Five students from the Baseball Analytics Club presented a case in Phoenix, Arizona to judges working for Major League Baseball teams.
Five students from Elon’s Baseball Analytics Club participated in a case competition at the SABR Analytics Conference in Phoenix, Arizona at the end of February.
The competition included 17 teams, from 9 schools, and each team presented their work for judges from professional baseball teams and companies. Teams were given one week to develop an analytics-based approach to determine when certain power hitters should adjust their plan at the plate to favor more contact. The teams needed to decide on an approach, gather and clean data, analyze the data, and produce a 20-minute presentation during that time. Elon’s team collected data from four different sources to build a model accounting for batter and pitcher ability, situational importance, ballpark-specific factors, and weather. Part of their approach included using existing situations where batters might already adjust their plan to determine which hitters have the greatest capacity to make adjustments.
Elon has been sending a team to this competition for a decade, and several former members have secured jobs with professional baseball teams after graduation. Jackie Jovanovic ’23, who represented Elon in the competition twice, returned this year as a judge for the competition. She is now working for the Miami Marlins as a Junior Data Scientist.
The Baseball Analytics Club meets weekly throughout most of the year and is mentored by Ryne VanKrevelen, associate teaching professor of statistics. Students interested in joining the club or learning more should reach out to VenKrevelen.
Student participation in the conference was supported by the School of Communication, College of Arts and Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics Department and Data Nexus. The five-member team will present their work at the Spring Undergraduate Research Forum (SURF) in April.