Over the years, teams have become increasingly scientific in their efforts to get players on base and beat out the competition, looking to fields like statistics, nutrition, and psychology to help players improve.<\/p>\n
Now, one MLB team has tapped a University of Rochester<\/a> alumnus who previously conducted fusion experiments at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics<\/a> (LLE) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to help their players find a competitive advantage.<\/p>\n JJ Ruby \u201921 (PhD) is the senior director of research and development for the Houston Astros, where he leads a staff of 17 software developers and research analysts. Ruby\u2019s staff works to ingest the massive amounts of data collected on players, develop tools to analyze the data, and conduct experiments in areas including aerodynamics and biomechanics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe landscape of the type of data in baseball is changing significantly,\u201d says Ruby. \u201cNow it\u2019s a lot more akin to something like the data that I\u2019d be taking at the LLE or during day-to-day work within physics or different engineering fields, than it is statistics data.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, Ruby notes that with the implementation of the Hawk-Eye computer vision system in 2020, every single play at the major league level produces data about the position of each joint on the pitcher\u2019s and hitter\u2019s bodies every three milliseconds. Extracting meaningful intelligence from those massive amounts of data is a tall order.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job is to drive large projects that make sense of that data and set players up to develop new skills and succeed,\u201d says Ruby.<\/p>\n Ruby grew up in rural Pennsylvania playing baseball and, like many American youth, dreaming of making it to the major leagues. But he also developed a love of science and became a first-generation college student, majoring in astrophysics and planetary science at Villanova University.<\/p>\n During a summer internship at LLNL, he learned about Rochester\u2019s physics graduate program and the LLE. He would enroll in graduate school and develop lasting relationships with his advisors, LLE Senior Scientist Ryan Rygg<\/a> and Gilbert (Rip) Collins<\/a>,\u00a0the Tracy Hyde Harris Professor of\u00a0Mechanical Engineering<\/a>, a professor of\u00a0physics and astronomy<\/a>, and an associate director of science, technology, and academics at the LLE.<\/p>\n \u201cRyan and Rip gave me a lot of creative freedom during my PhD to approach problems that I found interesting,\u201d says Ruby. \u201cI did a really healthy variety of experiments, theory, data analysis, and computational work and it turns out that\u2019s a very valuable mix of skills to develop that\u2019s broadly applicable.\u201d<\/p>\n While finishing up his doctorate and searching for jobs, he stumbled upon a post that he thought was too good to be true: a Bayesian inference scientist for the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought to myself, \u2018That\u2019s weirdly specific,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI clicked on the job ad, and it basically described my thesis.\u201d<\/p>\n He hit it off during the interview process with the Astros but another offer for a postdoctoral fellowship at LLNL was too tempting to pass up. Still, he agreed to do consulting work with the Astros, traveling to events like spring training when he could help. In 2022, he left LLNL to work full-time with the Astros as their lead innovator.<\/p>\n Ruby says he is invigorated by the challenges baseball presents and that he has a wealth of opportunities to collaborate at all levels of the organization, from farm teams to top players.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Astros excel at building the relationships between coaches, scouts, field, staff, medical staff, and the research team. Everything is seamless,\u201d says Ruby. \u201cIf I were to come up with an idea tomorrow that I thought was compelling, there are many individuals in the organization I could call up and I know they would be excited to start trying it out and iterate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEven when I went to the Astros full-time, I definitely didn\u2019t want to fully leave the academic sphere,\u201d says Ruby.![\"Six](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/baseball-physics-alumnus-students.jpg\")
Curveballs on the career path<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Coaching the next generation of researchers<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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