The "Yips" in Baseball: Psychological Causes and Cures - Baseball Scouter

Introducing DAVIES: A framework for Identifying Talent Across the Globe — American Soccer Analysis

In the world of sports, the search for an all-encompassing player evaluation metric is never-ending. Baseball was the first to develop its metric with Wins Above Replacement. Basketball followed suit with Player Efficiency Rating, and Hockey WAR has come into the fold within the past year. The US So

Expert consensus on skill acquisition in sport: A Delphi study

Skill acquisition is a rapidly evolving field in sport, but its definitions, roles and professional practices remain inconsistently articulated. Despite growing recognition of its importance, there...

The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game

A philosophy of games to help us win back control over …

Moneyball: the art of winning an unfair game ; [with a new afterword]

Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and p…

Inside Baseball: The Automated Ball-Strike System as an Object Lesson in Technological Rule Enforcement

Clearly-defined rules are often assumed to be straightforward to automate and evaluate. We challenge this assumption through an in-depth study of Major League Baseball's (MLB) seven-year experimentation with the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS). ABS is envisioned to call balls and strikes accurately: a seemingly straightforward use of technology to objectively determine the distance between a pitch and the strike zone. Although the strike zone is an area clearly defined in the rulebook, it took MLB seven years to figure out how to automate calling balls and strikes with ABS, showing how even seemingly straightforward rules require a complex translation process to operationalize via technological systems. In this paper, we trace the design decisions that led to the current implementation of ABS. Our case study reveals that "distance" exists even between a clear rule and its technological implementation. Using analytic frameworks from Science and Technology Studies (STS), we show that such distance exists because (1) historically, the "ground truth" of the strike zone is contested: the rule in practice has always reflected a hybrid between the rulebook definition and umpires' enforcement decisions; and (2) the use of ABS is embedded in an existing eco-system, where the implementation of a technological enforcement system needs to balance multiple stakeholder values. This perspective challenges conventional evaluation paradigms that center on the distance between a formalized rule and its technological implementation, and instead calls for evaluating how such systems are experienced in practice. Addressing this question requires in-depth social science approaches, contributing to ongoing conversations in FAccT about the implementation and evaluation of sociotechnical systems.

Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters

Shape Up will help you break free of “best practices” that aren’t really working, think deeper about the right problems, and start shipping meaningful projects your team can celebrate.

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents - Advice for job seekers - Career

Pitching isn’t bragging.

Moneyball

Michael Lewis&#8217;s instant classic may be 'the most influential book on sports ever written' (<em>People</em>), but 'you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis&#8217;s] thoughts about it' (Janet Maslin, <em>New York Times</em>).<br /><br />One of <em>GQ</em>'s 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century • A <em>Kirkus Review</em> Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far), Moneyball, The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Michael Lewis, 9780393324815

Opinion | There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate

Just as we changed our thinking around physical fitness, we need to change our attitude toward cognitive fitness.

When Using AI Leads to “Brain Fry”

As firms increasingly incentivize employees to build and oversee complex teams of agents—for example, by measuring and rewarding token consumption as a proxy for performance—people are finding themselves pushed to their cognitive limits. Participants in a recent study described a “buzzing” feeling or a mental fog with difficulty focusing, slower decision-making, and headaches. The authors call this phenomenon “AI brain fry,” defined as mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity. This AI-associated mental strain carries significant costs in the form of increased employee errors, decision fatigue, and intention to quit. The findings also show how AI-driven workflows can be designed to diminish burnout and point toward specific manager, team, and organizational practices to avoid mental fatigue even as AI work intensifies.

Researchers Studied What Happens When Workplaces Seriously Embrace AI, and the Results May Make You Nervous

Introducing AI in the workplace can create a vicious cycle that leaves employees overburdened and burned out.

Overload Prevention in Practice:

Dual Pathways for Autistic Minds

3 tactics for leading a team through uncertainty

Lessons learned leading a team through a bumpy acquisition.

The Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis: The Rules of the Game Keep Us Trapped - The Great Simplification

In this episode, Nate is joined by Greg Elliott, a systems theorist and author of the Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis (PSH), to unpack why our institutions themselves have become so psychopathic, and how that affects the behavior of the average human.