Ken Arneson

The roof was closed, as it is tonight, so there’s no wind impact to speak of. Nothing really stood out from the temperature either.

The wind was only 12 mph at Wrigley, but most of the time, there's at least some kind of crosswind. For many fly balls a 12 mph wind might work like 6 mph in the direction of the ball. But that was straight into a pure 12 mph headwind headed from the right center gap directly at home plate.

I have the Game 5 @weatherapplied.com data quality duty shift again tonight for CHC-MIL. Like last night, I hear the roof will be closed, so my job should again be uneventful.

And I'm sure, if weather is not an option, the gods of baseball will again find other ways to impart their random mischief.

I flew to Seattle yesterday to replace some equipment at T-Mobile Park before this game. By the time this game is over, I’m going to have to fly to Seattle to perform an end-of-life replacement on the new equipment I installed yesterday.

I'm on data quality duty for @weatherapplied.com for tonight's game, but the roof is closed, so I theoretically shouldn't have much to do.

But I just got a scare because they just showed an old drone shot of an open roof on TV. At least I hope it was an old shot. Don't do that to me, Fox Sports.

Look at literally ANYTHING these days, you'll see this phenomenon I wrote about in that 2016 article. It's since gotten a word for it, "enshittification". Everything sucks now, and it didn't used to. What happened? We're managing things towards our measurements, and not leading people to our goals.

I wrote an article in 2016 about what happens when what you're measuring does not match the thing you're really trying to accomplish. Why everything seems great for a long time, and then suddenly starts going to hell, even though you're not doing anything different:

ken.arneson.name/2016/06/the-...

As Grace Hopper said, "“You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership."

Nowadays, we're being flooded with artificial intelligence, and at the same time, suffering from a drought of human wisdom.

Loved this. Patrick's last paragraph gets at something I've been poking at in my writing for over two decades now: sports analytics correlates everything with wins, or with money, or with money per win, but in the end, the actual purpose of sport is a set of human emotions.

I came to Seattle this morning. I saw Ichiro. I conquered my mission. Seeing Ichiro was not my mission, but maybe it should have been. Now I’m heading back to the airport on the light rail. Thanks for the lovely day, Pacific Northwest.

Light rail train at Stadium Station in Seattle.

Hello Seattle! I like your light rail from the airport to the stadiums, very convenient.

Wow, I thought it might shift a bit, but I wasn’t expecting a whole change in direction.

I guess the lesson is, check your @weatherapplied.com forecast for the strength of the tailwind

I would be curious whether the ineffectiveness of curveballs also holds in domes and in the minor leagues. Curveballs are the pitch I would think would be rendered most negatively affected by 80% of MLB pitches being thrown with tailwinds.

Do you see a difference between roof open and closed on the high fastballs?

Longest home runs of the 2025 MLB season 2025's longest HRs  | These balls are still traveling

Even with the negative wind impact, this is the 2nd longest HR in MLB this season.

What was #1?

A 493 grand slam by A's rookie Nick Kurtz, aided by the wind adding 14 feet of distance.

Check out the top 10 courtesy of @MLB: www.mlb.com/stories/...

#weatherapplied
#playthewind

Data Viz: Mike Trout's 400th career home run | 09/20/2025 Take a look at Mike Trout's 400th career home run through data visualization

WAM Wind Impact POTW: Coors Field, September 20

Mike Trout (@MikeTrout) hits his 400th career HR with NO help from the wind!

𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁: -𝟮𝟱 𝗳𝘁

This 485 ft bomb would've measured closer to 👀 510 ft on a calm night in Denver.

My infrequent reminder: awards are celebrations, not measurements.

If you have two people worthy of celebration, and you already celebrated one of them last time, go ahead and celebrate the other person this time.

Felt this little aftershock, but it was small enough that I had to go online and check if it was actually an earthquake.

Weird, though, to see these epicenters in Berkeley and know that they are centered on streets I know like College and Ashby and Claremont.
earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Well that one woke me up earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...

Here's the call:
bsky.app/profile/oakl...

The Oakland Ballers radio announcer giving a "Holy Toledo" when they win the Pioneer League championship was a very nice touch.

Bailey's wprhrbiitphr also was a bit unusual in that the wind actually blew it further away from home plate, but still prevented the ball from going over the fence. That can happen when the wind also blows it sideways toward spot where the fence is further from home plate.

We've had two wind-prevented-regular-home-run-but-instead-inside-the-park home runs in one season! The other was Patrick Bailey's walkoff on July 8 in San Francisco.

Yeah I think the AI just took last year’s agenda and added a year to it.

AI Google search results for "Baseball winter meetings 2025 schedule" says incorrectly that they will be held December 8-11, 2025 in Dallas, Texas.

Can I sue Google for a refund if I book a flight to the wrong city because of their faulty AI search results? (The 2025 Winter Meetings are in Orlando, not Dallas.)

Here come the autumn winds…

Tuesday gave us the #1 MOST wind-impacted play of the 2025 MLB Season thus far!

On a windy day at Nationals Park, a 24 mph wind knocked Braves Ha-Seong Kim’s hit back a whopping 98 FEET from where it would have landed in calm conditions.

#playthewind
#weatherapplied

I'm getting cold pitch sales emails written by AI which reference people and concepts that appear on our company website.

First time, I'm maybe impressed they did some homework, but try to fool me twice with AI BS? Book those lazy cheats onto a @jayjaffe.bsky.social rocket trip into the sun.

Alas, like Bay FC a year ago, the Golden State Valkyries lose a heartbreaking playoff game to end their inaugural season. But it was an admirable effort by a likable team.

If you stacked a second batter's eye on top of that batter's eye, I *think* it probably would *not* have cleared the second batter's eye, but it's close enough for me to hedge about it.

That homer by Nick Kurtz almost made me have to reprogram our @weatherapplied.com internal graphic for home run landing spots to make it bigger