Eh, I don't like the hire, hate the process, but I'm not going to hate on the man. Dusty seems to be personable. I like him on TV. Players don't cuss him out behind his back. I'm still very skeptical about his use of pitchers (both bullpen and starting) and would have preferred Black for that alone, and I want to see if his offense philosophy is more a function of the players he has and less a result of refusal to accept information. I'll really be curious to see if he takes in defensive information and uses it. I have doubts, but even 2 years off and some time in the studio may have led him to see "hey, there might be something to this."
Not picking on you (we're friends and all IRL) but I don't buy that guys like Dusty are "old school" and anti-SABR and find this whole "THERE'S NEW DATA THAT IS GOING TO CHANGE THE GAME BUY IN OR LOSE" to be overblown nonsense by people bored with the game. In hindsight there's a lot of things that could have been done differently to influence outcomes but in the moment (i.e. when the game is live, not OOTP or in a CRAY simulation) there's more data to consider than you have time to prepare for in a simulation. Look at the post-mortems of teams that fall apart - lots of issues (injuries, family situations, mental health issues) that don't make it into the stat sheet or in PitchF/X/FieldF/X/StatCast that a manager has to consider. When they freak up everyone wants to pull the "IN THAT SITUATION THE DATA SAYS TO DO X" or "I would have done X because Y happens 37.6% of the time". Sure, but you don't have all of the data that the coaching staff has and never will.
I don't disagree that when you have a chance to keep the game in your favour to bring in your closer prior to the 8th or 9th inning but I think we all know that's not something that's going to happen for most teams because of the "Save" metric and contract issues. All of that said, I think we all know that defense is something that you HAVE to really make a priority and if that involves shifts (which there's some discussion at limiting) I don't see why you wouldn't use that tool until you can't. The spray charts are great and FieldF/X has gotten much better but I still think that there's a lot more that goes into positioning outside of "he hits line drives into zone 3.86 45% of the time so position accordingly". It's good information to have but there are so many variables that change during the game (wind, atm pressure, spin rotation issues, muscle tweaks) that trying to model them
accurately is a waste of time. Again, not saying you dismiss it out of hand but it's just a guide and not the be-all-end-all that many seem to think it can be.