For some baseball fans, hits, batting average, wins and earned run average are the best way to evaluate talent. To others, those archaic statistics mean little compared to OPS+, xwOBA, spin rate and whiff rate.
Baseball relies heavily on analytics and data, and as the oldest North American Big Four sport, the game has evolved. Through a modern lens, Cy Young’s statistics of 511 wins and 749 complete games are incomprehensible. Or Ty Cobb’s .366 career batting average and 4,189 hits with just 177 home runs across 3,034 games seems impossible.
In 1980, baseball changed when author and baseball historian Bill James coined the term sabermetrics. He defined it as “the search for objective knowledge about baseball.” As statistical analysis has evolved and technology has improved, fans and teams examine baseball differently in 2025.
The role of a starting pitcher
The position that has seen the most significant change since baseball’s inception is the starting pitcher. Whether it’s the increased velocity or the lower number of innings, a starting pitcher’s duties in 2025 are very different from their roles in the past.
With the help of modern technology, sports analytics proves that pitchers are, on average, less effective the longer they pitch. As a result, managers allow starting pitchers to throw fewer innings per game and fewer innings per season.
“It’s been true throughout all of baseball history that the more a batter faces a pitcher, the more advantage that the batter gets,” said Michael Girsch, vice president of special projects for the St. Louis Cardinals said. “That was true 100 years ago, and it’s true today.”
In addition to teams wanting to limit the number of times a batter sees the same pitcher, teams are chasing the highest velocity and maximum movement.
“You start with velocity. Velocity requires max effort. Max effort means you can’t throw as many pitches. So that leads to fewer innings per start,” said Scott Bush, CEO of the Society for American Baseball Research.
The official fastest major league pitch ever recorded is Aroldis Chapman’s 105.8 mph fastball from 2010, but some science and biomechanics suggest it may be possible for someone to throw up to 125 mph.
Eno Sarris wrote an article for The Athletic in 2024 about the capabilities of a human being to throw a fastball. Jimmy Buffi, who has a PHD in biomedical engineering and experience in MLB, gave his maximum velocity theory.
“When you build up a simple physics model that is essentially a series of collisions between body parts, you get a max fastball velocity of about 125 mph,” Buffi said.
While Buffi’s projection is highly theoretical, it uses a pitching concept called the “kinetic chain” to describe the “series of energy transfers between two masses.” The person transfers energy from the legs to the torso, all the way up the arm, and finally into the ball.
Kyle Boddy – a special advisor for the Boston Red Sox and founder of Driveline Baseball, a data-driven baseball player development organization – argued that although throwing a 125-mph fastball may be a stretch, reaching 110 mph could be possible.
To achieve this, though, a pitcher would have to have the perfect physical structure and movements.
“We’ll need to use new methods, like simulation of human movement with millions of synthetic data points using machine learning and artificial intelligence to explore the entire latent space of possible mechanical outputs and muscular contributions to the throwing motion,” Boddy said.
While teams are continuing to encourage their starting pitchers to chase higher velocity, the human body may have reached its ceiling with the amount of stress the small ligaments and tendons can take. As the muscles in the arm continue to strengthen, the tendons and ligaments do not strengthen proportionally.
As a result, starting pitchers are more frequently administered Tommy John surgery, first administered to pitcher Tommy John in 1974.
“The big hope is that the continued work in biomechanics will lead to a place where we can have more sustainable outcomes both in terms of how long a player can throw in a game, but also how long they can throw for their career,” Bush said.
Do results-based performance dictate success?
Another way that analytics and data have changed baseball is through scouting and performance analysis. The results only tell part of the story, and advanced analytics are often used as predictive measures.
“We look at how your past performance is most likely to project your future performance,” Girsch said. “We’ve gotten away from just the results and more towards the causes of the results.”
One of the best resources for fans to see what is “causing the results” of their favorite players is the website Baseball Savant. Here, data like barrel rate, hard hit rate, whiff rate and launch angle can be used to better understand what leads to a player’s results.
Rather than looking at a player’s batting average, which only factors in whether a player got a hit or not, a player’s expected batting average factors in exit velocity and launch angle.
In the early 2010s, Baseball Reference incorporated what is now one of the most referred to statistics, wins above replacement. WAR explains a player’s value compared to the average replacement player in that player’s playing time.
Babe Ruth has the highest WAR in MLB history at 182.6, in large part due to replacement players in that era being well below the replacement players in the modern era. Barry Bonds has the highest WAR among modern players at 162.8, while Randy Johnson rounds out the top 30 with 101.1.
In 2012, WAR entered the mainstream during the American League MVP race between Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera won the Triple Crown, leading the AL in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. It was the first time since 1967 when Carl Yastrzemski did so for the Boston Red Sox.
Using base-level statistics, Cabrera was better than Trout, but because of Trout’s speed and defense, his WAR was 10.5 compared to Cabrera’s 7.1. In what could have otherwise been a unanimous MVP for Cabrera, Trout received six first-place votes, and the case can be made that he was more deserving of the award.
Data’s effect on Major League Baseball’s rules
MLB relies on data and analytics to change the rules of the game, making it more enjoyable for fans to watch. In 2023, the league restricted the way defenses can shift to bring back athleticism with more balls in play and more offense.
Teams found that the way to limit the damage of extreme pull hitters like David Ortiz, Joey Gallo or Chris Davis was to shift the infielders to the places where they most frequently hit the ball. Sounds simple, right?
The results were remarkable. From 2000 to 2009, the league batting average was about .265. From 2010 to 2022, it was about .251.
The league saw this as a problem and modified the shifting rules so that teams must keep two infielders on either side of second base, and they may not position themselves on the outfield grass.
It is important to acknowledge that correlation is commonly confused with causation. If two statistics are correlated, that does not necessarily mean that one variable is leading to the other. Increased velocity, more pitchers and better analytics for pitchers could also contribute to the lower batting averages.
It is the responsibility of front offices and scouts to find the most relevant statistics and determine if a causation exists.
“There are always new data sources and sources of information, and trying to understand those and use them effectively as fast as you can, so you’re ahead of the industry is part of our jobs,” Girsch said.
What does the future hold?
This season has already seen torpedo bats make their impact on the 2025 season. These relatively new bats, popularized by the New York Yankees, could be the next big thing in MLB.
In spring training and throughout the minor leagues, MLB tested the automated ball-strike system, and it may not be too long before it makes its way to the majors.
“We’re constantly trying to take whatever the newest technology is and use it to help our players improve. What’s the new technology? I don’t know. But whatever it is, we have to react to it quickly in order to integrate it into our system,” Girsch said.
Despite some of the recent rule changes, there are still so many opportunities for teams to innovate the game with new experiments.
“I’d love to see studies on what we can do with the ball or the bats to reduce the three true outcomes: home runs, walks and strikeouts. What can we do in that space to get more balls in play, get more people running the bases, and get even more athleticism into the game,” Bush said.
Sabermetrics have ruined the game. Pitchers don’t need to throw 100 mph+ fastballs if they can master location and movement mixed with offspeed pitches. Greg Maddux did it for years, they’ll also have longer careers.
throw the game