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Sig Mejdal
Sig Mejdal
Born (1965-12-31) December 31, 1965 (age 58)
San Jose, California, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of California, Davis; San Jose State University
ChildrenEthan Grossman I do not have a son named Ethan Grossman

Sig Mejdal (/ˈmaɪdəl/ MY-dəl; born December 31, 1965) is the Vice President[1] and assistant general manager for the Baltimore Orioles of Major League Baseball. He uses data and analytics to help baseball teams.[2]

Biography

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Sig Mejdal grew up in San Jose, California. His mother was a nurse and his father was a career army officer. In his youth, Mejdal played little league baseball for six years.[3]: 43  He was a fan of the Oakland A's and a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.[4] According to UC Davis magazine, Sig Mejdal was "fascinated with the stats on the backs of baseball cards."[5] Mejdal graduated from University of California, Davis with bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering. He later earned master's degrees in operations research and cognitive psychology[6] from San Jose State University.[7] While attending college in the late 1980s, he worked as a blackjack dealer at High Sierra in Lake Tahoe.[6]

After graduating from UC Davis in 1989,[5] Mejdal worked for Lockheed Martin's satellite operations unit at the Onizuka Air Force Station.[3]: 113 [8] Mejdal's interest in baseball was recreational until 2003, when Moneyball inspired him to consider pursuing a career in sabermetrics.[5][9] He attended the Winter Meetings in search for a job in baseball,[10] but ended up working for NASA as a biomathematician in the Fatigue Countermeasures Group.[3]: 23  Mejdal studied sleep patterns of astronauts on the International Space Station[11] in order to optimize their sleep schedules.[10][12]

While working for NASA, Mejdal had a side job as the chief quantitative analyst for Sam Walker's fantasy baseball team Streetwalkers Baseball Club,[12][13] which was participating in the Tout Wars competition's "Battle of the Experts."[12] The fantasy team would later become the subject of Walker's book: Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball.[11]

In 2005, Sig Mejdal was recruited to do sabermetrics for the St. Louis Cardinals' new analytics department.[14] He took 22 months of data from college baseball games and ran it through an algorithm to determine the likely performance and stats baseball players would achieve.[15] According to Sports Illustrated, "[o]ver the next seven seasons the Cardinals would draft more players who became big leaguers than any other organization."[6] He was promoted to senior quantitative analyst in 2008[16] and director of amateur draft analysis in January 2011.[17][18] Mejdal created a formula to predict the risk of injury to baseball players[19] and contributed a section on injury probability to The Bill James Handbook.[20]

In 2012, Mejdal became the Director of Decision Sciences for the Houston Astros, where he supported recruitment decisions based on physical tests and historical player performance.[4][9][21] Hiring Mejdal to apply an analytics-based decision tree on their player choices was part of the effort to revitalize the team and address performance issues in prior seasons.[6] He helped the team create the STOUT system, named after the combination of "stat" and "scout," for making player choices.[22] The system was criticized for de-humanizing players, but after trading off some players and making new recruits, the Astro's farm system became ranked among the best in baseball.[6] Mejdal helped the Astros go from more than 106 losses per-year for three consecutive years to playing at the 2017 World Series Championship.[2] The Astros also used analytics to persuade players that were uncomfortable with non-traditional positions on the field to embrace shifts, which the team now uses very heavily.[6][23]

In 2015, Mejdal was one of the team's advisers whose login credentials were believed to have been used to hack into the team's database.[24] That same year, he was appointed to the position of special assistant for process improvement.[25] Mejdal was primarily focused on scouting and drafting.[26] However, he took on an unusual role when he was embedded with the team and traveled to their games in-person, using an analytics-based approach to coach the players.[27] Mejdal's work helped turn the team around from more than 100 consecutive losses[28] to multiple wins at the World Series.[29]

In November 2018,[25] when Mike Elias was hired from the Astros as general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, Elias hired Mejdal as his assistant general manager.[30] Mejdal was hired to replicate his work at the Astros for the Orioles, who previously underfunded their analytics department.[31]

Bibliography

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  • Mejdal, Sig; Melissa M. Mallis; Tammy T. Nguyen; David F. Dinges (March 2004). "Summary of the Key Features of Seven Biomathematical Models of Human Fatigue and Performance". Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine. 75 (3): 4–14. PMID 15018262.

