Swing or Take on 3-0?

Newswise — What techniques can a general manager borrow from an investment portfolio manager to select a winning roster? How can a coach use math modeling to tell a batter whether to swing or take on a 3-0 count?

These are among the questions that will bring a new strategic dimension to baseball as operations researchers address a special, post-All Star Game symposium. The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is a sponsor of the symposium.

EVENT Symposium on Statistics and Operations Research in BaseballDATE Wednesday, July 11, 2007 TIME 10 AM " 5 PM PST PLACE: California State University, East Bay Valley Business and Technology Center Presentation Room, Hayward, CA

The Symposium on Statistics and Operations Research in Baseball will be a meeting of the baseball, industrial, and academic worlds. The focus is on how Statistics and Operations Research methodology is used within baseball and associated businesses and on how baseball inspires the expansion of the frontiers of Statistics and Operations Research as scientific fields. The Symposium will have a panel discussion moderated by Mike Siano of MLB.com's Baseball Channel in the morning, which will be edited for broadcast on MLB.com later in the week. In the afternoon, there will be short seminars. After a brief introduction at 10, the panel will begin. An hour and a half break for lunch will follow the panel, at about 11:45. The Symposium is scheduled to end at 5.

Two members of the INFORMS Section on O.R. in Sports (SpORts) will reveal the surprising ways that baseball can learn management strategies from experts in operations research.

J. Eric Bickel, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University will discuss decision-making in sports in "Applying O.R. across the Baseball Decision Hierarchy."

Operations research can be applied at all levels of baseball decision making from the field to the front office. At the field level, he will consider the decision of whether or not to take a particular pitch. From the perspective of the front office and player valuation, he will discuss a new method to determine how much a particular starting pitcher increases his team's chance of winning. For example, by how much does Roger Clemens increase the Yankees' chance of winning in games he pitches?

Joel Sokol, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology will show how business concepts like supply chain and portfolio management can help general managers in a lecture, "Supply Chains, Investment Portfolios, and Roster Management."

Operations research techniques are used successfully to determine investment portfolios and coordinate supply chains. Many of the same basic concepts are important in the long-term management of baseball rosters. In this talk, Prof. Sokol will discuss some of the major similarities, describe how current research is attempting to account for the differences, and show the opportunity that exists for a beneficial collaboration between baseball and operations research.

Additional information can be obtained by going to http://july11.sectioninsports.org/ or sending an email to [email protected].

About INFORMSThe Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®) is an international scientific society with 10,000 members, including Nobel Prize laureates, dedicated to applying scientific methods to help improve decision-making, management, and operations. Members of INFORMS work in business, government, and academia. They are represented in fields as diverse as airlines, health care, law enforcement, the military, financial engineering, and telecommunications. The INFORMS website is http://www.informs.org. More information about operations research is at http://www.scienceofbetter.org.