We’ve been ruminating for a while now (at least since May 21, specifically, but really much longer) about the notion of how present actions impact future outcomes. The specific case came from a RandBall Feud question that was posed thusly:

If the Twins had won that first game at Yankee Stadium (the one where they had a 4-2 lead in the ninth), how many games would they have won on this 7-game road trip that concludes this afternoon in Chicago?

Brandon replied: Do we have to keep pretending game-to-game motivation means anything? This makes me sad.

We replied: Brandon: It makes me sad that you don’t believe in the crushing weight of momentum. Yeah, blah blah, only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher.

Brandon replied: Rand: maybe you’re right. If Melky’s blooper would have held in the air another half-second longer to allow Gomez to catch it to end game 1, Perkins elbow would have healed and Liriano would have had more bite on his slider a week later. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Our point was both a baseball one — that momentum from one game can be a factor in future outcomes — and somewhat of a philosophical one: that everything we do right now impacts events in the future. Nothing is pre-destined (in our mind), and even the casual things we do (like what we choose to eat for dinner on a certain night) have an impact on our future realities, as minute as the difference might be sometimes. Therefore, a Twins victory that night absolutely could have impacted the mood of the next night’s starting pitcher and position players, etc., thus leading to different outcomes in future games.

Not to speak for Brandon, but the point we think he was making is also valid one: while realities might be different, the bigger forces at play (such as Liriano’s ineffectiveness or Perkins being injured) are larger mitigating factors that over-ride any subtle differences incurred from positive momentum.

The back-and-forth, though, reminded us of one of our greatest sports pet peeves. Say there’s a runner on second with nobody out, and the batter fails to advance the runner to third while making an out. When the next batter hits a modest fly ball, an announcer will inevitably say failing to advance the runner cost the team a run. Which is possibly true. But they so often say it with such absolute certainty, as if the exact sequence would have taken place had the runner been on third instead of on second. And that’s just not true. The pitcher would have approached the hitter differently. The hitter would have employed a different strategy. The entire game dynamic would have changed. While it’s true that not advancing the runner cost the team a chance to score a run on a different sacrifice fly, there is not some sort of space-time continuum that simply deviates for one hitter and then magically goes back on track for the fly ball hitter.

This happens in other sports, too, and we are always fascinated by the countless small things in every game that can completely change the dynamic. But baseball — at least in our opinion — has the most examples of these situations per game.

Your thoughts on RandBall vs. Brandon, pre-destiny, the fluidity of the present vs. the future and sacrifice flies in the comments.

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