Sig Mejdal | |
---|---|
Born | San Jose, California, U.S. | December 31, 1965
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of California, Davis; San Jose State University |
Children |
Sig Mejdal ( /ˈmaɪdəl/ MY-dəl; born December 31, 1965) is the Vice President [1] and assistant general manager for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball. He uses data and analytics to help baseball teams. [2]
Sig Mejdal grew up in San Jose, California. His mother was a nurse and his father was a career army officer. In his youth, Mejdal played little league baseball for six years. [3]: 43 He was a fan of the Oakland A's and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research. [4] According to UC Davis magazine, Sig Mejdal was "fascinated with the stats on the backs of baseball cards." [5] Mejdal graduated from University of California, Davis with bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering. He later earned master's degrees in operations research and cognitive psychology [6] from San Jose State University. [7] While attending college in the late 1980s, he worked as a blackjack dealer at High Sierra in Lake Tahoe. [6]
After graduating from UC Davis in 1989, [5] Mejdal worked for Lockheed Martin's satellite operations unit at the Onizuka Air Force Station. [3]: 113 [8] Mejdal's interest in baseball was recreational until 2003, when Moneyball inspired him to consider pursuing a career in sabermetrics. [5] [9] He attended the Winter Meetings in search for a job in baseball, [10] but ended up working for NASA as a biomathematician in the Fatigue Countermeasures Group. [3]: 23 Mejdal studied sleep patterns of astronauts on the International Space Station [11] in order to optimize their sleep schedules. [10] [12]
While working for NASA, Mejdal had a side job as the chief quantitative analyst for Sam Walker's fantasy baseball team Streetwalkers Baseball Club, [12] [13] which was participating in the Tout Wars competition's "Battle of the Experts." [12] The fantasy team would later become the subject of Walker's book: Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball. [11]
In 2005, Sig Mejdal was recruited to do sabermetrics for the St. Louis Cardinals' new analytics department. [14] He took 22 months of data from college baseball games and ran it through an algorithm to determine the likely performance and stats baseball players would achieve. [15] According to Sports Illustrated, "[o]ver the next seven seasons the Cardinals would draft more players who became big leaguers than any other organization." [6] He was promoted to senior quantitative analyst in 2008 [16] and director of amateur draft analysis in January 2011. [17] [18] Mejdal created a formula to predict the risk of injury to baseball players [19] and contributed a section on injury probability to The Bill James Handbook. [20]
In 2012, Mejdal became the Director of Decision Sciences for the Houston Astros, where he supported recruitment decisions based on physical tests and historical player performance. [4] [9] [21] Hiring Mejdal to apply an analytics-based decision tree on their player choices was part of the effort to revitalize the team and address performance issues in prior seasons. [6] He helped the team create the STOUT system, named after the combination of "stat" and "scout," for making player choices. [22] The system was criticized for de-humanizing players, but after trading off some players and making new recruits, the Astro's farm system became ranked among the best in baseball. [6] Mejdal helped the Astros go from more than 106 losses per-year for three consecutive years to playing at the 2017 World Series Championship. [2] The Astros also used analytics to persuade players that were uncomfortable with non-traditional positions on the field to embrace shifts, which the team now uses very heavily. [6] [23]
In 2015, Mejdal was one of the team's advisers whose login credentials were believed to have been used to hack into the team's database. [24] That same year, he was appointed to the position of special assistant for process improvement. [25] Mejdal was primarily focused on scouting and drafting. [26] However, he took on an unusual role when he was embedded with the team and traveled to their games in-person, using an analytics-based approach to coach the players. [27] Mejdal's work helped turn the team around from more than 100 consecutive losses [28] to multiple wins at the World Series. [29]
In November 2018, [25] when Mike Elias was hired from the Astros as general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Elias hired Mejdal as his assistant general manager. [30] Mejdal was hired to replicate his work at the Astros for the Orioles, who previously underfunded their analytics department. [31]
Updated Further Reading Section
