Michael McClellan “Physics on the Baseball Diamond” MEETING DATE: Thursday, May 28, 2026 6:45PM - 8:45PM (Zoom meeting room opens at 6:45 PM; Meeting starts at 7 PM) via Zoom virtual meeting.

Description

Can a pitcher really manipulate the wake of turbulent flow behind a spinning baseball in flight? Move over Moneyball! Dust off your old fluids textbook because sometimes, it takes a completely different approach to solve a difficult problem in sports. Learn about ways that physics, engineering, and simulation can be applied to a variety of problems facing modern sports teams and athletes and the way Michael McClellan (PhD MIT 2018) has seen the Tampa Bay Rays operate at the forefront of this space in his tenure there.

Michael McClellan’s Background

After finishing his PhD in Atmospheric Science at MIT in 2018, Michael joined the Research and Development department of the Tampa Bay Rays, one of the premier analytics-focused sports teams in all of professional sports. Currently in his role as Applied Physicist, Michael brings a different approach to problem solving than the traditional statistics-based toolkit typically used to address problems in modern sports.