Intent

There’s an aspect of Manny Machado’s cinematic home run off Mackenzie Gore in Tuesday’s barn burner against the Nationals that needs to be fleshed out. The prodrome of Tuesday’s heated showdown is important context.

In the game the night before, tied 3-3 in the 10th, the Nationals took the lead when Enyel De Los Santos gave up a two out double to Keibert Ruiz driving in the go ahead run, followed by a home run from Nick Senzel. The Padres would stop the bleeding but faced a 6-3 deficit going into the bottom of the tenth. Donovan Solano started the Padres half of the inning with a double. Jake Cronenworth, on second as the Manfred man, could only advance to third on the play as the ball hung up on its way to the left field warning track appearing for a moment that it might be caught. Jackson Merrill followed, and added to his sublime rookie campaign with a two run single cutting the deficit to 6-5. After Ha-Seong Kim walked to put runners on first and second Tyler Wade dropped a sacrifice bunt putting runners on second and third with only one out. But David Peralta popped out foul in the next at bat. Suddenly there were two outs and the Padres still trailed 6-5. The Nationals would opt to intentionally walk Luis Arraez to load the bases and face Jurickson Profar instead. Profar would quickly fall behind 0-2. This is when the first of several moments of melodrama transpired. Nationals reliever Hunter Harvey’s next pitch was a 98 MPH fastball a few inches from Profar’s head:

The pitch had late break towards the plate but initially appeared to be heading directly at Profar forcing him to awkwardly leap out of harm’s way. It’s very unlikely Harvey was intentionally trying to hit Profar as that would have brought in the tying run. But it’s very likely he was taking advantage of the 0-2 count to throw near Profar’s head to try to keep Profar from diving out over the plate. Harvey would throw inside on the next pitch again to bring the count to 2-2. After foul balls on two more four seamers to the outer half, Harvey tried to pull the string on Profar with a split finger. To Profar’s credit despite the high heat and brushback pitches thrown earlier in the at bat, he kept diving out over the plate to be able to cover the entire strike zone, and it paid off:

His refusal to be cowed allowed him to barrel a good pitch that was tailing off the outer half of the plate. And his success completed an astounding come from behind win. Although this was a random Monday night in June, the game was at Petco so there were 40,000 fans roaring in celebration creating a supercharged atmosphere. Profar had nearly been hit by a pitch he felt was intentionally thrown up and in. He was emotional, as you might expect anyone to be. He can be seen celebrating with teammates on the third base line in front of the Nationals dugout. He would eventually leave the crowd of teammates to walk up the left field line and gesture directly into the stands celebrating with the fans:

This upset the Nationals who felt the celebration of the implausible comeback was over the top, and didn’t appreciate Profar celebrating near their dugout. Keibert Ruiz, who’d driven in the go ahead run for the Nationals in the top half of the inning, was apparently especially upset.

In the first inning Tuesday Profar came up to bat in the first with one out and no runners on. Ruiz took this moment to confront Profar before the at bat began:

After the benches cleared the umpires issued warnings to both teams. This was the next pitch:

In a completely surreal sequence Mackenzie Gore immediately hit Profar with a fastball, and within 15 seconds the umpires ejected Mike Shildt. There are certain cases in which intent does not matter. Hitting a batter with a 97 MPH fastball the very next pitch after getting a warning from the umpire obviates considerations of intent. There is always some sliver of doubt about intent, but in so egregiously violating the umpire’s warning, the pitcher has forfeited his right to be the beneficiary of that doubt. Instead Gore was allowed to stay in the game and the manager of the player that was hit by the pitch was ejected within 15 seconds of the play. The umpires had no problem with what Gore did. And this doesn’t require a lot of analysis. Sometimes professionals, even those practicing in the highest echelon of their trade, screw up badly. Still, we can’t remember sequence of umpiring decisions quite this bad. This umpiring was unique in its ineptitude.

And this is the context in which Manny Machado stepped to the plate. The reason this context matters is because it informs a consideration of his intent. To Machado this wasn’t just an at bat with a runner on first and one out in a 0-0 game. This was a moment when his team had faced profound disrespect from the visiting team and contempt from the umpiring crew. Everyone watching understood implicitly that there was one perfect answer for everything that had transpired: for Machado to launch one to the moon. But Machado has been suffering the effects of a surgically repaired elbow all season and had acknowledged last week he is struggling to get into his slot to launch the ball when taking his swing because of the lingering elbow injury. Which is why it was incredible to see what he did on the first pitch from Gore:

That ball was hit 104.1 MPH with a launch angle of 38 degrees. He absolutely found a way to get to his slot to launch the ball on that swing. But that’s not what’s so interesting about his swing. What’s interesting is the bat speed. He reached a bat speed of 85.5 MPH, a staggering number. For context Machado’s average bat speed is 74.6 MPH. The major league leader is Giancarlo Stanton with an average bat speed of 80.7 MPH. The longest home run this season (excluding Coors field) was Aaron Judge’s 473 foot blast against Houston, with a bat speed of 79.3 MPH. Machado’s last home run June 20th against the Brewers was hit with a bat speed of 74.7 MPH, right in line with his season average. His average bat speed on home runs this season going into Tuesday was 76.9 MPH. Something was different on his swing Tuesday and there is powerful evidence that the difference was his intent at the plate: to swing for the fences with everything he had.

There’s a school of thought that hitters are monolithic: they have one approach and that approach yields a spectrum of results (strikeouts, walks, home runs etc.) that are randomly distributed through the season. And by that school of thought Machado’s home run was simply the result of serendipity: one of the homeruns he was destined to hit this season happened to come in a big moment. This attitude bothers a lot of former players who feel that players have a lot more agency than they’re given credit for. Ask yourself, is it pure coincidence that Machado’s bat speed was 13% higher than usual on that swing? Or did he switch into a higher gear?

After the analytics revolution swept through baseball at the turn of the century a subtle heuristic found its way into our analysis of the game: the idea that if something can’t be quantified it doesn’t exist. But earlier this year one of the great minds of the sabermetric community, indeed the founder, had this to say:

We’re living through a second wave of analytics, this time rooted in a deeper physical explanation for what we see on the field. This will allow us to challenge the notion that some of the ineffable parts of the sport, those we’ve felt are real but have been unable to quantify, are simply myths. The idea that players don’t have an extra gear they can get to when their passions rise, or that they can’t change approach to match what the situation calls for won’t be around for much longer. We now have the ability to track hitters’ bat speed, swing length, launch angle, exit velocity, and nearly every other physical characteristic that was once too granular a detail to capture. But these raw pieces of data still don’t capture a key piece of knowledge. The interminable challenge going forward will be capturing player intent. We won’t find it in the box score where the first wave of the analytics revolution arose. Neither will we find it in the Statcast data alone. This data must be paired with an understanding of moments like those on Tuesday, the case studies that allow us to understand a player’s intent. And for that, for the pursuit of a more perfect understanding of the game, we have to watch the games.