AI-nsanity

BY KEVIN KERNAN

You can’t see the forest through the Nerds.

With the revelation this week of major league teams using AI on their dugout iPads to make in-game decisions – with Steve Cohen’s Mets being the chief culprit according to former Mets reliever Adam Ottavino – this is another example of technology over humans and it is pure AI-nsanity.

The Mets stink. The Mets have stunk since June 13, 2025. AI isn’t helping. How about calling out the Nerds using the AI? As my friend former Marlins World Champion manager Jack McKeon often wonders: “How come no one is ever fired from the analytics department?’’

Only the Rockies, Royals and Angels have lost more games than the Mets. Yet, according to Ottavino, Cohen’s Mets were running around earlier this year bragging about their artificial intelligence advantage.

My question is simple to Cohen: Why not hire real baseball men who have real Baseball Intelligence, and let’s just call it BI, and let them do their job?

Real Baseball Intelligence.

According to reports, the Mets and others used AI for in-game decisions, telling hitters what pitch to look for at the plate and telling pitchers what pitch to throw from the mound.

In my day, pitchers and catchers would see what is working in that particular moment, and that intelligence would be formed by actually watching the game, reading swings, and realizing what pitches are working best for the pitcher at that moment, because every day can be different and then make BI decisions from that data; you know, it used to be called Baseball.

Now, to back up my point with real data, Mets hitters are dead last in on-base percentage this year with a .302 mark. As a point of reference, the 1962 Mets – the Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game Mets – wound up with a .318 on base percentage, 16 points higher than these billionaire owned Mets. As another point of reference, the Dodgers are first in on-base percentage at .342. Clearly, their coaching and players are better than the Mets’ AI infused on-base percentage. The Mets are 26th in batting average with a robust .232 mark.

AI or no AI, the Mets stink.

I also bring up on-base percentage because that was the goal of the Moneyball Nerds back in the day of fictionalized character Peter Brand, who favored using on-base percentage as the ultimate metric to evaluate hitters — something that was always important to baseball men. The present-day Nerds have metastasized into something different than the Peter Brand front office analysts.

As for calling pitches and that side of the game, the Mets as of this moment are 17th in ERA at 4.23. The Dodgers are third with a 3.50 mark. As for the Mets’ horrible defense, AI didn’t help, and I have wondered all year why the Mets play their outfielders too deep. Too many times, key bloop hits have fallen just out of reach of Mets outfielders.

By the way, it is here where I must remind everyone that Cohen, when he purchased the Mets clearly said he wanted his Mets to be the “East Coast Dodgers.’’

Well, these Mets are not even close to being anything like the Dodgers.

The Dodgers are looking for their third straight World Series title. The Mets are going on 41 years since their last World Series title.

I also had to laugh when I read the Athletic piece about this decision by MLB to limit AI usage through dugout iPads was, according to the report: “met with frustration by some front office members tasked with innovation.’’ 

Baseball cracked down on the use of AI, according to reports, in June — but you can be sure all that AI information is still being used for setting up a game-plan before every game down to the last degree.

It ain’t working, Mets.

The original AI report came from the Athletic. It certainly answered some questions I had from earlier in the year from watching Mets games when I would see a Mets pitcher blow a fastball by an opposing hitter but never go back to the fastball, and the pitcher would try to trick the hitter with a sweeper that was subsequently hit hard.

Meanwhile, Carlos Mendoza, a baseball man I have known for many years, clearly was not given the authority to actually manage the game, that job belonged to those running the AI program.

Those Nerds were not fired when the over-priced Mets crashed and burned, thanks in large part to the off-season personnel decisions made by David Stearns, who was hailed as a savior by Mets media when he was hired.

Stearns or the AI functionaries did not pay the price; Mendoza did when he was fired by Stearns. Stearns, of course, was the one who hired Mendoza.

I also had to laugh when I read the Athletic piece about this decision by MLB to limit AI usage through dugout iPads was, according to the report: “met with frustration by some front office members tasked with innovation.’’

