One of baseball’s best stats seminars is happening in Boston
All of the proceeds go to charity.
In what has become an increasingly cherished tradition, some of baseball’s smartest people will once again sit down for a weekend seminar, all in the name of charity.
Sabermetrics, Scouting and the Science of Baseball is a two-day event on August 13 and 14 at the Jacob Sleeper Auditorium (located on the Boston University campus). Essentially, it’s a series of discussions led by various baseball coaches, executives, scouts, statisticians and writers. Fans (many of whom are often students) engage with the experts on a multitude of baseball topics.
Tickets, now on sale, go directly to two charitable causes: the Jimmy Fund and the Angioma Alliance.
And as co-founder Dan Brooks (of Brooks Baseball) notes, the seminar was the result of a natural evolution.
“It sort of evolved out of a program that Chuck Korb, who’s the co-organizer of the event, was affiliated with,” Brooks said. “I think it really filled at the time a void in a sense that there wasn’t really a research-focused baseball conference.”
Now in its sixth year, the event has grown from its initial setting (a lecture room at Harvard) to filling an auditorium. Still, Brooks pointed out that even in year one, Sabermetrics, Scouting and the Science of Baseball had a few notable speakers.
“At our first event, Dan Duquette was one of the speakers and now he’s GM of the Orioles,” Brooks noted. “Kevin Goldstein, who at that point was in the baseball media, was our emcee for the event. He’s now the pro scouting director for the Astros.”
This year, speakers include Brian Bannister (Red Sox director of pitching analytics), Harry Pavlidis (Director of Data Analysis for Baseball Prospectus), and Alex Speier (Red Sox beat reporter for the Boston Globe). Brooks, as well as his fellow seminar co-founders, will also be among the list of speakers.
Along with experts from all over the sport, Brooks credits the local ball club for helping to provide a different element in the seminar that fans appreciate:
People like a connection to the game of baseball. They like to not only hear the more academic take on baseball that much of our research provides, but they also like hearing about the in-game. What is the front office doing? What are the scouts doing when they look at players? Or what an ex-player is thinking about when they’re watching baseball. The Red Sox have been tremendously helpful in creating that connection for us.
And for the students who attend each year, it provides them an affordable chance to get in front of top baseball minds. In some cases, it can have an enormous impact on a student’s future. For Brooks, it’s something he relishes as one of the seminar’s organizers.
“We are giving kids a chance to get their name out there and connect with teams,” Brooks explained. “I think that’s the part of it that’s most rewarding to me.”
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