The following is excerpted from THE MVP MACHINE: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data To Build Better Players by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik. Copyright © 2019. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Brian Bannister belongs to a family of pitchers. His father, Floyd, was the first- overall pick in the 1976 draft and pitched for fifteen years in the majors. Floyd’s brother-in-law was a second-round pick a year earlier and topped out at Triple-A. Brian is the eldest of three brothers, one of whom pitched at Stanford and the other of whom, like Brian, was drafted out of USC, although he never advanced beyond Rookie ball.