Jonathan M. Judge
Jonathan M. Judge

Often, lawyers say they’re lawyers because they’re not that into numbers.

But Jonathan M. Judge is convinced the law and analytics go hand-in-hand. Or ball-in-glove.

That’s because Judge, a partner at Schiff Hardin LLP, uses statistical models to help defend companies in consumer safety matters. And on the side, he helps Major League Baseball teams improve their defense — or offense or pitching. He also analyzes the game for Baseball Prospectus, a website that publishes and helped popularize the kind of advanced baseball analysis that now permeates the game.

Just as the North Side caught World Series fever for the first time since 1945, Judge spoke to the Law Bulletin about why he started mixing the legal and statistical worlds, why he’s fascinated by driverless cars, and of course, the Fall Classic.

Law Bulletin: How did you begin blending analytics and the law?

Jonathan M. Judge: A few years ago, I became more and more interested in being able to explain patterns, and that interest and the interest in baseball kind of reinforced each other. And then I started applying a lot of the analytics stuff to the legal world.

When we look at trends and problems and products that need to be reported … being able to do that and make these arguments requires you to look at substantial amounts of information and find patterns, as opposed to just someone’s best guess.

It’s just a situation where it became pretty clear to me if you have a few data points to work off of, you’re much better leveraging that in a statistical way.

LB: Besides baseball, you’re also interested in working on problems we might encounter as driverless vehicles move from science fiction into reality. How do you use your expertise to figure those out?

Judge: It’s sort of an area of growing interest. The issues and decisions that vehicles make are statistically based. So how could someone explain to a jury or to a regulator or to the public whether the company is making the right decision if they don’t even understand how the system is working to begin with?

So I think that’s a potential area of growth for us — being able to talk to programmers and explain what they do, instead of writing that off as an engineering decision.

In terms of what is sufficient or not sufficient, those decisions have to be defensible and have a coherent philosophy behind them, and that starts with being able to understand what these folks are doing.

LB: Are there any unique or interesting cases you’ve worked on using some of your statistical knowledge?

Judge: Yeah, I had one in which we had a client was facing a pretty serious penalty. The problem, when you’re negotiating a penalty with an agency, is if you don’t have any good data, you’re basically going there to ask for mercy.

I can’t give many details, but it was a situation when we were able to go pinpoint a penalty, say why it was more like the better ones than the worse ones and be told by the agency that they found the approach interesting and informative and wanted to engage with us.

LB: What baseball teams have you worked for?

Judge: I can’t really say because they’re pathological about secrecy, in part because I think there’s a view that the decision to hire certain people is a reflection of what [they’re] supposed to work on.

[But] it’s been a lot of fun. All of the teams have very, very bright folks in their analytics departments. Needless to say, they’re not just looking at batting average and runs and things like that.

LB: There’s an ongoing mystery in the baseball world — a dramatic spike in home runs over the last couple of years. Has anyone figured out why that’s happened?

Judge: We have very strong suspicions which the league is denying vehemently. I have a friend, Rob Arthur, who writes about baseball and lives in Chicago and has worked on this question. He’s absolutely convinced it’s the ball. Like they went to a different substance making the ball, or they did something else to it. And so the ball is probably to blame or credit, depending on your perspective.

So I think we’re pretty sure that’s the culprit, because we have tried almost everything else to explain it, and it doesn’t add up and there’s really no other explanation for how an entire major league, with players from all teams, could suddenly start, as of the All-Star break last year., launching the ball like they have.

So the only explanation we have is that the ball is “juiced,” frankly.

LB: Looking at this World Series matchup between the Cubs and Cleveland Indians, how much do you think home field advantage matters here?

Judge: It definitely matters, but it only really matters if you get to the seventh game. Most series do not. So if seven games are required, home field advantage will be important. But that’s unlikely to be the case, because most series are wrapped up in five or six games.

Home field teams in every major sport do better, but the advantage isn’t as big in baseball as in basketball — especially college basketball.

LB: One baseball metric you’ve come up with is deserved run average, which helps evaluate a pitcher’s performance. What are the advantages of looking at that number versus the more traditional earned run average, or even fielding independent pitching?

Judge: The main advantage of it is that it controls for the quality of defense, and it controls for the park you’re playing in and the strength of your opponent.

DRA has been saying for like two years that Cleveland has the best rotation in the major leagues.

You have Chicago pitching which has a lot lower of an ERA, but a lot of that is driven by their defense, which is the best defense we’ve seen in modern times. Their pitchers do not have to pitch as well to get the same results.

For us, it is kind of looking at the quality of where the outs are coming from. DRA helps us understand if a pitcher is stuck on a bad team or riding the success of good people around them.

LB: You wrote last year that DRA is the best stat for picking Cy Young Award winners [the best pitchers in baseball in a given year]. What does it say about Kyle Hendricks’ and Jon Lester’s chances of being named the best pitcher in the league this year?

Judge: I think they’re certainly in the mix, but people who choose Cy Young think about things like ERA and pitchers’ wins, which is silly, but that’s what they do.

In terms of who ought to be deserving, we would not put the Cubs’ pitchers that high. Jon Lester is certainly in the top 10 or so in the National League, and Kyle Hendricks may be 10 spots below that. But the people who we really value are people like Chris Sale [of the White Sox] in the American League, and then, on the other side, tragically, Jose Fernandez [a Miami Marlins pitcher who died in a boating accident earlier this year].