We can take solace in the utter predictably of certain principles in the cache of physics: Newton’s 2nd law, Fermat’s Principle of Least Time, and the BEC-BCS Crossover (if you recognize the first two but thought the third was related to the ranking of national college football teams, please head quietly to the back of the class). My mind has recently been occupied with plenty of other scientific certainties. Al Gore is a poor choice as the face of the pro-global warming community, when far more dynamic speakers (with more impressive scientific credentials) such as Brian Greene or Steven Weinberg were available for the task. Meaningful research in High-Tc Superconductivity is coming to a close, and for all intents and purposes it will permanently cease in 2018 +/- 3 years. Removing Pluto’s planet status was the only logical choice available to leading astronomers. Nobody cares about string theory. And when I examine the quality of contemporary scientific research into the sport of baseball, my reaction, as my freshman physics students might say, is a healthy and determined “WTF??1!?11!!>?”
If you are indeed a college physics graduate (and if you’re not, then you really should be in order to appreciate the full intellectual scope of my columns) then think back to your compulsory 3rd year Electrodynamics course. You know that type of likeable but lazy guy in your class who always came to the lectures, claimed he understood the material, but was hopeless when faced with solving even the simplest problems in J.D. Jackson’s “Classical Electrodynamics”? Soon enough, you found yourself working on problem sets with this sub-par student while quiet geniuses such as the spectacled fellow who sat behind you in class — who always let you photocopy his notes when you slept in and missed the first fifteen minutes of lecture — worked alone in one corner of the student lounge, consistently scoring upwards of 95% on his assignments despite his solitary working habits?
The state of baseball research closely resembles this unfortunate situation. I survey the internet and my local bookstore and see an endless parade of people championing what they call “objective analysis”. Baseball Prospectus, The Hardball Times, Baseball Think Factory, et. al. have assumed the mantle of the baseball scientific method and have gained legions of fans across the country due to their concerted efforts. It’s great that so many websites and book authors appreciate my pioneering accomplishments. I am happy with my part in introducing the language of scientific discourse into baseball analysis. However, more and more writers continue relying on the principles I introduced without properly citing and respecting my work, and it has now become something of an insult to me and the legacy I have built in the analysis of our great national pastime.
My widely read book, entitled “The Physics of Baseball”, dissects the game and reveals underappreciated or previously misunderstood information about the sport. It only follows that sabermatricians would co-opt my style and use a more data-oriented form of analysis to extract similar types of conclusions. But it is starting to get out of hand. All of you self-professed “baseball analysts” who have jumped on the bandwagon recently — where is the underlying physics behind your work? Why the messianic insistence in using VORP instead of the Principle of Inertia when predicting a pitcher’s GB/FB ratio for 2007? Why do the “new breed” of GMs hire number crunching statistical assistants — none of whom can explain why a curveball curves, let alone why Barry Zito’s is so effective — instead of Ph.D.’s in fluid mechanics when they need advice on whether or not it is worth signing a journeyman pitcher to a four-year contract?
The scientific method is an indispensable tool when it comes to revealing the truth and beauty in the world we see around us. I owe my career to the scientific community that fostered my early career and allowed my work to flourish, to the Faradays and Helmholtzes and Chandrasekhars who elegantly and brilliantly showed all scientists how to perform great research. These lessons have been lost on the current crop of statistic-obsessed writers who have deviated down the path of accounting, rather than that of physics. Their never-ending number twiddling profoundly bores me, and introduces little that the great Branch Rickey didn’t already bring to the game some sixty years ago. They race each other to be the first to invent a complex metric with a fancy-sounding acronym for a title, all while foregoing any discussion of the Stokes Drag Force law. In other words, they ignore the most basic underlying principles that describe player performance, while couching their arguments in my style of analytical rhetoric in the hope that their WARPs and LOOGYs can gain scientific credibility.
I pause for thought and am struck with the occasional pangs of fear. There are people who wish take account of the Steroid Era by restructuring the baseball record book. Do they really plan to reconfigure a decade’s worth of home run numbers without any consideration of the Reynolds Number for near-spherical objects moving through a viscous fluid? Others wish to compare fielding across different eras by adjusting Fielding Runs Above Replacement for All-Time. How can such a calculation be valid without rigorous measurements of the coefficients of static and kinetic friction of both grass and turf, extrapolated over several decades of baseball groundskeeping? At what point between the time I introduced objective analysis to the sport of baseball and the present day did this knowledge of basic physics become lost? Were my writings not clear enough, or entertaining enough, or lucid enough? Am I partly to blame for the current state of sabermetric “research”?
Are these my disciples? If so, perhaps I might as well cease my research and begin ruminating on aspects of “Quantum Medicine” instead.
Robert K. Adair is the author of “The Physics of Baseball” and the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Physics at Yale University.
