Joseph Adler - Baseball Hacks

Tom Dierickx is a data analyst specializing in automating data processes and authoring data-driven solutions. He has a wide range of computer programming and database development experience, along with an M.S. in statistics from Arizona State University. All of the languages, tools, and techniques he enthusiastically pursueswhether technical or statisticalare simply an outgrowth of the passion he has for working with data.

Mark E. Johnson, Ph.D., earned his Ph.D. from Princeton Universitys Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics in 1998, where his research interests included the visualization and study of chaotic dynamical systems arising in physics and chemical engineering. A cofounder of SportMetrika, Inc., Mark spent the 2004 baseball season as the in-house baseball analyst of the National League Champion St. Louis Cardinals. While pursuing his B.S. in computer science and M.A. in mathematics as an undergraduate at Indiana University, Mark spent four years as a student manager of the mens basketball team under the leadership of Coach Bob Knight.

Matthew S. Johnson, Ph.D., earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon in 2001. His research interests lie in the field of psychometrics, estimating abilities from repeated categorical responses, where the responses might be answers to test questions used to measure a students ability, or wins and losses used to measure a teams talent. Matt is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Computer Information Systems in the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, of the City University of New York. Matt received his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Indiana University in 1996, and he is a cofounder of SportMetrika, Inc.

Ari Kaplan is a leading figure known throughout the major leagues for revolutionizing and modernizing player assessment. Educated at the elite California Institute of Technology, he is a recipient of the universitys Alumni of the Decade award for pioneering groundbreaking sabermetrics used to evaluate pitcher talent, including the reliever effectiveness, expected ERA, and save value, while popularizing the inherited runner statistics. Over the past 17 seasons, Ari has worked full time and consulted for 11 MLB organizations, working directly with general managers, presidents, and scouting directors to improve business operations and strategic analytical and technology capabilities dramatically. He comes from a scouting background and is one of the few long-term baseball leaders with a proven track record of successfully running several high-profile companies as CEO. See http://www.arikaplan.com/baseball.html for more.

Pete Palmer is a coauthor of The Hidden Game of Baseball (Doubleday) and coeditor of the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia (Sterling), which has a third edition due out next spring. Pete introduced on-base average as an official statistic for the American League in 1979 and invented on-base plus slugging, now universally used as a good measure of batting strength. A member of SABR since 1973, Pete is also a contributor to The Complete Baseball Record Book & Fact Book (The Sporting News) as well as Whos Who in Baseball .

Brendan Roberts is a senior editor at The Sporting News . He has been with The Sporting News since 1996 and was one of the first to work on its fantasy sports web site (http://fantasy.sportingnews.com) when it launched in 2000. As part of his duties, he writes weekly baseball columns for the web site during the season, responds to readers fantasy baseball and football questions, and creates updates for the sites round-the-clock news coverage, from a fantasy perspective. He has been playing fantasy sports for about 15 years against a varied competition level, including public leagues and expert leagues.