Whitzman: Canadian student wins 2014 SABR Analytics Yoseloff scholarship

From April Whitzman at the Canadian Baseball Network on February 15, 2014:

For many, statistics are cumbersome, tedious and challenging.

But for Toronto-resident Paul Nakonechny, they are thrilling and stimulating.

Especially baseball statistics.

“Every morning I wake up and someone has made a stunning finding related to baseball statistics,” said Nakonechny, 24, of Edmonton. “It’s a real struggle to keep pace, but completely worth it.”

Nakonechny has been enamoured with sabermetrics for quite some time. It’s for this reason that he never hesitated to apply for the Society for American Baseball Research [SABR] Anthony A. Yoseloff Foundation scholarship the moment he found out about it.

“I didn’t really think I stood much of a chance of winning it, but I felt I didn’t have anything to lose but to try,” he said. ”I finished the essay and application and hoped for the best.”

In his application, Nakonechny wrote about how his acceptance to the University of Toronto came by way of discussing how former Toronto Blue Jays General Manager JP Ricciardi taught him about managing human resources before he even understood what ‘human resources’ was.

“The development, scouting, compensation, and labour relations issues teams navigate through year in and year out aren’t so different from what organizations in the corporate world face,” Nakonechny wrote. “It’s what motivated me to work towards a Master’s degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto.”

 

Read the full article here: http://www.canadianbaseballnetwork.com/articles/nakonechny-wins-sabr-analytics-scholarship/

Related link: To learn more or to register for the 2014 SABR Analytics Conference, visit SABR.org/analytics



Originally published: February 18, 2014. Last Updated: February 18, 2014.