Business and sports collide as Ted Rogers MBA students compete in baseball case competition

A Ted Rogers MBA team stepped up to the plate in Phoenix, AZ at an international baseball analytics conference and scored some valuable big league experience. 

The five business students participated in the 2018 Diamond Dollars Case Competition at the annual Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Analytics Conference. They were tasked with evaluating the relationship between the launch angle and exit velocity (the vertical angle at which a baseball comes off a bat after being struck) of four major league baseball players. They chose Andrew McCutchen, Jackie Bradley Jr., Salvador Pérez and Kevin Kiermaier.

The teams’ strategy for the problem was to analyze three years worth of hitting data to identify the ten degree range in which the player was most successful at getting on base.

Although the team didn’t win at the competition, the presentation was not without merit, as various scouts including those from the Toronto Blue Jays were interested in discussing their strategy and model after the presentation.

Alec Barratt, Ted Rogers MBA student and team member said, “All in all, it was a great experience. I got to rub shoulders with some of the great minds in baseball and although it wasn’t the result we were looking for, I think we had a great team, a great solution and had a lot of fun.”

The team was made up of Kyle Cormier, Stephen Nagy, Max Piltz, Alec Barratt and Michael Strong.