2022 Diamond Dollars Virtual Case Competition
The 2022 Diamond Dollars Case Competition winners were announced Friday, March 18 during the SABR Virtual Analytics Conference.
The winning teams selected were from Tufts University, The Branson School, St. John Fisher College, Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School, and Elon University.
The Tufts University team — which was picked to deliver an encore presentation in front of the full SABR Analytics Conference on Saturday — included Richard Diamond, Andrew Holden, Evan Hu, Joshua Ober, and Brendan Tivnan. Click here to watch a video replay of their encore presentation.
The Branson School team, based in Ross, California, included Kaden Gustafson, Audrey Knowles, Lucas Segal, Wilson Wendt, and Charlie Zwibelman.
St. John Fisher College sent two teams to the competition; the Team 1 winners included Noah Ackerman, Colin Campbell, Adam Drake, Mike Hebbard, and Brandon Smith.
The Maggie Walker Governor’s School, based in Richmond, Virginia, sent four teams; the Team 3 winners included Jonah Curran, Sean Fang, Lorenzo Galang, Pulkit Iyer, and Nived Sanjay.
The Elon University team included Zach Cioffi, Theodore Freeman, Jacqueline Jovanovic, Evan Wu, and Winnie Yang.
In this year’s case, the students were asked to provide recommendations to increase the action in a baseball game and evaluate the risks and rewards of each proposed decision.
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 former SABR Board President Vince Gennaro, co-founder of the SABR Analytics Conference, 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 Zach Aldrich (Pittsburgh Pirates); Adam Brodie (Houston Astros), Cody Callahan (Arizona Diamondbacks), Tani Cohen (MLB), Bobby Evans, Josh Keen (MLB), Brandon Nickell (MLB), Max Phillips (Arizona Diamondbacks), Shanna Shi (MLB), Mark Simon (Sports Info Solutions), Oliver Spohngellert (MLB), and Mallory Williamson (MLB).
Callahan is a former winner of the Diamond Dollars Case Competition at the SABR Analytics Conference.
Other participating schools were: Carthage College, NYU-Tisch Institute for Global Sport, University of Arizona, University of Chicago, University of Florida, University of Michigan, UTHealth School of Public Health, and Washington University in St. Louis.
More than 120 alumni from the 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Diamond Dollars Case Competitions have secured internships or permanent positions within Major League Baseball.
For more coverage of the 2022 SABR Analytics Conference, visit SABR.org/analytics/2022.