2019 Diamond Dollars Case Competition
The 2019 Diamond Dollars Case Competition winners were announced Friday, March 8 during the SABR Analytics Conference at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona.
The winning teams selected were from Washington University in St. Louis, Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School, and Syracuse University.
The Washington University team — which was picked to deliver an encore presentation in front of the full SABR Analytics Conference on Saturday — included Noah Kastelman, Sam Linker, Aaron Margulis, Devlin Sullivan, and Johnnie Teng (pictured above).
Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School sent four teams to participate in this year’s Case Competition; the winning team consisted of Tom Blue, Creed Crabtree, Nicolas Ferree, Dom Gammino, and Maya Qureshi.
Syracuse University teams sent five teams to participate; the Team 1 winners, pictured above, were Dylan Blechner, Gareth Jobling, Kyle Liotta, Colby Olson, and Nick Schloop.
Syracuse University’s Team 2 winners included Will Dalton, Joey Deaton, Dante Giugliano, Josh Horwitz, and Brandon Pollack.
In this year’s case, students were asked to prepare a comprehensive strategy on the optimal use of pitching for an MLB team to follow over the course of the 2018 regular season.
In the Diamond Dollars Case Competition, undergraduate, graduate and professional school students from colleges and universities 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 SABR Board President Vince Gennaro, author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, and consultant to MLB teams. 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.
This year’s judges included Cody Callahan (Arizona Diamondbacks); Art Chou (Rapsodo); Tani Cohen (Major League Baseball); Michael Gries (San Francisco Giants); Rohan Gupta (Rapsodo); Max Phillips (Arizona Diamondbacks); Joe Rosales (Baseball Info Solutions); Greg Rybarczyk (Boston Red Sox); Kevin Seats (St. Louis Cardinals); Kevin Tenenbaum (Cleveland Indians); Nick Wan (Cincinnati Reds); and Keith Woolner (Cleveland Indians).
Callahan, Gupta, Phillips, and Tenenbaum are all former winners of the Diamond Dollars Case Competition at the SABR Analytics Conference.
Other participating schools were: Arizona State University, Elon University, Kenyon College, NYU-Tisch Institute for Global Sport, Oklahoma State University, St. John Fisher College, St. Joseph’s University, University of Arizona, and Washington State University.
For more coverage of the 2019 SABR Analytics Conference, visit SABR.org/analytics/2019.
More than 70 alumni from the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Diamond Dollars Case Competitions have secured internships or permanent positions within Major League Baseball.