Introduction

Hi. My name is Brad Null. I recently completed a Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering (Operations Research, Systems Engineering, Quantitative Analysis, and Optimization, if any of those terms mean anything to you). My thesis was on Stochastic Modeling and Optimization in Baseball. So a better title for this site might have been Baseball Stochastics, but that isn't nearly as catchy.

For those of you that may be unfamiliar with any or all of the above terms, they translate to striving for better ways to understand random events so that we can better predict what is going to happen, better understand the likelihood of different things happening, and better decide what actions to take when faced with all of this uncertainty.

I've spent much of the last few years creating a unified model that allows analysis of any random variable related to the game of baseball. For example, the model attempts to predict how players are likely to perform this season, this month, tomorrow; who is likely to win the pennant or an upcoming series; and which players are due for an upswing or a downturn.

The goal of this website is to provide a window into the predictions generated by my model. We've already posted preliminary forecasts of player and team performances for the 2010 MLB season. As the season unfolds, we will be updating all of these numbers regularly. We will post predictions on a game-by-game basis for all you gamblers out there. Also, watch for aditional in depth articles and analysis on the season, for example:

• Who is overperforming?
• Who is due to improve?
• Which teams should bunt more?
• Which teams should change their lineups?
• What are the best trades?

Feel free to contact me (brad at baseballcalculus.com) and let me know what you think about the analysis and what you are interested in seeing. The good thing about these models is that they can be applied to just about any prediction or optimization problem relating to the game that you might imagine.

Thanks for visiting,

Brad