Ignore Spring Training Stat Lines, Please!

There is value to what happens on the baseball field in Spring Training, but most of that is not in the results of the games or the at-bats. We need to stop getting worked up about the preseason stats.

Health and mobility are big ones. How the defenders are handling the mechanics of turning double-plays, preparing for throws home on sac-flies, rounding the bases while running, or getting good jumps when stealing. How guys look trying out new positions, new swings. Is a player being more selective at the plate, swinging at better pitches, or laying off ones he struck out on last year?

These things are different for everyone, and often tie into perceived faults from the year before. If the team felt a defender was taking bad routes to fly balls in the outfield last year, they’re going to be paying special attention to that this spring. If a team felt a player needed to be more selective at the plate, they might be paying more attention to when he swings this Spring, regardless of what happens after he does. These things, more than how many hits he gets off pitchers that may or may not be throwing the way they’d be throwing in a competitive MLB game, are the things teams are looking at.

It’s easy to get excited because Michael Conforto has some hits against lefties, or that Travis d’Arnaud is driving the ball, but ultimately these things are not indicators for 2017 MLB success. The Mets destroyed the Marlins in a game on Thursday, but many of the pitchers they hit were 28 year old guys with little to no major league experience. This is poor competition even if they were at their peak point in the season.

Players hit nothing during March and suddenly start the season 11/25 with 3 HR. Players also drive the ball all over Florida and start the season in a slump. The actual MLB season is such a different animal than practice games in Spring Training when everyone’s working on different things with different goals that it’s a hopeless task to try to figure out what any of it means for the regular season. This is especially true early in March when even the best pitchers are pretty rusty and the percentage of minor leaguers participating is higher.

So let’s just calm down on the over-analyzing of these games. Let’s just let everyone get in their reps and stay healthy and we can reevaluate in April.

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