The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players
By Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik
Basic Books. 385 pages.
When a book opens with Trevor Bauer on a pitching mound at Driveline Baseball, as The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players does, it is immediately complicated. Bauer is a self-made, elite pitcher and an MLB bad boy (more on that later). Driveline is a symbol of baseball innovation, the kind of change that made Adam Ottavino an eighth-inning Rockies hero after a dismal 2017.