Physics of Baseball 5: Rockies are CHEATERZ!

There have been many attempts of late to explain the Rockies home/road splits. There was an excellent, if not misguided article about Carlos Gonzalez on the Athletics SBN site linked this week, as well as several mass media articles. Several of these articles have pointed out how the ball doesn’t break the same at Coors Field as it does at more altitude-challenged stadiums, while many individuals have claimed the Rockies are obviously cheating, no one has yet come out with the Grand Unified Theory (GUT). This theory will tie together all of the independent theories on the interaction of players and baseballs at altitude due to each of the different types of possible cheating (e.g., dehumidified balls being used late in games because they are harder and more difficult to throw, bullpen mounds having improper slope, runners at second base relaying signs to batters, and praying) into one grand explanation of life at altitude, the Coors universe and everything. The reason this theory has not yet been discovered is there is one missing link that has eluded the scientific community for years; a missing link that has now been discovered!

The Rockies cheating ways is as simple as the color on their uniforms. Purple. There is a simple relationship between the energy and the wavelength of light, as shown in Eqn. 1.

E=hc/(λ) (Eqn. 1)

where E is energy, h is Planck’s constant (h = 4.135 x 10^-15 eV-sec), and c is the speed of light (c = 3 x 10^10 cm/second). An inverse relationship is shown between the energy and the wavelength of light. This means that teams with longer wavelengths on their uniforms and therefore, in the stands will have less energy reflected at them. As the only MLB with purple in their jerseys, the Rockies are able to feed off this energy while playing at home, and the sea of purple manages to actually carry the team. In 2010, you can see a very clear linear relationship in Fig. 1 between wins and primary non-black/white team color. Due to the nature of all teams including black and/or white in their uniforms, these colors have been removed from each team’s list of colors for this study to further highlight extent of the treachery occurring in Colorado.

Figure 1. Exhibit A of the sinister nature of the Colorado Rockies.

This trend is not a function of small sample size, as it has been the case since 2007, the year the Diamondbacks foolishly removed the color purple from their wardrobe. For teams with two non-black/white colors, the wavelengths of these colors have been averaged for this portion of the study.

Figure 2. Exhibit B of the purple conspiracy.

These trends can lead to the conclusion that it is not a coincidence that the Diamondbacks and Rockies have been the two most successful franchises in their first 3-4 years in MLB history, nor that the Diamondbacks have had a lower than average number of wins since they changed their colors. Early in 2007 many fans still wore purple, but as the color has faded from their memories, so have the totals in the wins column.

Finally, the home/road splits of individual players can now be fully explained and a GUT derived, as at Coors Field there is not only thin air, but more purple wearing charlatans than on the road, leading to a much larger amount of energy being reflected back on the field and transferred into the game and ball. Some of this energy has to turn into kinetic energy, causing the balls to fly further and the bats to be swung faster. Bullpen mounds feel different because there is protection from the sea of purple, while it will strike down an unprepared pitcher with the fury of a thousand burning suns when they take the mound in a game. This is the nature of the most heinous of crimes being committed routinely in plain sight for the last 17 years in Denver: beating other teams in a game of baseball.