Tasked with innovation is a nice way to put it, that’s for sure.

How about leaving the task of calling pitches to baseball men?

Or as one former pitching coach told BallNine on Sunday, and he did not hold back: “Start watching the game, learning the game and put your bleeping iPads down and start paying attention; and learning in real life and gain some knowledge and wisdom.’’

Exactly. The beauty of baseball is reacting to what is happening on the field and then making those adjustments.

Too bad Nerds, there should be some human element to the game. Especially when the game is being played right before our human eyes.

Another former longtime pitching coach was infuriated as well, telling me, “Come on! It’s a human game not machines. Stupid buy in.’’

As I noted earlier the Mets were not the only team using AI in-game. But that explains a lot as well. Perhaps that is the reason why this is one of the worst overall seasons in baseball history with so many bad teams, so many bad plays, so many players out of position. If you are mediocre now, you have a chance to play in the watered-down playoffs.

Maybe they should just change the World Series trophy to the AI trophy; after all, Rob Manfred once called the World Series trophy “a piece of metal.’’

He later had to apologize.

In Sunday’s 8-2 destruction of the Yankees by the Dodgers at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees showed they have not made the adjustments needed to beat the Dodgers, this was much like Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. The Yankees’ defense was abysmal once again and while the Dodgers grinded out at-bats against Cam Schlittler, Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto dominated Yankees hitters in his complete game victory.

The Run It Back Yankees have the same old problems, and BallNine founder Chris Vitali has been saying that since the first day of the season and refuses to be invested in a team he has rooted for his entire life. After that loss, the great Katie Sharp pointed out that in the last 10 home games for the Aaron Judge-less Yankees they are 1-9 with a minus-41 run differential. They have only had as bad a span of 10 home games with one win or fewer and outscored by 40-plus runs only three other times in their history – 40 years ago and then way back in the pre-Babe Ruth days of 1912 and 1911.

That was so long ago the Yankees were not even the Yankees, they were the New York Highlanders, and they played in Hilltop Park. The 1911 team was managed by Hal Chase, who also played first base. The next year the team was managed by someone I had never heard of before until Sunday when I read his name on Baseball-reference.com. That would be Harry Wolverton, known as “Fighting Harry.’’

There was no AI in Fighting Harry’s day. This fight was a knockout. The Yankees lost 102 games that season and Fighting Harry was not the manager in 1913.

By the way, that afternoon win improved the Dodgers’ record to a stunning 32-17 on the road. I maintain that Dave Roberts is one of the best managers in the game and gets his players to play a heady brand of baseball and always seems to run circles around Aaron Boone.

Roberts, like Boone, is a baseball lifer. Roberts was a 28th round draft pick by the Tigers in the 1994 draft. Roberts would not even be drafted in today’s MLB, which only has 20 rounds in the draft.

There is nothing wrong with getting as much information as you can through data, and the Dodgers do that well, but you also need to understand your players and know how to get the best out of them and use your baseball knowledge.

Artificial Intelligence is one thing, but good old-fashioned baseball intelligence is vitally important.

Concluded one former pitching coach of the AI Insanity: “They are trying to take the human element out of the game, no feel, no judgement, and no accountability.’’

That’s for sure.

Baseball is a game played by humans, watched by humans and that is what makes it great. I will give the last word to Steve Chazin, who has had 30 years in tech with Apple, Cisco and Salesforce. He posted this on Sunday, read it carefully, especially those in MLB.

“I spent years building collaboration tools at Cisco and Salesforce, and we always assumed people would use tech to move faster, not outsource their thinking …

“Baseball is a game of inches and habits, not real-time moneyball. A pitcher needs to read a hitter’s swing in seconds. An algorithm can easily spit out a heat map, but it cannot feel the tension in a batter’s shoulders or adjust to the humidity … The bottleneck isn’t if AI can play the game, but whether we are willing to pay a price for losing the thing – our own instincts, reflexes and emotions that makes a sport sporting.’’

Well said, Mr. Chazin.

Stop the baseball AI-nsanity.