Innovation and the Great American Pastime

Strategies and Techniques for Change Agents, Strategists, and Innovators

You can observe a lot just by watching — Yogi Berra

As the dog days of summer settle over Major League Baseball (MLB), the season's narrative sharpens. For some teams, the stakes are higher with each game, inching closer to a coveted playoff spot. For others languishing at the bottom, a roster shake-up looms before the trading deadline. It's a unique period in sports: the NFL and college football are still in pre-season mode, and the NBA is in its off-season lull.

This is the perfect time to immerse yourself in America's pastime.

With the MLB All-Star game marking the halfway point of this long, grueling season, it's a moment to reflect on your team's journey and your favorite players' performances. With its storied history dating back to the National League's inception in 1876 and the American League's debut in 1901, the MLB seems like a sport, a business, a world where every innovation has already been explored.

But hold on—there's a twist in this timeless game. Innovation is far from dead. In fact, this season has brought us a tale of serendipity and ingenuity that is turning heads across the league. It's a compelling reminder that nothing is beyond improvement. Let's dive into the fascinating story behind the MLB's most captivating development this year: a groundbreaking new pitch born from a happy accident.

Enter the Splinker

As highlighted in this WSJ article, rookie pitching sensation Paul Skeenes has had an almost unprecedented rookie season. His record at the midway point is 6 wins, zero losses, and a miserly ERA of 1.90. He was chosen as the starting pitcher for the NL team in this week All-Star game. While he has a devasting fastball averaging 99.1 MPH and a slider, it is a pitch he discovered last year, the splinker, which seems to be the most baffling and deserves to be studied.

Skenes’s splinker comes in just a little slower than his 100 mph heater, but it nosedives like a splitter. He developed it with the intention of catching major-league hitters off guard—in the same way most pitchers use a change-up or other off-speed pitch—and so far, it’s done the job. Skenes has thrown 1,071 pitches in his 11 MLB starts. A total of 333 of them have been splinkers, according to Baseball Prospectus. It is averaging 94 mph and has been his primary strikeout pitch. 

One of the oddest things about the filthiest pitch in Skenes’s repertoire is that he discovered it entirely by chance. Last summer, not long after he was drafted No. 1 overall out of LSU, Skenes was working to develop a pitch that had rightward movement to pair with his primary fastball. During one throwing session, his grip slipped, causing the ball to come off his middle finger instead of his index finger, decreasing the spin of the pitch while maintaining its velocity. 

“I just kind of discovered it on one random throw, and then I just kept doing it,” Skenes said. “How I was holding the ball didn’t change. But the way I was releasing it and what I was feeling as I released it changed a little bit.”¹

As the article points out, he is not the first to discover this pitch. We all build on the work of others. But it is non-traditional, unique and unproven. If he waited for this to become a “best practice”, they would have ignored his discovery as just an accident and moved on.

Competitive Advantage

An already world-class athlete and performer doesn't just rely on what's already working. In their relentless pursuit of competitive advantage, they constantly tinker and seek improvements. Along the way, unexpected discoveries occur. Instead of ignoring these signals, they recognize their potential, work to perfect them, and ultimately create an unplanned advantage.

Innovation is the art and craft of bringing what doesn't exist today into existence tomorrow. Everything can be refined, improved, re-thought, and re-discovered. It takes the courage to navigate through a hundred (or more!) failed experiments, all in the hope of uncovering an improvement that provides a winning edge.

Work your craft. Find an edge. And enjoy the long days of summer.

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Onward!

John

About The Digital Leader Newsletter

John Rossman is a keynote speaker, innovation coach, and strategy advisor. The Digital Leader Newsletter is a weekly coaching session focused on customer-centricity, innovation, and strategy. We deliver practical theory, examples, tools, and techniques to help you build better strategies, plans, and solutions—but most of all, to think and communicate better.

1. https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball/paul-skenes-mlb-all-star-game-ab914d8a?st=78g9ffbwt8bv6u1&reflink=article_imessage_share