The story of a major league baseball game has often been told by the familiar numbers in a box score: runs, hits, errors, home runs, strikeouts. But while baseball might not be the first sport that comes to mind when you hear the term “load management,” MLB teams are becoming increasingly interested in measuring the workload of every play who takes the field on a particular day, to keep position players on the field and performing their best.
Cincinnati Reds skipper David Bell said that he’s taken a lost of interest in it in his second career as a manager, saying “As a player, you think you’re invincible and can play every day. But the grind of the season in baseball is an extreme challenge.”
At a time when analytics have become a standard element of almost every front office decision, optimizing player workload is seen as one of the few remaining areas teams can gain an edge.