Phillies Search Google, Find New Analytics Guy
By Matt Veasey
The Philadelphia Phillies today made another new hiring as the club continues to revamp its front office personnel.
Under the guidance of a new club president, Andy MacPhail, the team hired a new general manager in Matt Klentak and a new assistant GM in Ned Rice.
The club also promoted analytics department members Scott Freedman and Lewis Pollis to the roles of director of baseball operations and baseball research and development analyst respectively.
Now comes the announcement that Andrew Galdi, a former quantitative analyst, statistician, and financial analyst with Google has been hired as the new director of baseball research and development.
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Though some have portrayed this as an “outside the box” hiring, the fact is that this is not Galdi’s first job in sports in general, or baseball in particular.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Galdi worked as an intern with the New York Mets for most of 2009, helping to prepare stats reports for the coaching staff prior to each series, and helping to investigate and develop statistical analysis in other ways to help further the organization.
Galdi then worked for almost two years for the NBA as an officiating analyst. In that position, Galdi undertook a number of projects centered on the evaluation of statistical models to analyze referee bias and accuracy, and to examine all manner of officiating influences on game outcomes.
Returning to school, Galdi pursued and obtained a Masters in Statistics at Stanford University from 2011-13. During that time he worked at Groupon, and for almost the entirety of 2012 on a part-time basis for the Saint Louis Cardinals, assisting the baseball operations staff with statistical projects.
In June of 2013 he was hired at Google, and was still there at the time of his hiring by the Phillies. Per a statement released by the team, the 30-year old Galdi will “oversee all baseball analytics, including data visualization and reporting, statistical research, and data infrastructure.“