Maddux joked that at some point during his career as pitching coach statistics became analytics and “it was kind of ancient the way we started.” What has remained the same is how coaches must relate to pitchers who are comfortable with analytics, like Washington ace Max Scherzer, a St. Louis native who could win his second Cy Young Award in as many seasons with Maddux as coach, and others who are … not.

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“You have other people who want to be a little more old school, and you just don’t use numbers and you just say the same thing to him,” Maddux said. “You might say to an analytical guy, ‘Hey this guy is 42 percent swing and miss on the slider.’ To your old school or non-analytical guy you might just say, ‘Hey, this guy swings and misses on the slider quite a bit. Slider is your go-to.’ You’re searching for the same result. You just may have to phrase it in a different way.”

Such a slider strategy, while informed by analytics, would not rest on analytics alone if Maddux passes it along. Gone are the days when he has to map hot zones and dissect splits on his own, but he’s still going to use his eyes more than the iPad.