The weekend of March 14, Branson participated in the Diamond Dollars Case Competition at the 2025 SABR Analytics Conference. The team, led by Spencer Weinberg ‘26 and Theo Zak ‘25, took home a win for the fourth year in a row and the first overall win for the first time.
The competition is hosted annually at Arizona State University and is one of the largest baseball analytics conferences in the nation.
Weinberg, Zak, Remy DeJean ‘26, Zach Redlin ‘25 and Christopher Mao ‘26 represented Branson in the competition, where high school and college students prepare a presentation on a chosen baseball operations decision. Among teams from Vanderbilt University, Syracuse University and New York University, Branson was the only high school team to make the podium.
Inheriting the Branson SABR club from Wilson Wendt ‘24, Weinberg and Zak spearheaded the planning aspect for the competition.
“Theo and I organized the club, and we had a few meetings to see what interest was out there,” Weinberg said.
Preparation for the conference started on campus.
“Around a week before the competition, the tournament organizer sent out a prompt and we had that week to make a 20-minute presentation,” Weinberg said. “We turned in our presentation the next Wednesday and flew to Phoenix to present in front of judges from MLB organizations.”
For their presentation, the Branson team chose the topic of relief pitcher performance. Relief pitchers are pitchers who enter games after the starting pitcher is removed, typically for poor performance, fatigue or strategy. A relief pitcher’s performance is therefore defined by their ability to pitch effectively in these situations.
There are a number of metrics used to determine relief pitcher performance, but the team focused on redefining the save stat.
“We thought about normalizing each situation a pitcher can be put in,” Weinberg said. “Using our stat, we could contextualize a pitcher’s performance with external factors besides just how the pitcher pitches.”
In addition to winning an award, Branson’s team of five was also chosen to present in front of the entire conference.
“That was a really interesting experience because I’ve never presented anything in front of that many people before,” Weinberg said. “It was a good experience for all of our public speaking and presentation skills.”
Beyond the competition, any baseball fanatic would have loved to attend the SABR conference. “It was a fun experience to get to talk to MLB executives,” Weinberg said.
