ily.

[Paul Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting look at how teams are using analytics to re-think player development.

[Rich W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book - much bigger than baseball.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unintentionally interesting pairing with Winning Fixes Everything.

[Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book chronicles the innovative ways in which data analytics and non-traditional approaches to player development are elevating the game of baseball. The chapter focusing on the Astros is particularly interesting, all the more so as it relates to the sign stealing scandal, which was revealed after the publishing of this book. Recommended read for any fan of the great sport of baseball!

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

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