It looks like an ersatz form of chess. Grown men moving guys around at a whim, desperately trying to find the best spacing — impatient, unable to wait for the next pitch without tinkering with someone. But there is math to the madness. When you consider that the data is so meticulous now that you can know if a hitter sends 80 percent of his ground balls to one part of the field, it does make sense to stack that area defensively, no matter how hideous it looks from the blimp-cam.

Sure, it messes with a lot of memories from my childhood. If I pick up the box from my Intellivision baseball game — which I still have — I see that all the players on the field are neatly in position. The shortstop is at, well, shortstop, the third baseman is near third base. A player’s position then was more than just who he was; it was an address.

During my career, I played center field, and I used scouting reports and empirical evidence to move around. But none of it would have made you doubt I was playing center field — these were quick, necessary location adjustments I made as I saw patterns in the hitter-pitcher matchup, in the weather or in a natural effect from playing in a certain stadium. Back then, after a few years in the league as a captain of the outfield, I had virtual autonomy to reposition myself and my corner outfielders.

Now the data is so deep and expansive that to reject it is to reject good help, even if you (or your outfield coach) have to sift through gigabytes of video to find what is game-useful. It has brought positioning down to a granular level, analyzing every section of the field and where and how a hitter hits it in each section. And it is situational. By count, by outs, by pitcher, by pitch type. I imagine it will get even finer as time goes on.

Baseball has always been considered a “game of adjustments,” but those adjustments are not coming from only the players anymore. They also come from the front office and the analytics department. They use historical data and patterns to turn predictive and proactive assessments into decisions, and together they are building impenetrable fortresses that frustrate hitters who can’t find ways to spray the ball around the field. Maybe of most concern to hitters is that these defensive adjustments are happening quickly.