Coincidentally, I was reading Derrick Goold’s chat from yesterday in another window and this section was right in front of my eyes.
“…Also, what has priority in the game has changed. Hitters aren’t chasing batting average as much as they are OPS. Pitchers don’t talk about a hitters hot zone in regards to his batting average — they want to avoid areas where that hitter does damage, so it’s slugging percentage. If the stats that are important change, then the style of game also changes to meet them. And that’s the crux of it really: The analytics revolution which was designed to find better ways to evaluate performance in the game has become the way the game is played…”