Up at Bat: Tom Tippett, Senior Analyst for the Boston Red Sox
September 8, 2016
Careers in sports analytics are evolving faster than athletes can run bases or make tackles. We sat down with Tom Tippett to discuss his work as a senior analyst for the Boston Red Sox and how he helped the team make crucial decisions about players and games. For Tom, baseball analytics was a dream job. Baseball is complex, and has a long history of data collection, so the sport makes a natural pair with statistics.
Practice Makes Perfect
When we asked Tom what a “typical” day at work was like, he laughed and said, “What’s typical is that it’s not typical!” The rise and fall of the baseball season largely drives the job. Understanding player performance is a key part of Tom’s role on the Red Sox. The data Tom studies on each player’s batting, running, fielding and pitching all help the coaches better understand past player performance as well as predict future performance. “It’s hard but there is a really big pay-off,” said Tom of the process. He and the analytics team are also heavily involved in determining acquisition decisions, tracking and analyzing player performance long before the Red Sox even express an interest in a new team member.
A Field of Rising Stars
When Tom was starting his career, however, you would be hard pressed to find sports teams with full-fledged analytics departments. He initially came on with the Red Sox as a consultant, and at that time he only knew of a few others in sports analytics as a whole. Today, it’s a completely different playing field, pun intended, with possibilities spanning virtually every professional sport known to man.
In part, the rise in Big Data has sparked the growth of sports analysis, just like the growth we’re seeing in statistics careers everywhere. Tom believes new sources of data in the medical and training arenas will support advanced research into performance improvement and injury prevention.
Sports analysis crosses passion for statistics, strategy and sport. For Tom Tippett baseball is the best fit, but the field of sports analytics is growing rapidly, and opportunity exists in virtually every kind of playing field. Read more about Tom Tippett from our friends at the Boston Globe.
Interested in learning more about what sport statisticians do and how the field of sports analytics could be the right career choice for you? Join us as two sports statisticians tell us what the data is like behind the scenes, and the many ways their work informs decisions of professional teams on a daily basis. Learn more about our upcoming webinar here.
Since we last spoke with him, Tom has left the Boston Red Sox and is currently an Independent Consultant for Tippett Analytics.
Reviewed by the This is Statistics Team 06/2023
Related Posts
Hindsight Is 2023 for Former Statistics and Data Science Students
It’s back-to-school season! Gear up for the upcoming semester and consider diving into the captivating world of statistics and data science. Looking for diverse job opportunities that span across every industry? Look no further! With a variety of graduate programs and jobs, now is a great time for students to become data scientists and statisticians….
Elizabeth J. Kelly: “Statistics is for Adrenaline Junkies”
Elizabeth J. Kelly has always loved math, and as a professional statistician at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and a recreational rock climber, Elizabeth is an avid thrill-seeker who enjoys a challenge. “Math reminds me of climbing, including the need to focus, problem solve and persevere. I guess I ended up in statistics because I…