Minnesota's Baseball Analytics Professionals Gather To Talk Numbers
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- They gather in an auditorium – accountants, lawyers, computer programmers. They are here to talk baseball. That's right, it's a gathering for the new term in the sport -- analytics.
"Now we have Statcast information, which is a tracking system of all the players on the field at every moment in time," Derek Falvey said. "We're learning a lot about what players do on the field that we see with our eyes but now we can quantify and objectively measure."
Falvey is the Twins' new general manager, brought in in part for just that -- to break down numbers.
And man do they have some breaking down to do. That's why the science is taken into account.
"That's what we try to find is things that our hunches are wrong on or things that coaches' hunches are wrong on because those are the things that you need to know because your hunches aren't telling you what the data really tells you," Randy Istre of Inside Edge Baseball said. "The data's typically right if there's a high enough sample size."
This organization lends a willing ear.
"So it's a little bit of everybody because not a lot of people are employed in the sports analytics. Maybe 7 percent of this group is," Dan Atkins with Minneanalytics said. "But it's people doing analytics at United Health Group, Target, Best Buy, all the majors. I mean there's 10,477 analytics professionals that belong to our organization."
While the big leagues are extensive in their computer work, it's trickled down to college. The key -- know how to use the numbers.
"We like to give guys real, tangible data that helps guide their training, that helps guide their in-game development and helps guide the way that they adjust from game to game," Gophers pitching coach Ty McDevitt said. "Without overloading them, and that's the caveat to the whole deal."
So you have this new cross breed, athletics and computer types, coming together with -- to an extent -- the same goal: learn how to use data to get better.
"In my day job I do medication adherence, which is really boring but I talk in sports metaphors, so it's like, 'Hey, they're on three drugs, this is a power hitter, right?'" Atkins said.