While much of the allure of sports comes from watching the game, the game wouldn't be possible without the work of student managers behind the scenes. The Dartmouth sat down with two members of the Dartmouth Baseball analytics team, Caleb Lewis ’28 and Aaron “AJ” Sikora ’28 to discuss their work providing data on pitching statistics for members of the baseball team.
Introduce yourselves and your role with sports analytics.
CL: I'm Caleb Lewis, Class of 2028. I’m a student manager and part of the data analytics team for Dartmouth Baseball.
Usually, we’ll attend practices and most of the games — at least the ones at home — and keep the books for games. We’ll collect data on pitching statistics, and use that to advise the coaches on management decisions.
AS: I'm AJ Sakura, also a sophomore.
That covers most of it. Additionally, the team will have scrimmages in the winter, and after scrimmages, we put together some summary stats about the pitching. We give a summary of table stats for pitchers, and the pitchers themselves can look at it and get an idea of how they did, as well as the coaches.
How do you guys get into baseball and sports analytics? What’s your favorite part about the position?
CL: I’ve played baseball since I was six years old, all the way through high school. I really like baseball, so I thought I would want to be involved with it in some way. At Dartmouth, I wanted an outlet for my baseball interests, and that took form in the analytics team. As a government major, I feel like I don’t often get to do quantitative, data-analysis stuff, which I am interested in. This job lets me pursue some of my passions that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. I also just think it’s fun to be on the field sometimes, especially at spring games on a nice day.
AS: I played baseball in high school. I was a bit late to the game. I started seriously playing baseball in eighth grade, and then COVID-19 happened, so I started playing on the JV team in ninth grade. I was later than most people, but I had been watching baseball for a couple years before that and just started to get really into it at that point. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to, at the very least, do some kind of baseball analytics stuff, just for fun. I’m hoping to do it as a career, eventually. Before I got to Dartmouth, I talked to the baseball coach at the time, and he agreed to let me join the other students doing analytics. My favorite aspect of it is just staying around baseball. I still watch baseball all the time, but actually being around a team is super fun.
Have you both formed strong relationships with members of the team?
CL: I think just being out at practice, you get to know the guys a little bit. You definitely are not talking to them about their stats a lot. I think it’s more for the coaches than the players.
Do you have any goals for the future of the baseball analytics team?
CL: We’d love to have some new analysts for the Dartmouth Baseball team.
AS: I also think there’s room for incorporating statistics on the hitting side of things. As of right now, the vast majority of what we’re doing is related to pitching, which is cool, but I think there’s more that we could do for hitting as well.
Yeah, as long as you like baseball and you want to do this job, that’s great. We would love to have new people.
Caleb Lewis is a staff sports writer for The Dartmouth. He was not involved in writing or editing this article.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
