This season, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have embarked on an ambitious experiment in an effort to solve one of the deepest mysteries in sports. They received permission from the San Francisco Giants to put GoPro cameras in the dugout of the franchise’s San Jose minor-league affiliate. With that access, they will monitor players’ interactions, expressions and behavior during games to determine how they relate to production.

The study is part of a growing push to understand and quantify one of the most...