SMT Data Challenge Judge Committe

  Meredith J. Wills (chair), Senior Data Scientist, Academic Lead – SMT-U, SportsMEDIA Technology (SMT)

Meredith WillsBio: Dr. Meredith Wills is a Senior Data Scientist and Academic Lead, SMT-U at SportsMEDIA Technology (SMT). She has a B.A. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from Harvard University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Montana State University—Bozeman. As a data scientist, Wills focuses primarily on baseball, working with SMT’s 6th Tool (formerly FIELDf/x) ball- and player-tracking data. In 2021, she helped spearhead SMT-U, a program that provides 6th Tool tracking systems to colleges and integrates those data and technology into academic curricula. Wills is also known for her ongoing independent research into Major League baseball construction, most recently finding that MLB manufactured and used two distinct baseballs during the 2021 regular season.
Twitter

  Cameron Adams, Implementation Lead – SMT-U, SportsMEDIA Technology (SMT)

Cameron AdamsBio: Cameron Adams is the Implementation Lead for SMT-U at SportsMEDIA Technology (SMT). Building on his baseball operations and business development experience, he now works on improving access to problem solving tools and data, specifically implementing SMT’s 6th Tool ball- and player-tracking system in college baseball parks and academic environments. He has also spent several seasons adding the yellow first down line graphic to the McDew Crew’s college football games. He is a current, former Division 3 athlete, having been a relief pitcher at Washington University in St. Louis where he received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Microeconomics. Adams believes the promise of improved decision-making through data lies in the democratization of the field, according to the lottery paradox—a large number of bright, creative students looking at a variety of problems will all but guarantee breakthroughs, even if the specific advancement or advancer is unknowable from the outset. As John Prine sang, “A question ain’t really a question if you know the answer too.”

  Jim Albert, Emeritus Professor, Bowling Green State University

Jim AlbertBio: Jim Albert's interests include Bayesian modeling and applications of statistical thinking in sports. He has coauthored several baseball books, including Curve Ball (with Jay Bennett), Teaching Statistics Using Baseball, Visualizing Baseball, and Analyzing Baseball Data with R (with Max Marchi and Ben Baumer). Albert currently contributes to the Exploring Baseball Data with R blog at https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/.
Website, Email: albert@bgsu.edu

  Perry Barber, Baseball Umpire

Perry BarberBio: Perry Barber has been umpiring since 1981, when her mother Jaqueline suggested that she start umpiring Little League baseball in California. Her twin sister, Warren, became her first steady partner because no other umpires in the league would work with her. 42 seasons later, she's umpired all over the world, assembled the only four-woman crew (so far) to umpire a major league spring training game, called more than 8000 ballgames, been inducted into the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame, and inspired countless other women to join her on the diamond. In her sordid past, Barber was an itinerant singer/songwriter, opening concerts for Bruce Springsteen, Hall and Oates, and Billy Joel. She financed her profligate lifestyle by appearing on the quiz shows Jeopardy!, Tic Tac Dough, The Challengers, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. (Yes, she is a Jeopardy! champion.) Barber has taught umpiring to public school students in New York City, speaks regularly to groups and organizations about the necessity of respecting sports officials, and has authored dozens of articles and stories about the rewards of umpiring. She currently serves on the board of directors of the International Women's Baseball Center, which is spearheading a drive to build a girls and women's baseball museum and activities center adjacent to Beyer Stadium, home of the fabled Rockford Peaches. Barber vows to keep “calling 'em as she sees 'em” until women begin to take lineup cards on major league diamonds, and will probably be umpiring until she's wheeled off the field.
Twitter, Facebook

  Trevor Hildenberger, Professional baseball player, 2+ years in the Major Leagues

Trevor HildenbergerBio: Trevor Hildenberger is currently in his ninth year of professional baseball, after earning his degree and playing 5 years of Division 1 ball at UC Berkeley. (Go Bears!) He loves data analysis, especially in the context of baseball, which he believes is becoming crucial to learning and understanding the game at the highest level.
Twitter, Instagram

  Ari Kaplan, Global Al Evangelist, DataRobot; Instructor, Baseball Analytics, Sports Management Worldwide

Ari KaplanBio: Ari Kaplan is a leading figure in sports analytics and technology. During 34 seasons innovating analytics within MLB front offices, he created the Chicago Cubs and Dodgers analytics departments and served as assistant to the GM of the Orioles, and was a "Top Ten GM Candidate" by Sports Illustrated. He currently is DataRobot's Global AI Evangelist, working with McLaren's Formula 1 and IndyCar teams on AI-driven race strategy and engineering, along with many MLB, NBA, NHL, and Premier League football clubs. He has been the recipient of Caltech's "Alumnus of the Decade" and Crain's Chicago Business "40 Under 40" awards.
LinkedIn, Twitter

