Analytics killed the World Series star

The L.A. Lakers and the Dodgers both ended long championship droughts in the past month by beating Florida teams 4 games to 2.

But there was one key difference.

The Lakers were facing Eric Spoelstra, one of the best coaches in the NBA, and the Dodgers were up against Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash. And that made all the difference.

Most people expected the top-seeded Lakers to make quick work of the Miami Heat, who’d been seeded behind four other teams in the East. The Dodgers and Rays, meanwhile, were seen as the two best teams in baseball. The Dodgers were given a slight edge, but they’d won 106 games a year earlier and hadn’t even made the Fall Classic; besides, as the saying goes, “anything can happen” in a short series in baseball.

Basketball’s more predictable, which is what made Miami’s run to the Finals even more interesting.

Still, the Heat were underdogs to the Lakers, and they probably would have been swept had it not been for the efforts of one Jimmy Butler. In the two games the Heat won, Butler went bananas, scoring 40 points with 11 rebounds and 13 assists in Game 3, and racking up 35 points as part of another triple-double in Game 5.

Few would have predicted Butler, who averaged under 20 points during the regular season and 18.7 for his career during the playoffs, would go off like that. Analytics would not have foreseen it.

Yet it happened.

He ran down loose balls, made driving layups, and grabbed offensive rebounds in a pair of frenetic efforts. For both games, he played more minutes than anyone else on the floor, and was in the game all but a few seconds of Game 5. He looked spent. Exhausted. But still incredible, right till the end. Spoelstra left Butler in the game because he needed him in the game to have a shot at beating a better team.

Tampa at bay

Contrast that with arguably the most impactful player on the Rays’ roster, former Cy Young-winning pitcher Blake Snell. “Arguably” because Randy Arozarena was amazing with the bat. But it was Snell who struck out nine Dodgers in just over four innings, allowing just two hits in a 6-4 victory in Game 2, and he was even more unhittable in Game 6. With Tampa Bay on the brink of elimination, he’d struck out nine more batters and allowed the Dodgers just two singles.

Six of those strikeouts had come against the first three batters in the Dodgers’ lineup — their best hitters. He’d been more effective against them than against anyone else. So after Austin Barnes singled off Snell in the bottom of the sixth, he seemed to be in a great spot with those same three hitters due up again.

But inexplicably, that’s when Cash, the manager, decided to pull the plug.

Mookie Betts promptly doubled, and L.A. scored twice in the inning off reliever Nick Anderson, erasing a 1-0 Tampa Bay lead and giving the Dodgers all they needed to win Game 6 and wrap up the series.

This wasn’t a case of hindsight being 20/20, though. Twitter blew up with “WTF” posts before the Dodgers took advantage of the opening.

It was like tagging your partner in a tag-team match when you’ve got the other guy on his back. Or letting your main competition take a mulligan in The Masters. Or substituting for Jimmy Butler with the score tied in Game 5.

Fans were mystified, and so was Snell, but Cash had a ready explanation. It wasn’t that he thought Snell was tired or was losing his effectiveness. He just didn’t want the Dodgers to face him the third time through the lineup. It was pure analytics: the numbers game.

Numbers don’t lie... except when they do

It’s not just Cash, though. Analytics is the name of the game for a lot of managers these days. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw from Game 5; Kershaw wasn’t as effective as Snell was, but he was still ahead and pitching well while sitting on a two-run lead. He’d retired seven batters in a row when Dustin May relieved him.

And it’s not just baseball, either. The Houston Rockets have leaned heavily on 3-point shots, based on the idea that they can get more bang for their buck. But even with one of the best distance shooters in the game (James Harden), the Rockets haven’t been able to make the NBA Finals. In one case, they famously missed 27 consecutive 3-pointers in a loss to the Golden State Warriors that eliminated them from the playoffs.

As the old saying goes, that’s why they play the game. If analytics always worked, why would anyone bother? The fact is that human beings are involved; the ball takes crazy bounces; weather intervenes. Some players choke. Others overachieve. Still others get injured. It’s impossible to take every variable into account, no matter how much we’d like to lean on OPS, pitch counts, or (in basketball) plus/minus figures.

Analytics don’t account for intangibles, but guess what? The intangibles don’t care about analytics.

The Dodgers didn’t, either. That’s why they won the Series.