WINDS OF CHANGE? COMPANY LOOKS AT WEATHER'S EFFECT ON BALL

The wind blowing out at Wrigley Field. The tricky breeze in San Francisco. The heat in Los Angeles.

The weather is important business in baseball. But what kind of business is still being decided.

Weather Applied Metrics has a contract with Marquee Sports Network to develop graphics that show the effect of the weather on the flight of balls for home games for the Chicago Cubs this summer — assuming there is a season amid the coronavirus pandemic. It is planning to install weather stations at Wrigley Field by the end of next week.

It had a pilot program for Red Sox broadcasts last year. But it’s also heading into the third season of a deal with another major league team it declined to identify that decided to keep the information internal.

“The biggest thing that they’re doing with it is they’re positioning their outfielders,” said John Farley, the chief technology officer for Weather Applied Metrics. “Their thing to us was if you can get us 20 extra outs a year this is well worth whatever it costs because they can factor in that they can win x number of games because of that.

“But we think we’re getting them many more than 20 outs a year.”

One of the biggest keys to Weather Applied Metrics’ modeling is computational fluid dynamics, which uses software to help analyze the flow of gas or liquids, or how flowing gas or liquids affects objects.