The Mayo Clinic is an amazing place full of history, art and physicians administering to people’s needs. Normally I try not to frequent the clinic too much for as I grow older there seems to be some discomfort attendant with my visits. However, the clinic has helped me a great deal over the years and is one of the reasons we returned to southeastern Minnesota.

The Mayo Clinic is known for its medical care, but there are other facets to the facility. It presents programs on a variety of subjects. I once attended a program featuring Ronan Tynan, the Irish tenor who sang and spoke of the disability he had overcome.

However, when I read about another Mayo Clinic program with a professor of statistics from St. Olaf coming to deliver a lecture, I was able to control my excitement. I read further and learned that the title of his talk was a “Probabilist Goes to a Ballgame,” I was interested.

Professor of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Matt Richey, was going to give a talk sponsored by Sigma Xi and the Mayo Foundation. It was open to the public and it was free. Well, say no more, I made plans and was there at the opening bell.

I was surprised at the size of the crowd. There were probably a couple of hundred people in Phillips Hall — a mixture of nationalities and genders. There was a lot of note taking and while that was certainly appropriate (I took some myself), it could be that some students were attending for credit.

Professor Richey opened with what he called a key statement: “The team with the most runs wins.” Well, duh! Everybody knows that. But what I think Richey meant behind that simple statement was it’s not who has the best shortstop, hits the most home runs or pays the biggest salary. All of that doesn’t mean a thing compared to the simple statement that “the team with the most runs wins.”

You would think that a statistician would be a fan of “inside baseball,” the bunt, stolen base, the hit and run. Not so, Professor Richey is a fan of “let them play” and that a three-run homer covers up a lot of mistakes. He is a fan of Earl Weaver, the former manager of the Baltimore Orioles, who “let them play.” He feels Ron Gardenhire of the Twins overmanages. I asked Professor Richey during the question and answer period, if he felt Gardenhire was a traditional type manager. He thought he was.

He showed us a graph that he called “Expected Runs,” (on-base scenarios). The graph indicated the probabilities of runs scoring using bases occupied and outs. All the combinations are listed ranging from two outs with nobody on base to the bases loaded with no outs. He felt much like Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s, that outs were a strong negative and one should avoid them if at all possible.

Professor Richey is strongly against the bunt and he is right according to his graph. For example, if there is nobody out and a runner on first base, the probability of his scoring is .91 percent. If there is a runner on second base with one out, the probability of his scoring is .70 percent. Therefore according to the laws of probability if you sacrifice a runner to second base and give up an out, you are less likely to score. Someone asked, “How about avoiding the double play by bunting the runner to second?” He replied, that probability was included in the model.

Richey said he was a big baseball fan and it was fortunate that baseball supplied tons of data. He felt his next project was to assess the laws of probability to pitching. If he does and comes back for another lecture, I’ll be there.