Scott Radley: McMaster grad gets ‘coolest job’ as Chicago Cubs’ new baseball scientist

You can probably expect that when he shows up for his first day of work at Wrigley Field, he won't be wearing short sleeves. Not out of modesty or because he's missed a few days at the gym.

I have a Blue Jays tattoo on my bicep," says the new baseball scientist for the Chicago Cubs.

Awkward? Maybe a little. But at this point, who cares? Did you read the last line? He's a freakin' baseball scientist for the freakin' Chicago Cubs.

It's definitely going to be the coolest job title I ever have in my life," says Mike Sonne.

The 39-year-old - his last name rhymes with Yawn - is a baseball guy. As evidenced by the arm ink. But he's also really, really smart.

While he was getting his doctorate in kinesiology with an emphasis on ergonomics and occupational biomechanics at McMaster a dozen years ago, he read an article on baseball possibly bringing in a pitch clock someday. The clock basically forces pitchers to hurry up and throw in order to speed up the game.

His PhD work was a scientific study on fatigue in the auto sector. He'd eventually spend roughly 900 hours investigating its effects on employees' performance.

But when he thought about the pitch clock, he realized it was pretty darn similar. It was all about controlling time between maximum bursts of effort. Turns out throwing fastballs and ratcheting bolts are essentially the same thing under certain circumstances. So he started a side study.

I published a paper that took my ergonomics model of predicting muscle fatigue and showed that putting in a pitch clock would lead to more fatigue in pitchers," he says. So that was kind of my entry point and my sneaky way of making everyone read my PhD thesis."

Then he wrote about related issues on baseball sites like Fan Graphs and Baseball Prospectus and his blog. Turns out some guys with the Cubs noticed his work and let him know they liked it. When Sonne heard Major League Baseball was implementing the pitch clock next year - 15 seconds between pitches, 20 if there's a man on base - he reached out and asked if there was a position available.

His work fit perfectly with what was happening in the game. So, yes, there was a spot for him. Full time. Meaning he'll now be joining Ferris Bueller, Eddie Vedder and Harry Caray as a resident of Wrigleyville. Sort of.

He'll be in research and development (yes, baseball teams now have R&D departments), spending some time in Chicago each month while also travelling to all the farm teams in Iowa, Tennessee, Myrtle Beach and elsewhere. But Hamilton will still be home base.

The point of his job sounds rather simple, even if the work isn't.

If you go to the gym and do a curl every five seconds, you'll be able to lift a certain amount of weight a certain number of times. But if you shorten the rest period to one second between exertions, your muscles will become fatigued and lose their ability to generate force, leading to a drop in performance.

That's what we're expecting to see in pitching to some extent," he says.

He'll be studying ways to offset that. Can mechanics be tweaked or certain muscles be strengthened in the off-season? Or could there be training methods created that will prepare a pitcher - who's exerting near-maximum effort every time - so his performance stays high and his technique doesn't break down, leading to injuries?

Making this uniquely challenging is the reality that pitchers are people, not factory-made robots. Each has a slightly different delivery and particular physiological strengths and weaknesses. So he can't just draw up a single template and say, done.'

I think that's one of the errors that's been previously made in this field is just assuming that you can have a one-size-fits-all approach to every pitcher and there's one certain set of mechanics that are going to work for everybody to get them to throw hard and keep them healthy," Sonne says.

In short then, all he's got to do is help the Cubs' pitchers keep performing well and remaining healthy through the changes to the game so that more W flags fly above Wrigley on game days and eventually another World Series or two is brought to the corner of Addison and Clark. While possibly getting another more-employer-appropriate tattoo on the other bicep.

Easy.

Not really. But it sure is a cool gig and an amazing opportunity. Even for a guy whose dream had been to land a job as a university professor. Which this clearly isn't.

Out of curiosity, are those in academia looking down at him for getting involved with baseball rather than opening a prestigious lab on campus? Or are they applauding the application of his work in a burgeoning new field?

I think," he says, they're all hoping to get some tickets."

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com