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Panic at the Elbow: High school baseball's Tommy John surgery epidemic

DescriptionPanic at the Elbow: High School Baseball's Tommy John Surgery Epidemic reflects on the history of Tommy John surgery, examines the scale of the current epidemic, explores its underlying causes and ultimately recommends steps that parents and players can take to avoid such overuse injuries. Link to documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xvOCN_tqk
ContributorsMargiott, Benjamin James (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Byck, Peter (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05

On Deck: Inside the Arizona Fall League

Description
Each year, a select few minor league baseball players are chosen to attend the Arizona Fall League, a development league within Major League Baseball that hones the next generation of players, coaches, managers, and even umpires. These players make up the top talent currently in the minor leagues from each…

Each year, a select few minor league baseball players are chosen to attend the Arizona Fall League, a development league within Major League Baseball that hones the next generation of players, coaches, managers, and even umpires. These players make up the top talent currently in the minor leagues from each of Major League Baseball's 30 organizations. Of the thousands in the minors, just seven players from each organization can go to this extra six-week season, and learn to play alongside the best future talent the sport has to offer. On Deck: Inside the Arizona Fall League is a short documentary that looks at some of these players, as they continue their baseball journey that they hope leads them one day to the Majors. The documentary can be viewed online at https://youtu.be/jkggYiDtn14 or nicolesheraefox.com
ContributorsFox, Nicole Sherae (Author) / Lodato, Mark (Thesis director) / Kurland, Brett (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
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The Evolution of Data and Statistics in Baseball

Description
While former New York Yankees pitcher Goose Gossage unleashed his tirade on the deterioration of the unwritten rules of baseball and nerds ruining the sport about halfway through my writing of the paper, sentiments like his were inspiration for my topic: the evolution of statistics and data in baseball. By…

While former New York Yankees pitcher Goose Gossage unleashed his tirade on the deterioration of the unwritten rules of baseball and nerds ruining the sport about halfway through my writing of the paper, sentiments like his were inspiration for my topic: the evolution of statistics and data in baseball. By telling the story of how baseball data and statistics have evolved, my goal was to also demonstrate how they have been intertwined since the beginning—which would essentially mean that nerds have always been ruining the sport (if you subscribe to that kind of thought).

In the quest to showcase this, it was necessary to document how baseball prospers from numbers and numbers prosper from baseball. The relationship between the two is mutualistic. Furthermore, an all-encompassing historical look at how data and statistics in baseball have matured was a critical portion of the paper. With a metric such as batting average going from a radical new measure that posed a threat to the status quo, to a fiercely cherished statistic that was suddenly being unseated by advanced analytics, it shows the creation of new and destruction of old has been incessant. Innovators like Pete Palmer, Dick Cramer and Bill James played a large role in this process in the 1980s. Computers aided their effort and when paired with the Internet, unleashed the ability to crunch data to an even larger sector of the population. The unveiling of Statcast at the commencement of the 2015 season showed just how much potential there is for measuring previously unquantifiable baseball acts.

Essentially, there will always be people who mourn the presence of data and statistics in baseball. Despite this, the evolution story indicates baseball and numbers will be intertwined into the future, likely to an even greater extent than ever before, as technology and new philosophies become increasingly integrated into front offices and clubhouses.
ContributorsGarcia, Jacob Michael (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Doig, Stephen (Committee member) / Jackson, Victoria (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
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Overuse Injuries in College Baseball

Description
For this project, I analyzed both the amount of overuse injuries or repetitive stress injuries occurring in college baseball and tried to understand why they were happening so frequently. I interviewed over a dozen people to get thoughts and messages on the subject from a variety of people from current…

For this project, I analyzed both the amount of overuse injuries or repetitive stress injuries occurring in college baseball and tried to understand why they were happening so frequently. I interviewed over a dozen people to get thoughts and messages on the subject from a variety of people from current college players, to Major League players, to current college coaches. While I spent the majority of the project working on the research and interviews of how these injuries effect college athletes, I always spent time speaking with journalists about the proper ways they go about reporting on injuries, especially those within college athletes. I found data that showed that the average rate of fastballs in Major League Baseball is going up and that is indirectly affecting the way in which players and specifically pitchers are learning to play as they go through college baseball. I got valuable perspective on how the game changing is affecting the injuries that are so common today. The most common occurring repetitive stress issue in baseball has been happening most with pitchers so much of the project is tailored toward the views of some of the best pitchers in college baseball. I found out how college pitchers are taking care of their bodies and using the offseason to help regain strength. Why do some pitchers not take as long an offseason as others? How intense is the pressure to stay healthy in college, as many of these athletes are pursuing professional baseball? What is the mental toll these student-athletes have on a day-to-day basis? All these questions and more are answered in the paper. Included in the long-form paper are all of the full transcripts from the interviews with players, coaches, trainers, doctors, and reporters.
ContributorsWerner, Robert Joseph (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Dieffenbach, Paola (Committee member) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12
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A Study of Win Expectancy Estimators in Major League Baseball

Description

In recent years, advanced metrics have dominated the game of Major League Baseball. One such metric, the Pythagorean Win-Loss Formula, is commonly used by fans, reporters, analysts and teams alike to use a team’s runs scored and runs allowed to estimate their expected winning percentage. However, this method is not…

In recent years, advanced metrics have dominated the game of Major League Baseball. One such metric, the Pythagorean Win-Loss Formula, is commonly used by fans, reporters, analysts and teams alike to use a team’s runs scored and runs allowed to estimate their expected winning percentage. However, this method is not perfect, and shows notable room for improvement. One such area that could be improved is its ability to be affected drastically by a single blowout game, a game in which one team significantly outscores their opponent.<br/>We hypothesize that meaningless runs scored in blowouts are harming the predictive power of Pythagorean Win-Loss and similar win expectancy statistics such as the Linear Formula for Baseball and BaseRuns. We developed a win probability-based cutoff approach that tallied the score of each game once a certain win probability threshold was passed, effectively removing those meaningless runs from a team’s season-long runs scored and runs allowed totals. These truncated totals were then inserted into the Pythagorean Win-Loss and Linear Formulas and tested against the base models.<br/>The preliminary results show that, while certain runs are more meaningful than others depending on the situation in which they are scored, the base models more accurately predicted future record than our truncated versions. For now, there is not enough evidence to either confirm or reject our hypothesis. In this paper, we suggest several potential improvement strategies for the results.<br/>At the end, we address how these results speak to the importance of responsibility and restraint when using advanced statistics within reporting.
ContributorsIversen, Joshua Allen (Author) / Satpathy, Asish (Thesis director) / Kurland, Brett (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05