  Christopher D. Long, Chief Data Scientist, Headlamp Software; Optimization Consultant; SumerSports

Chris LongBio: Chris Long has MS degrees in mathematics, statistics, and biostatistics from Rutgers University. He has served as a Data Scientist for the San Diego Padres, and has consulted for the Detroit Tigers, Houston Rockets, Atlanta Blaze, and Arsenal FC.
Twitter

  Keenan Long, Founder, LongBall Labs

Keenan LongBio: Keenan Long earned a mechanical engineering degree in 2010 from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, after leading the baseball team to three consecutive NCAA D-III Tournaments and receiving an NCAA All-American Honorable Mention. His professional career includes stops in the Golden League and the Frontier League. Long went on to pursue a career as a bat engineer for Easton, where he authored a portfolio of patents on bat technology. His subsequent research with the Analytics Department at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management uncovered the bat performance advantages that LongBall Labs now provides directly to MLB hitters.
Website, Twitter, Instagram

  Kieran Lovegrove, Former Minor League Baseball Player (2012-2021); Special Advisor to the MLBPA

Kieran LovegroveBio: Kieran “Lovey” Lovegrove played Minor League Baseball 2012-2021, after which he became an advocate for improving wages, housing, and working conditions for minor league ballplayers. He now serves as a Special Advisor to the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), working towards the unionization of Minor League baseball players. Lovegrove was born in South Africa and moved to the US at 5 years old, where he fell in love with the game of baseball. Throughout his professional career, he saw firsthand the rise of data and considers it to be the start of baseball's next Golden Age. Lovegrove has a passion for philosophy, physics, human evolution, and other scientific disciplines, and he enjoys performing research and developing theories. As he says, “I may not be able to find answers to every question, but if I can ask a better question, that holds just as much merit.”
Twitter, Instagram

  Brian MacDonald, Senior Lecturer and Research Scientist, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University

Brian MacDonaldBio: Brian Macdonald is currently a senior lecturer and research scientist in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University, where he focuses on data science education, sports analytics, and environmental data science. He was previously Special Faculty in Sports Analytics in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University, the Director of Sports Analytics at ESPN, Director of Hockey Analytics with the Florida Panthers Hockey Club, an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at West Point, and an Adjunct Professor at University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University. He received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College, Easton, PA, and a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.
Twitter, Linkedin

  Gregory J. Matthews, Associate Professor and Director of the Data Science Program, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Loyola University Chicago

Greg MatthewsBio: Dr. Gregory J. Matthews is an associate professor of statistics and director of the data science program at Loyola University Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Connecticut in 2011 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2014. In 2016, he was one of the winners of the SABR Conference Research Award for Contemporary Baseball Analysis for his work on openWAR, and in 2014 he won the March Machine Learning Mania Kaggle contest as part of a team with Mike Lopez. He won the open track reproducible research competition at the Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Symposium in 2020 and 2021.
Website, Twitter

  Allison McCague, Science Policy Analyst, National Human Genome Research Institute

Allison McCagueBio: Allison McCague is a Science Policy Analyst at the National Human Genome Research Institute. She earned her PhD in Human Genetics from the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins in 2019. Her graduate work was a unique collaboration between the Institute of Genetic Medicine and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, which combined qualitative research on the policy implications of emerging therapies and quantitative research in cystic fibrosis therapeutics. Following her PhD, McCague was part of the inaugural class of Science & Politics Fellows with the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, spending a year as a full-time science aide for the New Jersey Department of Health. She is particularly interested in the policy challenges raised by genomic medicine. Outside of her science policy work, McCague is an avid baseball fan, podcaster, and writer. Her baseball writing has been published on SB Nation, Baseball Prospectus, and Fangraphs. She co-hosts an all-women-led baseball podcast called “A Pod of Their Own,” which covers the Mets and social justice issues in baseball and aims to normalize non-male voices in sports podcasting.
Twitter

  Adam McInturff, Political Revenue Analyst, Deep Root Analytics

Adam McInturffBio: Adam McInturff worked in Baseball Operations roles in the front offices of the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles. He later joined the Toronto Blue Jays as a scout. He has served as an international scouting and analytics consultant for the KT Wiz of the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), as well as the Assistant Director of Professional Scouting for 2080 Baseball and Senior Prospect Writer for Baseball Prospectus. Recently, McInturff put his career in professional baseball on hold to pursue new opportunities in the political strategy and data space. He currently works for Deep Root Analytics, an audience-powered data intelligence and political consultancy firm. He and his wife Hayley split their time between Washington, D.C. and Newport, Rhode Island.