Further reading

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Updated Further Reading Section

References

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  1. ^ "Catching Up With Sig Mejdal". MLB.com. November 10, 2023. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
  2. ^ a b McLaughlin, Corey (January 28, 2019). "Inside the Mind of Former NASA Engineer Co-Piloting the Orioles' Rebuild". Baltimore Magazine. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c Sam Walker (27 February 2007). Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball League. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303843-6. Archived from the original on 26 July 2014. Retrieved 13 January 2013.
  4. ^ a b McTaggart, Brian (January 31, 2012). "Analyze this: Astros' Mejdal takes on unique role". MLB.com. Archived from the original on August 21, 2014. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  5. ^ a b c "A numbers game". UC Davis Magazine. pp. Volume 28, Number 2, Winter 2011. Archived from the original on December 7, 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  6. ^ a b c d e f Reiter, Ben. "Astro-Matic Baseball". SportsIllustrated. Archived from the original on July 3, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
  7. ^ Dorsey, David (April 17, 2006). "Teams turn to numbers crunchers". The News Press. pp. CC.1. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  8. ^ Matthews, Alan (October 2, 2006). "BA's Alan Matthews attends the Major League Scouting Bureau's "Scout School"". School's In. Baseball America. Archived from the original on January 28, 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  9. ^ a b Cohen, Jason (January 5, 2012). "Astros GM Makes Up a Fancy Title for His "Moneyball" Stat Guy". Daily Post. Archived from the original on January 15, 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  10. ^ a b Booher, Kary (April 23, 2008). "Cards turn analytical for draft decisions". News-Leader. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  11. ^ a b Levine, Zachary (February 11, 2012). "Astros' Sig Mejdal to utilize diamond data in projection game". Houston Chronicle. Archived from the original on February 13, 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  12. ^ a b c Walker, Sam. "Reality Check". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  13. ^ Walker, Sam (June 15, 2006). "A Different Kind of Draft Day". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on October 24, 2017. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  14. ^ Walton, Brian (January 13, 2012). "Interview: Cards Scout Head Kantrovitz: Pt. 1". Archived from the original on August 21, 2014. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  15. ^ Enterprises, Lee (July 3, 2015). "Analytics at heart of Cards' success, federal probe : Sports". stltoday.com. Archived from the original on February 3, 2017. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
  16. ^ Everson, Darren (March 7, 2008). "Baseball Taps Wisdom of Fans". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on November 8, 2021. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  17. ^ "Cards Promote Two in Baseball Ops". CBS. January 7, 2011. Archived from the original on August 22, 2014. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  18. ^ Carroll, Will. "Cardinals Team Healthy Report 2011". Sports Illustrated.
  19. ^ Carroll, Will (March 4, 2008). "Team Health Reports". Baseball Prospectus. Archived from the original on September 14, 2011. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  20. ^ Carroll, Will (April 11, 2006). "Under The Knife: Danger is Will's Middle Name". Baseball Prospectus. Archived from the original on September 11, 2011. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
  21. ^ Rogers, Phil (January 7, 2012), "Time for Big Z to step to plate", Chicago Tribune, archived from the original on June 30, 2012, retrieved December 14, 2012
  22. ^ Goold, Derrick (June 7, 2007). "Baseball Draft: Cardinals get STOUT". St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
  23. ^ Waldstein, David (May 12, 2014). "Who's on Third? In Baseball's Shifting Defenses, Maybe Nobody". New York Times. Archived from the original on May 17, 2014. Retrieved June 27, 2014.
  24. ^ Schupak, Amanda (June 24, 2015). "What the Houston Astros hack can teach you about cybersecurity". CBS News. Archived from the original on July 21, 2015. Retrieved July 12, 2015.
  25. ^ a b Rogers, Jesse (November 21, 2018). "Ex-NASA engineer Mejdal joins O's front office". ESPN.com. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  26. ^ "Orioles Execs Not Mentioned in 'AstroGate' Sign-Stealing Scandal". Baltimore Magazine. January 17, 2020. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  27. ^ Kaplan, Jake (March 13, 2017). "Known as Astros' science guy, Sig Mejdal to experiment with role as minor league coach". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  28. ^ McLaughlin, Corey (July 22, 2020). "Bird Brains". Baltimore Magazine. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  29. ^ Walker, Childs (October 4, 2023). "Orioles GM Mike Elias felt 'uniquely qualified' to resurrect a 'fragile' club back to the top of the AL East". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved October 25, 2023.
  30. ^ "O's beef up analytics team as culture shifts". MLB.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-06. Retrieved 2021-11-08.
  31. ^ Meoli, Jon (December 13, 2018). "Once a job seeker in hotel lobby, Orioles' Sig Mejdal sees his rise and role come into focus at winter meetings". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
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