2026 Diamond Dollars Case Competition
The 2026 Diamond Dollars Case Competition winners were announced Friday, February 27 during the SABR Analytics Conference.
The winning teams selected were from Rice University, Vanderbilt University, and Texas A&M University.
The Rice University team (pictured above) which was selected to deliver an encore presentation in front of the full SABR Analytics Conference on Saturday included Mark Cohen, Brady Detwiler, Brendan Lloyd, Andersen Pickard, and Saylor Robinson.
Another winning team from Rice University included Jacob Andreini, Chad Federico, Ethan Larimore, J. Dante Maurice, and Kenneth Soh.
The Vanderbilt University team included Brooks Barrett, Riley Hewitt, Claire Kelly, James Marshall, and Dylan Tovitz.
The Texas A&M University team included Isaac Graham, Casey Hawkins, Joseph Lasala, Evan New, and Fletcher Newman.
In the Diamond Dollars Case Competition, high school and college students from schools across the country compete against each other by preparing an analysis and presentation of a baseball operations decision — the type of decision a team’s GM and his staff is faced with over the course of a season. The cases are developed by Vince Gennaro, founder and Executive Director of the Lab for Transformative Leadership at NYU’s School of Professional Studies; author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball; host of Behind the Numbers: Baseball SABR Style on SiriusXM; and the former President of SABR’s Board of Directors. The Diamond Dollars Case Competition is the first national competition to be based solely on baseball operations issues.
Four- to five-person student teams are asked to evaluate a baseball operations case problem. The student team presents their analysis and recommendations to a panel of judges that includes MLB front office executives.
In this year’s case, students were asked to evaluate whether a specific group of hitters should alter their approach based on the context of a game situation.
This year’s judges included Adam Brodie (Houston Astros), Cody Callahan (Arizona Diamondbacks), Justin Choi (Cleveland Guardians), Michael Girsch (St. Louis Cardinals), Jacqueline Jovanovic (Miami Marlins), Kyle Ruedisili (Houston Astros), Devlin Sullivan (Seattle Mariners), Michael Topol (Texas Rangers), Jared Wilson (Miami Marlins), and Keith Woolner (Cleveland Guardians).
Callahan is a former winner of the Diamond Dollars Case Competition at the SABR Analytics Conference.
Other participating schools were: Arizona State University; Elon University; Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School; Syracuse University; Tufts University; and University of the Pacific.
For more coverage of the 2026 SABR Analytics Conference, visit SABR.org/analytics.
Nearly 200 alumni from the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 Diamond Dollars Case Competitions have secured internships or permanent positions within Major League Baseball.