After years of "Moneyball"-style quantitative analysis, major-league teams are setting records for inactivity because of on-field substitutions and strategizing, prompting talk of rule changes.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Games this season saw an average gap of 3 minutes, 48 seconds between balls in play, an all-time high. There were more pitcher substitutions than ever, the most time between pitches on record and longer games than ever.
A confluence of hitting, pitching and defensive strategies spawned by the league's “Moneyball” revolution have all played a role. That makes baseball, whose early use of big-data strategies was embraced by the business world in general, acase study in its unintended consequences.
