(Sorry if I missed a thread on this already.)
SI has an excerpt from Ben Lindburgh and Travis Sawchik's new book "THE MVP MACHINE", and damn, it's a really cool read about Bannister.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/06/07/boston-red-sox-brian-bannister-mvp-machine
SI has an excerpt from Ben Lindburgh and Travis Sawchik's new book "THE MVP MACHINE", and damn, it's a really cool read about Bannister.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/06/07/boston-red-sox-brian-bannister-mvp-machine
Fascinating piece, and makes me want to pick the book up.In his current role, Bannister says, “99 percent of the work I do is standing out in the outfield during batting practice or during a bullpen session, holding my phone and showing it to a pitcher, showing him what the data says and then telling him why I think he should make an adjustment and backing it up on the spot.” Before Bannister, no one on the Red Sox staff needed to deploy data that way. Boston’s old internal information repository dated back to before the iPhone-iPad era, and it wouldn’t work on mobile devices. After joining the Red Sox, Bannister learned SQL (Structured Query Language)—a programming language that’s become a prerequisite for front-office work—to retrieve information from the database more quickly, but the queries he created weren’t powerful enough for his purposes.
Enter a new application called PEDRO (pitching, evaluation, development, research, and optimization), a nod to Red Sox legend and onetime Bannister teammate Pedro Martínez. PEDRO, which was built by R&D analyst Spencer Bingol, a former baseball blogger hired by Bannister, functions as a “sandbox of ideas on the player-development and scouting side.” It also enables Bannister to do with one click what once would have taken him hours or days, applying his custom pitcher evaluations on a “mass scale” and allowing him to exchange computer time for face time with players.