Paul Articulates – New School versus Old School

 

The recently completed Mets-Braves series was thrilling to watch.  It highlighted not only two very good teams battling for the lead in the Eastern Division, but also what I would opine to be a showdown between two very different philosophies on winning baseball games.

As you have read in many posts and comments this year, Mets fans have been celebrating the return to an “old school” approach to offense.  This includes hitting the ball away from the shift, hitting to move runners even if it results in a productive out, running the bases aggressively, and working pitch counts.  Buck Showalter has deservingly received a lot of credit for this transformation, but there are also many players who have shown a willingness to embrace this approach at the possible expense of a stat line like slugging percentage.  

According to Baseball Savant, the Mets team has averaged an 11.3 degree launch angle so far this year compared to the league average of 12.6 degrees.  Their whiff rate of 23.9% compares favorably to the league average of 25.4%.  To date the old-school approach has led to winning baseball – the Mets have one of the top winning percentages in the league and have been in first place virtually all year.

The Atlanta Braves in contrast seem to be the epitome of the “new school” of offense.  Their batters swing for the fences, with optimal launch angle cuts and have produced very high home run and strikeout rates.  Again according to Baseball Savant, the Braves team has averaged a 13.9 degree launch angle so far this year compared to the league average of 12.6 degrees.  

Their whiff rate is a whopping 28.8%. This approach did not work very well in the spring, as cold dense air held towering shots in the ballpark, but as the weather warmed up so did the Braves.  They had the best June in baseball and surged from below .500 to challenge for the best record in the NL.

So how has this matchup of styles played out?  So far, the Mets tied a series and won a series, but each series felt like a tight matchup.  There will be much more – the teams still play twelve more times in their remaining 73 games so the jury is still out on which team (and which approach) is superior.  To me, there have already been some clues in the games to date:

• Series 1: May 2-4 – Mets take two, Braves take two.  The Mets victories in this series were scored in typical “move the line” fashion, featuring singles and sacrifices with multiple players on base.  The Braves victories, and even their losses, were characterized by runs scored via the HR or extra base hit.  Braves batters fanned 43 times in the four game series.  When they hit it in the cool May air, the Braves batters could not reach beyond the fences often enough to tilt this series.  Pitching made the difference in the two Mets wins as Carlos Carrasco pitched 8 innings of shutout ball and David Peterson was very effective in 5 innings except for one pitch – a three run homer by Matt Olsen.

• Series 2: July 11-13 – Mets take two, Braves take one.  This series really showed the difference between the two approaches.  
• In Game 1, the Mets prevailed 4-1 as Max Scherzer pitched brilliantly, using his array of different pitches to keep the Atlanta batters off balance.  They managed to catch only one ball on the barrel – a bases empty HR by red hot Austin Riley, but the rest of the at-bats that night resulted in 13 Atlanta K’s, nine in Scherzer’s seven innings and another three consecutive whiffs against Diaz in the ninth.  
• In Game 2, Peterson also pitched well, but this time two of the Braves got a barrel on the ball resulting in two 2-run homers that proved the difference in a 4-1 Braves win.  In the second of the homers, the cameras showed Adam Duvall’s swing perfectly illustrating the point: weight on the back leg, back shoulder tilted down, big uppercut swing.  
• In Game 3, The Mets forgot which side of this argument they were on, scoring their first five runs on three HRs.  They later got back to basics and scored some old school runs, including one of the more artful acts of aggressive base running as Lindor baited the pitcher into balking him home from third.  The Braves scored all their runs on three solo HRs – true to form.  One thing the Mets did consistently throughout this series is particularly important in this rivalry of two teams with great pitching staffs: they worked the pitch counts from the beginning of the game.  In three games, none of the Atlanta starters were able to get more than 15 outs as their pitch counts ballooned through the first 4-5 innings.  Fried threw 99 pitches under constant stress in his 5 innings of work; Strider threw 103 in 4 2/3 innings; and Morton threw 107 in 5 innings.  Final score: Mets 7, Braves 3.

You may or may not agree with my theory that the Mets-Braves matchup represents a classic old-school versus new-school showdown.  However, I think you must agree that the rest of the Mets-Braves matchups this year will provide some great drama and eventually should determine the best team in the NL East.  

If you do subscribe to my theory, then the season outcome will be determined by two factors: defense and pitching.  Defense is important to mitigate the “old-school” approach because you have to stop the line from moving.  That means everything from holding runners from advancing an extra base on hits to turning double plays and shutting down the running game.  

Pitching is always important, but against the “new-school” hitting philosophy it is very important to impair the hitters’ timing by varying speed and location of pitches.  When the Mets are at full strength with their pitching staff, they have what it takes to hold down the Braves. It won’t be easy, but as the Mets demonstrated in their second series with the Braves this year, they were able to stress the opposing pitching staff with long at-bats and aggressive base running.   

I am looking forward to the rest of the match-ups between these two talented teams and also to your comments on these thoughts.