College baseball and analytics

I'm a huge fan of mlb, and analytics has really changed the game. With us pouring money into our baseball program (new stadium) and on the verge of hitting a HR on the new coach, I would love to be cutting edge in bringing analytics to college baseball.

What are the rules with hiring off field coaches in baseball? Could we within the rules hire 3-4 guys to do nothing but scout sec teams? The sec network and having many teams within a few hours should make this possible without having to break the bank. Obviously we can't do this on an mlb level, but I do think it can be done.

What are you guys' opinions on this? Do you have ideas on how to implement this and what areas we should focus on? I realize scouting is a part of sec baseball now, but I'm talking on a much larger scale and using much more qualified personnel

I like that idea, but I don't know the rules on it.

I'm not 100% sure on the rules on outside staff but my educated guess is as long as the staff member isn't actively recruiting players it should be OK. It's no different than Saban's army of analysts.

Now my thought on it is the first thing I would do is talk to the new coach and see what his feelings are on analytics first. The Cardinals front office went big into analytics but Mike Matheny is an old school guy and it has caused problems before. So if we do something like that we MUST make sure that the new coach is on board with it. Cohen was big on data and things like that so I would think he would be fine with it.

The thing about analytics is while the information and data is useful the most valuable commodity is talent. You can only outgame someone so much even with analytics. The Moneyball A's couldn't beat the Yankees who had more talent in the playoffs. Plus, as an aside I think that movie makes it look like a team can just out analyze the other teams but what it failed to mention was that the A's had three very young elite pitchers in Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, and Mark Mulder and then it didn't discuss the fact that Miguel Tejada was a really good player for them as well.

So, that leads me to my point that we should invest in someone or someones who has outside scouting connections that we can either send video to or who can go to the PG tournaments and help us evaluate things like projectibility and signability. It may be as simple as paying MSU alumni who are scouts some money on the side to give us that info.

I do think that having someone that is an analytics person or two could be helpful as well and I think it would be ideal to have the scouting connections person and the analytics person on staff. What it would do is help the assistant coaches focus on coaching the players and recruiting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Todd4State

I'm not 100% sure on the rules on outside staff but my educated guess is as long as the staff member isn't actively recruiting players it should be OK. It's no different than Saban's army of analysts.

Now my thought on it is the first thing I would do is talk to the new coach and see what his feelings are on analytics first. The Cardinals front office went big into analytics but Mike Matheny is an old school guy and it has caused problems before. So if we do something like that we MUST make sure that the new coach is on board with it. Cohen was big on data and things like that so I would think he would be fine with it.

The thing about analytics is while the information and data is useful the most valuable commodity is talent. You can only outgame someone so much even with analytics. The Moneyball A's couldn't beat the Yankees who had more talent in the playoffs. Plus, as an aside I think that movie makes it look like a team can just out analyze the other teams but what it failed to mention was that the A's had three very young elite pitchers in Tim Hudson, Barry Zito, and Mark Mulder and then it didn't discuss the fact that Miguel Tejada was a really good player for them as well.

So, that leads me to my point that we should invest in someone or someones who has outside scouting connections that we can either send video to or who can go to the PG tournaments and help us evaluate things like projectibility and signability. It may be as simple as paying MSU alumni who are scouts some money on the side to give us that info.

I do think that having someone that is an analytics person or two could be helpful as well and I think it would be ideal to have the scouting connections person and the analytics person on staff. What it would do is help the assistant coaches focus on coaching the players and recruiting.

---

Nice post

Some thoughts:

- Outside of track man, using analytics for recruiting is useless.
- Wes Johnson may be the most analytical coach in baseball. In other words, we were are the forefront of the industry
- People confuse “analytics” and think that means stats. Stats are a part of analytics but essentially, analytics is the use of technology and numbers to find an edge. “Analytics” comes in many different forms.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShotgunDawg

Some thoughts:

- Outside of track man, using analytics for recruiting is useless.
- Wes Johnson may be the most analytical coach in baseball. In other words, we were are the forefront of the industry
- People confuse “analytics” and think that means stats. Stats are a part of analytics but essentially, analytics is the use of technology and numbers to find an edge. “Analytics” comes in many different forms.

---

If we could just master the art of shifts, we could really help our staff. I see more ground ball hits in a college game than 3 combined in mlb.