Game Day: June 10th, 2026
It's a humid day in the Midwest, temperatures are approaching ninety degrees and although we aren't quite yet to the official first day of summer, the summer season and the summer weather has been in full swing for a few weeks now.
MLB should do something special for the Vernal Equinox. I always appreciate the Equinox and the Solstice. The Vernal Equinox is the longest day of summer. After June 21st, the days will begin to get shorter into the Winter Solstice at which point they will again grow longer. It is, in an abstract sense, an expansion and a contraction of time.
The baseball season also has an ebb and flow to it but it is erratic. It isn't so much parabolic as it is linear. If we were to graph the enthusiasm and the "fever" of baseball fans from the beginning of March to the end of October, with the Y-axis set at summer's midpoint how would that line travel along the X-Axis?
I don't know the answer but it is an interesting experiment. How do we measure fan enthusiasm? Social media interactions, ticket sales, merchandise purchases, streaming views, total value of wagers. You would first have to devise a measurement for "enthusiasm" from data sources that can be compiled and tracked daily. You could then plot "enthusiasm" day-to-day across the X-Axis.
You could create an oscillator that rises and falls below a rolling average. You could then measure the results to determine if the oscillations above the mean or below the mean have an effect on future outcomes.
You could create an "enthusiasm" measurement for each individual team. Tracking "enthusiam" for each team would give you a sense of a team's momentum and with the "enthusiasm" indicator, you could then determine if momentum is having an effect on players performance and team statistics. To what degree does a surplus of momentum improve the team? To what degree does a lack of momentum hinder it?
It is sort of complex and it isn't an exact science with many other variables affecting outcomes. It would be difficult to silence the extraneous from the specific and it that way our conclusions wouldn't be all that relevant but it would be an interesting experiment in data and performance metrics nonetheless.
11 days of games until the Vernal Equinox. Will there be a big change in the ebb and flow of the standings? One team is going to rise the most over the next week. Who is it going to be? Another team will fall the most into the Equinox. With the rising and the falling, the ebbing and the flowing, a framework for the second half of the season begins to take shape.
I contend that it is the Equinox that marks the midpoint of the season moreso than the All-Star break. Watch out for the teams that get hot into the end of June and the teams who begin to fall off. It will tell a story of contenders and pretenders. It may not be all that detrimental but it will be interesting and entertaining if you decide to follow along.
It's sort of an abstract and out of the box Game Day today on the Pickstreak blog. I didn't plan it to be so, this is what bubbled up and I decided to ride the wave. I'm happy with the thoughts and looking forward to researching the games.
Stay tuned for a pick before post time.