There's an old adage in baseball that says something like: "All things even out over the course of a season." If an umpire misses a close call at first in favor of the runner, then at some point during the season, the same pitcher will eventually be the beneficiary of a blown call. If a hitter is robbed of a base hit by a nice defensive play, one of his later hits is bound to fall due to a defensive lapse. If a career .300 hitter -- still in the prime of his career and unaffected by any external factors such as injuries has a poor week and bats .150, he's almost certain to have a week where he bats .450, and so on.
The belief in this theory is calming because it gives meaning to the chaos that is baseball. But it's also kind of unsettling in the way that predetermination is unsettling. A hitter can go on a cold streak and unless his name is Adam Dunn, he's eventually going to snap out of it. We know this. Sports remain interesting because we don't know when these particular cold streaks will occur. In the regular season, each player has the opportunity to rake their way out of them -- but in the playoffs, a cold streak can cost your team the season, and there's no opportunity for redemption.
We call these dips and ascensions momentum, and they apply to individual players and entire teams. Momentum is an accepted term in the sporting lexicon. We point to particular moments in a game when we can say "the momentum shifted," and we say teams on winning streaks are in the process of "building momentum." Psychologists have studied perceived momentum in sports for almost forty years. They've developed complicated formulas* and studied specific teams over the course of a season and their results suggest fans and players place too much of a premium on "momentum" as a critical factor to decide a game, season, or in-game situation.
*To me, at least.
However, this doesn't stop us fans and players from believing in it. In 1981, mathematician Robert Adler coined the term "psychological momentum," as the tendency of an effect to follow a similar effect. Positive psychological momentum predicts that success would increase the probability of further success, whereas negative psychological momentum predicts that failure would increase the probability of further failure. Through a process known as the momentum chain, an athlete is more likely to perform well when he or she has been successful in the past.
So while momentum has very little mathematical bearing on all of these previously discussed outcomes, it does have a huge effect on the mentality of an athlete. Basically, if an athlete believes they have momentum, they're more likely to succeed. If they think they don't have the momentum, they're more likely to fail.
I began thinking of momentum today after Tottenham dropped the second match of the Premier League season 5-1 to Manchester City. This coming after a 3-0 loss to Manchester United in the first match of the season. Tottenham are now 0-0-2 with a -7 goal differential and currently sit at the bottom of the table. City and United are the two best teams in the Premier League, so it's likely Spurs would have been smacked around regardless of when they played them. Still, I can't help but think about the timing of this Premier League season. Spurs were supposed to open the season at home against Everton -- a likely win. Three points heading into Old Trafford to start the season probably wouldn't have shifted the outcome in either match, but it would have saved them from becoming bottom-dwellers for the time being. I worry this could have some sort of long-term psychological effect on the players. Losses to United and City seemed inevitable, but I can't help but think having them occur at some point during the middle of the season would have been better. It's in all in the head, it's all in the head...
Mathematicians would chalk up Tottenham's start to bad timing, similar to a great hitting slumping in the playoffs. Psychologists are concerned with the mental makeup which produces the perception of momentum. The math stays relatively consistent. The brain is anything but that. Where is Adam Dunn when you need him?
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