{"id":1150,"date":"2019-07-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/the-texas-rangers-when-an-analytics-department-is-in-tune-with-a-teams-key-stakeholders\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:31","slug":"texas-rangers-analytics-department","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/texas-rangers-analytics-department\/","title":{"rendered":"The Texas Rangers: When an Analytics Department is In-Tune with a Team\u2019s Key Stakeholders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Jul 23, 2019 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

The Texas Rangers: When an Analytics Department is In-Tune with a Team\u2019s Key Stakeholders<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Data & Innovation<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/texas-rangers-analytics-department\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n
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Ryan Murray explains why data in the right hands can tip the balance between winning and losing in your favour.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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Ryan Murray believes that tangential technology could make the difference between a nondescript season and a playoff run in baseball.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the real innovation that\u2019s starting to kick up,\u201d he tells an audience at the 2019 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in Atlanta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Murray is the Director of Baseball Analytics at the Texas Rangers where, during his five years at the team, serving in various analytics-based roles, he has seen the analytics staff grow from two individuals in 2014 to a point where, he says, the department has \u201cgrown and exploded in size\u201d.<\/p>\n

The pathway forward is clear in Murray\u2019s mind: \u201cIt\u2019s about unique data generation, whether you build products yourself or you find third parties. It\u2019s about gaining an edge by having data that other teams don\u2019t have access to and aren\u2019t yet on the cutting edge of.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s finding those products that are really going to make your team better and, in doing so, probably depriving another team of that same advantage because everything is about those marginal gains. If you can make yourself half a percent better over the course of a year then that\u2019s a win. It can be the difference between making the playoffs and not making the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rangers are a team where this idea is taken at face value. It speaks to their culture of innovation and openness to new ideas but it also points to the efforts of Murray and his colleagues to demonstrate value in terms of sports science and performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trusted advisors,\u201d he adds. \u201cWe work to build a level of trust with coaches, players and executives – the people who are making decisions based on the information you are providing them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here, we delve into the key points Murray made that enable an analytics department to play a significant role in the decision-making process.<\/p>\n

