IBM's Cognos BI and Baseball Contract Negotiations
Now this is the kind of story that not only makes good business sense it also discusses the application of new technology to something most of us find exciting and can understand, “high-stakes” Baseball contracts. The Major League Baseball Players Association (“MLBPA”) has decided to assist player agents get faster and deeper access to statistics and comparative analysis for their contract negotiations with Owners and General Managers. The MLBPA will be using IBM's Cognos BI software to analyze, compare and project player stats, and chart individual players' progress over the course of this year’s baseball season.
Doyle Pryor, assistant general counsel of the MLBPA, released a statement reported by InternetNews.com in its article Baseball Gets a New Data Cleanup Hitter stating, “Our analysis of player performance is as complex and dynamic as the work of high-powered business analysts in Fortune 500 companies, and we need to use the same robust, flexible interface to achieve reliable results." Joseph Pusztai, IBM Cognos' director of product marketing added, "Once the agents become comfortable with this, they'll be able to leverage the information for their clients in the best way. The ultimate goal is to come up with statistics that shows a player's success. For example, the common stats will show you home runs, but now they'll be able to see how many were hit in the late innings, when it tends to matter more."
Phil Taylor, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, commented that, "The stats help both the players and owners make their case during contract negotiations. If a player hits .285 for the year, but he can show that he hit .350 from the 7th inning on in tie games, that'll help his case." Such availability to these kinds of stats can be a double edge sword and be used by the Owners and General Managers to show weak hitting in the later innings as well.