Sig Mejdal | |
---|---|
Born | San Jose, California, U.S. | December 31, 1965
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of California, Davis; San Jose State University |
Children |
Sig Mejdal ( /ˈmaɪdəl/ MY-dəl; born December 31, 1965) is the Vice President [1] and assistant general manager for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball. He uses data and analytics to help baseball teams. [2]
Sig Mejdal grew up in San Jose, California. His mother was a nurse and his father was a career army officer. In his youth, Mejdal played little league baseball for six years. [3]: 43 He was a fan of the Oakland A's and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research. [4] According to UC Davis magazine, Sig Mejdal was "fascinated with the stats on the backs of baseball cards." [5] Mejdal graduated from University of California, Davis with bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering. He later earned master's degrees in operations research and cognitive psychology [6] from San Jose State University. [7] While attending college in the late 1980s, he worked as a blackjack dealer at High Sierra in Lake Tahoe. [6]
After graduating from UC Davis in 1989, [5] Mejdal worked for Lockheed Martin's satellite operations unit at the Onizuka Air Force Station. [3]: 113 [8] Mejdal's interest in baseball was recreational until 2003, when Moneyball inspired him to consider pursuing a career in sabermetrics. [5] [9] He attended the Winter Meetings in search for a job in baseball, [10] but ended up working for NASA as a biomathematician in the Fatigue Countermeasures Group. [3]: 23 Mejdal studied sleep patterns of astronauts on the International Space Station [11] in order to optimize their sleep schedules. [10] [12]
While working for NASA, Mejdal had a side job as the chief quantitative analyst for Sam Walker's fantasy baseball team Streetwalkers Baseball Club, [12] [13] which was participating in the Tout Wars competition's "Battle of the Experts." [12] The fantasy team would later become the subject of Walker's book: Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball. [11]
In 2005, Sig Mejdal was recruited to do sabermetrics for the St. Louis Cardinals' new analytics department. [14] He took 22 months of data from college baseball games and ran it through an algorithm to determine the likely performance and stats baseball players would achieve. [15] According to Sports Illustrated, "[o]ver the next seven seasons the Cardinals would draft more players who became big leaguers than any other organization." [6] He was promoted to senior quantitative analyst in 2008 [16] and director of amateur draft analysis in January 2011. [17] [18] Mejdal created a formula to predict the risk of injury to baseball players [19] and contributed a section on injury probability to The Bill James Handbook. [20]
In 2012, Mejdal became the Director of Decision Sciences for the Houston Astros, where he supported recruitment decisions based on physical tests and historical player performance. [4] [9] [21] Hiring Mejdal to apply an analytics-based decision tree on their player choices was part of the effort to revitalize the team and address performance issues in prior seasons. [6] He helped the team create the STOUT system, named after the combination of "stat" and "scout," for making player choices. [22] The system was criticized for de-humanizing players, but after trading off some players and making new recruits, the Astro's farm system became ranked among the best in baseball. [6] Mejdal helped the Astros go from more than 106 losses per-year for three consecutive years to playing at the 2017 World Series Championship. [2] The Astros also used analytics to persuade players that were uncomfortable with non-traditional positions on the field to embrace shifts, which the team now uses very heavily. [6] [23]
In 2015, Mejdal was one of the team's advisers whose login credentials were believed to have been used to hack into the team's database. [24] That same year, he was appointed to the position of special assistant for process improvement. [25] Mejdal was primarily focused on scouting and drafting. [26] However, he took on an unusual role when he was embedded with the team and traveled to their games in-person, using an analytics-based approach to coach the players. [27] Mejdal's work helped turn the team around from more than 100 consecutive losses [28] to multiple wins at the World Series. [29]
In November 2018, [25] when Mike Elias was hired from the Astros as general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Elias hired Mejdal as his assistant general manager. [30] Mejdal was hired to replicate his work at the Astros for the Orioles, who previously underfunded their analytics department. [31]
Updated Further Reading Section