A few weeks ago, I took to task the online theory that the D-Backs’ brand of “chaos ball” – that blend of aggressive baserunning, stolen bases, and balls in play that made the 2023 postseason run so magical – had ended. As much as I love speculating wildly about baseball and baseball strategy, I always prefer to interrogate my speculation with numbers and evidence. Much to my surprise, there’s some numbers-backed proof to suggest that the team has indeed moved away from the chaotic style that was so successful in the 2023 postseason for an offense that was more power-based, in line with the rest of the league. Specifically, I looked to see how the team’s penchant for stolen bases and for taking an extra base (compared to the rest of the league) had changed since that 2023 campaign. As we can see in the chart below, that 2023 club was well outside of the norm and they’ve been falling back towards the pack ever since. There was a similar, but less compelling movement for the team on taking an extra base as well. I won’t go so far as to say that the case is solved, but it is fair to conclude that there’s at least directional proof for the theory.

I wanted to take that discussion another step though. It’s all well and good to wish for a specific style of play from the team you’re rooting for – especially when it lead to that magical run to the World Series that still gets evoked today. There’s a subjective enjoyment factor that goes along with a dynamic style of offense like that chaos ball. But that enjoyment is inherently subjective. What about an objective look at which style of play is more effective rather than which one fans might enjoy? Let’s take a look at three categories: on-base plus slugging (OPS), OPS+ (a league-adjusted number where 100 is league-average), and runs per game.

First, let’s look at OPS. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite metric as it comes close to the “single number” that quantitative nerds like me love, but it’s also got plenty of supporters as it is much more inclusive than the more traditional focus on a number like batting average. Regardless of your personal feelings on the metric, we can see that the team’s overall offense is substantially higher than it was in 2023. And if we look at the constituent parts of OPS (on base percentage and slugging), it’s not as if the OPS numbers are being buoyed by one specific result over another. While there has been a slight dip in OPS this year compared to last season, it’s still a significant improvement over that 2023 campaign.

As I always like to mention, context is key for any statistic. Thankfully, we have a handy statistic that adjusts a player’s (and therefore his team’s) OPS to the rest of the league as an easy measuring stick for comparing across players and across years. This also seems to put a point in favor of the argument that the offense has performed better without chaos ball as they’ve been well above league-average in the subsequent two seasons. As an aside, I’m deliberately not displaying the league average OPS+ since that would be by definition 100, which wouldn’t be very useful in a visualization like this.

And finally, the ultimate test of an offense’s success: how many runs does it score on a per game basis. I’ve also included the context of the rest of the league to give us some additional sense of how average that 2023 team’s offense was and how much it’s improved since then. It’s still mindblowing to me that arguably the best offense in the league last year didn’t even make the playoffs while that 2023 club was somehow to sneak into the field. Regardless, we have one final definitive piece of evidence to suggest that the offense has been more successful foregoing the chaos ball. I completely understand if you don’t personally prefer this style of play, but it’s hard to ignore the evidence that it’s been more effective at scoring runs.