A team representing the Syracuse University Sport Management Baseball Statistics and Sabermetrics Club won the SABR Diamond Dollars Case Competition at NYU earlier this month. Falk College sport analytics majors Justin Perline ’19, CB Garrett ’19, Luke Scheetz ’21, Trevor Olofson ’21 and Zak Koeppel ’21 won the competition against other universities such as Villanova, NYU and Fordham. Slides from their presentation are available here.
Sport analytics majors Luke Scheetz, CB Garrett, Zak Koeppel, Justin Perline and Trevor Olofson, from left, teamed to win the 2017 SABR Diamond Dollars Case Competition at NYU.
The teams were tasked with creating a model to determine a player’s BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play), both for hitters as well as the BABIP that pitchers allow. They were then asked to use this to determine the players who are going to see the biggest increases and decreases in their BABIP next season.
The teams were given five days to collect data, create a model and prepare a 30-minute presentation on the topic to be given in New York City on Nov. 17. Judges for the competition included Ben Jedlovec (Baseball Info Solutions), Chris Pang (New York Mets), Tom Tippett (consultant, formerly of the Boston Red Sox) and Cameron Barwick (Major League Baseball).
“I’m very proud of the students who competed in the Diamond Dollars Case Competition,” says sport analytics Professor Rodney Paul. “The new analytics program has accumulated very talented students and I look forward to their continued interaction with each other, their progress through the curriculum and their present and future successes in the field. Our students are a genuine pleasure to teach and I look forward to future classes following in their footsteps.”
This is the fourth year that SU has competed in this event. Also competing for SU this year were sport analytics majors Evan Weiss ’19, Kyle Liotta ’20 and Colby Olson ’21, as well as sport management major Mike Cavalier ’19 and sport analytics minor Chris Karasinski ’19.
In 2016, Falk College announced its new bachelor of science in sport analytics to provide students with a deep understanding of math, statistics, research methodology, sport economics, database management, finance and computer programming integral to sport analytics. The inaugural class of sport analytics majors arrived in August 2017. With growing numbers of sport organizations embracing data analytics’ powerful role in understanding and prioritizing information to maintain a competitive advantage, there is increasing demand for sport analytics professionals to guide data-driven decision making. Falk’s sport analytics program prepares students for a variety of different possible analytics career paths on the player evaluation side, business side or both.
To learn more about the Baseball Statistics and Sabermetrics Club, which meets every Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Falk College, Room 104, or Falk’s sport analytics academic offerings, visit falk.syr.edu.
