Michael McClellan ’13 featured by MIT for applied physics work with Tampa Bay Rays
McClellan studied chemistry and women’s and gender studies at Carleton.
Michael McClellan ’13 was featured by the MIT Technology Review in a story titled, “Data on the Baseball Diamond.” McClellan earned his PhD from MIT in 2018.
Baseball insiders used to say that baseball was a game of inches. For Michael McClellan PhD ’18 it’s now a game of millimeters. “Today, the gap between the highest and lowest performers is microscopic,” says McClellan, the applied physicist for baseball operations and research and development for the Tampa Bay Rays. “It could be a millimeter of difference in the point where the bat meets the ball, a fraction-of-a-degree change in the arc of a player’s swing. The margins that determine positive outcomes in this game can be extremely narrow.”
McClellan, who grew up rooting for the Kansas City Royals in Independence, Missouri, and has been with the Rays since 2018, is one of the growing ranks of scientists on staff with Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs. He focuses primarily on hitting—charting players’ batting stances, bat speed, and other aspects of their performance and then working with the coaching staff and players to improve it. “Hitting is a largely untapped research area in baseball,” he says. “With pitching, once the pitcher releases the ball, physics determines where it goes. When he chooses to change speeds or spin rates or location, he knows how these will alter the ball’s trajectory. But hitting is reactive. The hitter can adjust his swing or stance, move forward or back in the batter’s box. But he also has to react to the pitch, a pitch that is beyond his control. That’s what makes the study of hitting so exciting.”