The student-led club formed during the Spring 2013 semester. Sport Management professor Dr. Rodney Paul is the faculty advisor.
The club will conduct in-depth discussions about baseball statistics and sabermetrics. Members will take part in a club fantasy baseball league. Guest speakers will be brought in on a variety of topics and the club will take part in a trip every semester.
In 2014, the Club saw its research published in ESPN The Magazine. Dr. Rodney Paul, professor of sport management, and SPM students Matt Filippi, Greg Ackerman, and Zack Albright co-authored a research paper that was presented at the 2014 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. Their research paper, “The Effects of Atmospheric Conditions on Pitchers,” studied the impact of air density on pitch selection and pitcher performance. It was one of 16 papers selected (eight for presentation and eight for posters) from more than 300 submissions worldwide. In the Fall of 2013, five members of the Sabermetrics Club finished second in the SABR Diamond Dollars case competition at New York University. Their task was to forecast free agent contracts for catcher Brian McCann and starting pitcher Ubaldo Jiminez, find the cost of a draft pick, determine which contracts the players would get if they did not receive qualifying offers and determine how the players’ average annual salaries would change based on the length of the contract. “Having a Sabermetrics club at Syracuse is important as it allows for students to study in-depth advanced baseball statistics to create a better understanding of the game and of player value,” Paul said. “Students will learn the origins and uses of the current crop of sabermetric statistics and we will discuss and debate their usage. The goal of the club is to inform and encourage the use of advanced baseball statistics for a variety of uses in the industry. In the future, we look forward to developing and implementing the use of our own statistical measures to fill potential gaps in the current statistics used in baseball.”
The club meets at 6 p.m. Wednesdays during the academic year in Heroy Geology Building, Room 013.
Contact Dr. Paul (rpaul01@syr.edu or 315-443-8165) or Matt Filippi (mfilippi@syr.edu) for more information.