Pirates’ analytics specialist to speak on campus

Pirates’ analytics specialist to speak on campus

Grove City College’s Department of Mathematics is excited to welcome Dan Fox, director of Baseball Informatics for the Pittsburgh Pirates, to campus to discuss how analytics have revolutionized baseball and helped turn the team’s fortunes around.

Fox will speak at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 21, in Sticht Auditorium in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus.

Fox is a key figure in the Pirates organization, which he joined in 2008. At the time, the team was far behind the industry curve in accepting and adopting 21st century information management. His first task was creating the club’s database and creating its player-information management system, known as MITT. It’s used to figure out which players and strategies will help the Pirates win games.

Fox now leads an analytics team that works closely with management and the team’s coaching staff and has been credited in part with turning the long-suffering Bucs, which had a 20-year playoff drought, into a winning team the past several seasons.

The event is free and open to the public.