Derek DuBois Demonstrating TrackMan, SaberSeminar 2014

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball conference, better known as SaberSeminar 2014, held at the Boston University School of Management. Now in its 4th year, this wonderful event is more than just a baseball conference, as 100% of the proceeds go to the Jimmy Fund, a charitable organization dedicated to defeating cancer. It was a truly humbling experience to be surrounded by so many prolific baseball minds, while also doing something positive in directly supporting cancer research.

The remarkable list of presenters was headlined by keynote speakers Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington and Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow, although each individual over the course of the two days was captivating in their own right. For the sake of brevity, I will highlight a few presentations that particularly piqued my interest and had me focused like Daniel LaRusso.

Houston GM Jeff Luhnow, SaberSeminar 2014

The first keynote speaker, Jeff Luhnow, used this platform to discuss his experience in the front office attempting to implement various sabermetric theories into on-field activity. Luhnow explained how although he wanted to impose infield shifting at the major league level three years ago, he described the various hurdles involved in adapting the thinking of those on the field. He also made a specific point to remind the audience to carefully choose how they approach more traditional baseball thinkers, as they believe their methods are similarly correct. Luhnow also took questions from the audience including the eventual Brady Aiken query, and he answered them all with style: his polish and intelligence is overwhelming and I would feel more than comfortable having him as my GM.

Later Saturday morning the audience was treated to a lengthy question-and-answer session with Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell. One individual asked him why he thought the offensive numbers were down league-wide this season, and he attributed it to several factors, including a slightly larger strike zone than in the past, relief pitchers with greater stuff being used in matchup situations as soon as the 6th inning, and infield defensive shifts.

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Boston GM Ben Cherington

The second keynote speaker of the event was Boston Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington, who used his time to discuss the offensive struggles of the team in 2014. He described many big-picture questions their front office is asking themselves, in particular why are they scoring fewer runs than they expected in 2014 and how do they help their hitters perform at the higher range of their projections more often in the future. His candor about the team’s struggles and how difficult the losses are on the front office particularly caught my attention, as his passion and desire to win was evident. He also produced one of my favorite lines of the event saying, “People have always recognized that the ability to take a walk and hit for power is valuable, that’s always been valued, and maybe that’s even a little bit more valuable today, because those are the things that cannot be defended anymore”.

TrackMan Demonstration, SaberSeminar 2014

Another terrific presentation occurred Saturday afternoon as former major league pitcher (and guest on Episode #3 of THE NatsGM Show) Brian Bannister lead an outdoor demonstration of the developing technology Trackman. A local pitcher, Derek DuBois, threw an assortment of fastballs, curveballs, and changeups to his college battery-mate to demonstrate the various real-time data that can be collected from this equipment. The ability to immediately and accurately know things such as spin rate and movement could potentially be groundbreaking baseball technology.

Finally I want to give a special mention to the Master of Ceremonies for the weekend, Mike Ferrin from SiriusXM and the host of the event, Dr. Dan Brooks from BrooksBaseball.net – they should both be commended for their tireless work this weekend. I also would like to publicly thank Dave Cameron from Fangraphs and SaberSeminar founder Chuck Korb for generously allowing me to interview them. SaberSeminar is easily the greatest baseball event I have ever experienced outside of the ballpark.  I look forward to my return in 2015.