Bowman said the year “shortened” how long he was going to try baseball.

He had always expected more from himself than time from the game. At an “academically inclined” high school in the Washington, D.C., area he didn’t think he’d get noticed for college until he was recruited. He was a smaller guy. “Stats weren’t incredible,” he said. At college, he didn’t think he could play professionally until he was drafted. But he did think about baseball. A lot.

At Princeton University, another academically inclined school, Bowman pursued and finished a degree in economics. His junior and senior term papers were both about baseball. First he analyzed ticket sales and dove deep into the world of “dynamic pricing,” where ticket costs fluctuate to reflect demand. The Cardinals use that now. As a senior, Bowman took a look at free-agent contracts and used Wins Above Replacement to study what teams were better at predicting value, using production and injuries.

“The A’s were all over the place and that suggests, with a large variance in WAR, that they’re trying to capture something very large but they’re also willing to settle for something that goes poorly,” Bowman said. “The Cardinals were very steady. They don’t sign many long-term deals. They were better at capturing and predicting value.”