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The Red Sox might have won the World Series this year, but don’t expect ExCollege instructor Morris Greenberg (A16) to be particularly effusive about Boston’s reigning champions. “Morris doesn’t like the Red Sox, and I do, so there you go,” jokes co-instructor, Andy Andres (N99). The good thing is that their ExCollege course, Baseball Analytics: The Sabermetric Model, is all about objectiveness and using statistical analyses to understand, predict, and better enjoy America’s favorite pastime (think Moneyball). “There’s been a real change in the game of baseball at a professional level using data science to make decisions and that’s what we try to teach here,” says Andres. Based on the longstanding success of the class, it certainly seems like Andres and Greenberg have uncovered the statistical secrets to hitting home runs left and right.
The humble origins of the class can be traced to almost two decades ago by Andres and his two friends, David Tybor and Morgan Melchiorre, while he was getting his PhD from the Tufts School of Nutrition. The idea for teaching a class for baseball analytics spun out of what Andres called “this new way to think about the game more objectively rather than just arguing like we’d be, among friends.” And, as is often the case with Tufts students, the entrepreneurial trio didn’t just stop there. “That inspired us — we’d heard about the ExCollege and I said, hey we should just propose to them that we teach this class,” says Andres. “It had never been taught before in a college anywhere. So we did — we designed this class to be strictly about baseball analytics, and to learn the fundamentals of it, and we taught it many times.”
Many times might be an understatement. The course’s popularity has remained strong through the years, with different instructors — mostly former students — teaching it in various semesters. Greenberg, who first took the class as a first-year student in 2013, explains that as a “huge baseball fan but also a quantitative-stats-coding-type of person...it kind of aligned with all my interests.” Even as he took what he learned into his burgeoning professional career — he’s now a senior analyst at an economics and statistics consulting firm — Greenberg helped Andres teach the class in his junior year, and even completely took over the reins in his senior year. It makes sense, then, that it was “a no-brainer” when Andres asked if he wanted to teach it with him this semester. Another no-brainer: the dynamic duo, effusive with their appreciation for one another, is back.
Andres, who’s a professor at Boston University, is cognizant of the impact his class has had on his students. But even as he acknowledges that they’ve “had a lot of success trying to get people the right projects and skills needed to compete for jobs in sports analytics all over,” he’s humble in downplaying his key involvement in crafting what is at this point more than a class, but a veritable legacy. After all, as he puts it wryly, at the end of the day, there’s a simple reason for the class’ popularity and successes: “Bottom line — we get to talk about baseball. And I get paid for it, and the students get college credit for it, so it’s a win win.”
At the same time, it’s about more than just the love of the game — even if that’s what defines the whole enterprise, and clearly always will. But the lessons learned in class extend far beyond baseball. For Greenberg, “it’s always about trying to be objective about things...You don’t have to implement the analysis yourself but don’t just take what someone says necessarily for granted. Actually try to think about whether that’s likely to be true, how do we actually go about testing that. Ask the questions and create your own hypotheses, and if you have time, then research it or see what other research is out there for it.” Andres agrees, saying:
“We’re really here to push their own ability to think critically and generate questions. We just do it with baseball to make it fun, but generally I’d say that’s the mission of the university, to do that for all students and all courses.”
Even if their paths might diverge in the future and the class evolves along with the ever-changing field of baseball analytics, the two instructors are optimistic about what lays ahead for the course — and for baseball fans everywhere.
About the Author
Max Lalanne is a senior majoring in Film & Media Studies. Born in Paris and raised in New Hampshire, when he's not writing for The ExPress, he's running his own daily newsletter, News in French. He plans to continue a career in media and publishing.
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