Give the coaches a better tool<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball is not full of dummies,\u201d Murray declares. \u201cWe\u2019re very smart people and it\u2019s evident that not only objective but subjective information is becoming more and more involved in modelling and prediction software. We must use that to our advantage as opposed to just having ad hoc conversations or just an objective way of thinking about your problems.\u201d That is not to discount the importance of procedure. \u201cYou rigorously go through setting up your process, establishing the things you believe in, understanding how predictive they are and what they\u2019re good at. Getting to that point is so critical and almost entirely comes from us understanding what is going to make us better and take us to the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaching that point means gaining the trust of all key stakeholders, which can take time in an elite baseball environment where coaches have been ploughing their furrow for decades and players have a natural mistrust of anything that has the potential to jeopardise their status with the team.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Murray and has staff have found way and cites the example of the traditional manner in which coaches prepare. His work with coaches is geared towards showing them that there might be a more effective way. Show them the \u2018how\u2019 and \u2018why\u2019 and it will gradually lead to ongoing conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cSay they tell me they want a visual of the strike zone by batting average, a traditional nine-box zone,\u201d Murray begins in explanation. \u201cMy first response to that request is to say that\u2019s not very predictive of anything. Let\u2019s actually break down what the coach is trying to understand, what it is they\u2019re trying to accomplish, and how can we get to that goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I would do from that point is that I would actually sit down and have a conversation with them. They might tell you, \u2018I\u2019m trying to figure out where this pitcher has his best pitches go, where hitters can do damage to them\u2019 and I say to them that batting average has a certain level of predictability with outcomes but if I tell you that our internal metric, a combination of exit velocity, launch angle and hit direction is much more predictive then I can go through some examples, watch a video, and try to meet them on their plain and build that visual every time we have a conversation. It really enables you to open up a dialogue that allows you to build that trust with the people in your organisation who are ultimately making those decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray and his analytics staff will also endeavour to make the Rangers\u2019 players feel comfortable with the data. \u201cIn spring training,\u201d he says, \u201cwe have small group sessions with subsets of players. We\u2019ll take all the minor league pitchers and we\u2019ll go through them, not only the tools we use to evaluate them but the things they do really well. Guys love hearing things that they do well; you lift them up in front of their teammates, you start getting some momentum going.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea is to be around the team at all times. \u201cIn the past there has never been an analyst who was down in the clubhouse whereas now we are physically present. We are there for those guys to ask questions. You build those relationships that are so critical to help bridge the gap between objective and subjective decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray is able to embed members of his analytics department within our departments because of the manner in which the department has proved its efficacy during the past five years. \u201cIn order to do that quickly,\u201d he says, \u201cyou have to have a solid plan about how to develop those assets, how best to use the talents of those people in order to further data-driven decision-making throughout the organisation. What we do is we take our analysts and we deploy them in specific areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our analysts is in the sports science area, we have one in player development, some in scouting. They do a lot of travelling, they interact directly with people in those fields; they\u2019re with our coordinators, scouts. In fact, one of our analysts, RJ Walsh, was in uniform for a day this year at Spring Training. The coaches were so impressed with some of the information that he had brought and all the things he was contributing that they wanted to reward him. He was out there with the coaches participating on the same level; and that\u2019s what we really want to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to embed people throughout the organisation. We don\u2019t want to sit in an isolated ivory tower with email sending out spreadsheets and bar graphs. That\u2019s not compelling and it\u2019s not useful and we really want to make the biggest impact that we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be compelling<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Texas Rangers analytics department has a core principle: be compelling. \u201cIt\u2019s such an important part of what we do that it often gets overlooked,\u201d observes Murray. \u201cYou can\u2019t just hand a stack of Excel sheets to a coach and slap it on his desk without any information or anything like that because the next day when you walk in there it\u2019s going to be in the garbage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to understand how people learn, you have to figure out what is compelling to them, data visualisations, having those conversations, making it into a story that you can turn into actions and decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the right method is employed Murray and his colleagues possess the means to challenge conventional thinking, as was the case when his first defensive algorithm proved such a game changer back in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne area where convention has been challenged, the big one over the past five years has been defensive positioning,\u201d he told the Leaders Performance Institute backstage. \u201cIt\u2019s the most visible on the field and defenders are not standing in what you would call your straight-up defence as they have going back to the 1800s. You\u2019re seeing much more dynamic positioning, players moving in between pitches, knowing what the pitcher is going to throw, knowing what the situation is, where the runners are, who\u2019s on base, who\u2019s hitting; everyone of those bits of information are accounted for on a very granular pitch by pitch level, and it\u2019s affecting where the defender should stand; and that\u2019s really challenged traditional baseball ideas. It\u2019s been a very visible changing of the guard in terms of what we value and what goes into where our defenders stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back onstage, Murray shares the story of a defensive algorithm that gave the Rangers an edge during the 2015 season. \u201cI developed that algorithm,\u201d he says. \u201cWe taught coaches where the defenders needed to stand at any given point on the field, hitter matchups, pitcher matchups, what was the way to maximise the number of \u2018outs\u2019 you got, reduce the number of runs the opponent got, and hopefully lead to more wins.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was, however, a risk of Murray and Co. stepping on the toes of coaches who had been in the game for decades. \u201cThere were definitely challenges along the way,\u201d he admits. \u201cThis had never been something that was automated before, it was something that coaches talked about and I wasn\u2019t trying to replace any of that functionality – I was trying to augment it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results were there for all to see as the Rangers won their division and made the playoffs. \u201cThroughout 2015 we were doing analysis the entire time on how much value the algorithm was bringing and we decided it was roughly 182 outs over the course of the season, which is roughly 1.1 outs per game. You\u2019re talking about an additional out and you only get 27 of them per game and you\u2019re adding one on top of it by us being in the correct positions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray notes that the confidence and trust of the coaches and players comes into its own at clutch moments during the season. \u201cWe were making a late run and as we make the playoffs you start to see people get a bit jittery.\u201d They might have been following Murray\u2019s suggestions all year long but in the heat of the moment, look to revert to a previous method. \u201cThat\u2019s where we start to build that trust and that buy-in,\u201d observes Murray. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about the pitching coordinator, the infield coordinator and we\u2019re trying to come up with a plan to minimise the damage that can be done by undoing an entire season\u2019s worth of work that\u2019s worked so well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the thing about baseball. Anyone can win a single game and you can do everything you can to maximise your value within that one game.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Further insight<\/strong><\/p>\n

Summit Session: Decision Making & Prediction in Atlanta\u2019s Premier Bank & Elite Sport<\/a><\/p>\n

How Manchester City Translate Data into Meaningful Interventions<\/a><\/p>\n

Leaders Virtual Roundtables: Balancing Data & Intuition<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Murray, Director of Baseball Analytics at the Texas Rangers, explains why data in the right hands can tip the balance between winning and losing in your favour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1151,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[23],"pathway":[],"topic":[],"sport":[],"class_list":["post-1150","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-innovation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Texas Rangers: When an Analytics Department is In-Tune with a Team\u2019s Key Stakeholders - Performance Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/texas-rangers-analytics-department\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Texas Rangers: When an Analytics Department is In-Tune with a Team\u2019s Key Stakeholders - 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