  Ethan Meyers, Visiting Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University

Ethan MeyersBio: Ethan Meyers is a Visiting Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University, an Associate Professor of Statistics at Hampshire College, and a Research Affiliate in the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines at MIT. He received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Oberlin College, his Ph.D. from the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department at MIT working in Tomaso Poggio’s research group, and was a Postdoctoral Associate at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. Meyers’ research focuses on developing data analysis methods that can extract deeper insights from neural data, and in collaboration with experimental neuroscientists, the goal of his work is to understand the neural algorithms that enable humans and other primates to perform complex behaviors.
Website

  Andrew Miller, Former MLB Pitcher

Andrew MillerBio: Andrew Miller played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball for seven different organizations (Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins*, Boston Red Sox, Baltimore Orioles, New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians*, St. Louis Cardinals). He won the 2013 World Series as a member of the Boston Red Sox, as well as a gold medal with Team USA for the 2017 World Baseball Classic. His individual accolades include the 2015 Mariano Rivera Award and the 2016 ALCS MVP. Miller has long been involved with the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), first as a player-member and now as part of the MLBPA Players Advisory Council. He is currently enrolled at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and is enjoying a well-deserved retirement.
* Team names reflect Miller’s tenure, and have changed since.

  Kristin Morgan, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering, University of Connecticut

Kristin MorganBio: Dr. Kristin Morgan is an Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Engineering at the University of Connecticut. She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Tennessee, respectively. She was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Kentucky, where she was awarded the Lyman T. Johnson Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr. Morgan has also been the recipient of a Whitaker International Summer Grant Fellowship, was a National Institutes of Health Program for Excellence & Equity in Research (PEER) Fellow, a United States Bone and Joint Institute Young Investigator and is a UCONN Pre-K Scholar Career Development Awardee. She was one of about 100 outstanding early career engineers invited to the 2021 National Academy of Engineering US Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Her work has been supported by the Office of Naval Research, General Dynamics Electric Boat, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.
Website, Twitter, LinkedIn

  Harry Pavlidis, Director, R&D and Client Services, DIY Baseball

Harry PavlidisBio: A graduate of Syracuse University, Harry Pavlidis has lived and worked in Chicago for nearly 30 years. He is the founder of PitchInfo, the industry’s leading provider of pitch classification information. Pavlidis joined Baseball Prospectus in 2012 and led the transition of their entire suite of public baseball metrics. In 2019, PitchInfo and Baseball Prospectus formally merged to create DIY Baseball, where Pavlidis now serves as Director, R&D and Client Services.
Twitter: [@harrypav](https://twitter.com/harrypav), [@pitchinfo](https://twitter.com/pitchinfo), [@baseballpro](https://twitter.com/baseballpro)
Websites: https://www.baseballprospectus.com, https://www.brooksbaseball.net

  Sara Sanchez, Lead Voice - Writer and Podcast Host, Bleed Cubbie Blue

Sara SanchezBio: Sara Sanchez is a baseball writer, based in Chicago. She is currently the lead voice for the SBNation Cubs website, Bleed Cubbie Blue, where she co-hosts the podcast "Cuppa Cubbie Blue." She has been a contributing writer for FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus' Short Relief. As a child, Sanchez fell in love with baseball and the numbers associated with it, and she considers her experience as a teacher and a nationally-recognized debate coach essential to translating metrics like spin rate and exit velocity for less-sabermetrically-inclined fans. When Sanchez is not explaining that wOBA is just a fancy on-base percentage that properly accounts for the additive value of a triple relative to a single, you can find her keeping score at Wrigley Field or tinkering with any number of fantasy teams.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

  Dan Szymborski, Senior Writer, FanGraphs; Contributor, ESPN.com

Dan SzymborskiBio: Dan Szymborski is the developer of the ZiPS projection system seen on FanGraphs and ESPN and has covered the sabermetric side of baseball for 20 years. He has provided data consultation for teams, players, agents, and has made over 2000 radio appearances.
Twitter

  Nick Wan, Director of Baseball Analytics, Cincinnati Reds

Nick WanBio: Nick Wan works for the Cincinnati Reds, leading the Baseball Analytics group on data-related projects and products for Major League, Player Development, Amateur Scouting, Professional Scouting, and Health & Performance. He has a Ph.D from Utah State University in Psychology, studying strategy formation in humans using EEG. He also streams independently on Twitch, discussing science, technology, sports analytics, and general news topics.
Twitch, Twitter

  Bob Wooster, Lecturer of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University

Bob WoosterBio: Bob Wooster has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Connecticut. He has taught mathematics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, the College of Wooster, and Central Connecticut State University. More recently, Wooster has worked in industry as a data scientist and independent consultant. He is currently a Lecturer of Statistics and Data Science at Yale University. In his Little League days, Wooster was the most feared bench player in the league.

  Ron Yurko, Assistant Teaching Professor, Department of Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Ron YurkoBio: Rob Yurko an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University, from which he received his BS in 2015 and his PhD in 2022. Yurko’s research focuses on developing methods at the interface of inference and machine learning, oriented towards problems in statistical genetics and sports analytics.
Website, Twitter