Smart Rainmakers Data Crunch

Fresh off an exciting Super Bowl, Major League Baseball pitchers and catchers are set to report to their team's Spring Training camps in just two weeks. But "Moneyball" style MLB General Managers have been crunching data for months to determine who really are the players with the most value. Oscar-nominated actor Brad Pitt's portrayal of Oakland As GM Billy Beane illustrated the baseball executive's obsessive commitment to a new "radical" key performance indicator (KPI) called on base percentage (OBP). Beane and his Harvard economics assistant figured out that high OBP closely mirrored team wins and committed themselves to letting their system work over time. So far, the World Series title has eluded him, but Beane’s system has delivered the fifth best record in the major leagues since 1998 and many teams have adopted his analytical approach to the game. Beane recently extolled the virtues of using data and analytics to a room full of search marketers.