{"644484":{"#nid":"644484","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Data Analytics are Key to Baseball Star Michael Guldberg\u0027s Athletic, Academic Pursuits","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EWritten by David Mitchell\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EMichael Guldberg\u0026nbsp;has a knack for numbers. Just glance at his stat line as a three-year member of the Georgia Tech baseball team.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EHe has\u0026nbsp;a\u0026nbsp;.374 career batting average and 119 hits in three seasons\u0026nbsp;\u0026mdash;\u0026nbsp;only one of which was a full season. After battling injuries in his first two seasons with the Yellow Jackets,\u0026nbsp;he was off to one of the best starts in team history when it comes to batting average.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EOver the course of his\u0026nbsp;athletic\u0026nbsp;career in Atlanta the numbers followed\u0026nbsp;Guldberg, leaving no secret as to why he was\u0026nbsp;drafted\u0026nbsp;in the third round of the Major League Baseball first-year player\u0026rsquo;s draft by the Oakland Athletics\u0026nbsp;in June 2020.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBut\u0026nbsp;it\u0026rsquo;s\u0026nbsp;not just the numbers on the field that resonate with\u0026nbsp;Guldberg, a student in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). Early in his academic career at Georgia Tech, he took\u0026nbsp;a programming with Python class (CS 1301),\u0026nbsp;a requirement for\u0026nbsp;the\u0026nbsp;major.\u0026nbsp;For the first time he came across programming languages and data analytics, and the dots between academics and athletics instantly connected.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ESince then, Guldberg\u0026rsquo;s\u0026nbsp;interest\u0026nbsp;has\u0026nbsp;grown.\u0026nbsp;In the summer of 2019, unable to\u0026nbsp;participate in\u0026nbsp;baseball workouts because he was still recovering from\u0026nbsp;an\u0026nbsp;injury, he\u0026nbsp;accepted\u0026nbsp;a data scientist internship\u0026nbsp;with Terbium Labs in Baltimore. There, he worked in dark web data monitoring, using Python scripts to scrape the dark web\u0026nbsp;to\u0026nbsp;identify\u0026nbsp;credit card or identity fraud.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EBack at Tech, Guldberg\u0026nbsp;eventually declared\u0026nbsp;data analytics\u0026nbsp;as his\u0026nbsp;ISyE\u0026nbsp;concentration\u0026nbsp;\u0026mdash;\u0026nbsp;a natural route for a baseball player who, throughout his career, will\u0026nbsp;encounter a vast repository of data.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EData analytics as a field has become almost synonymous with baseball. From the use of sabermetrics to charting impacts of infield shifts to decision trees that identify the probability a pitcher will throw a certain pitch in a given count, the numbers in the sport are endless\u0026nbsp;\u0026mdash;\u0026nbsp;a perfect hook for a player interested in the field.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;I kind of understand it on both sides,\u0026rdquo; Guldberg said. \u0026ldquo;More so on the baseball side, and I\u0026rsquo;m working to understand it on the back end now too.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Every game we have a hitter\u0026rsquo;s meeting beforehand, and that\u0026rsquo;s the time we use to watch video and see their sprays of where they throw pitches and how often. What I like is getting more into the analytics side, seeing the trees of an 0-0 count, then 0-1 or 1-0 the other way. You can see how pitchers attack\u0026nbsp;hitters and\u0026nbsp;alter your approach in response.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EGuldberg said that he could see himself working as a data analyst or in a front office for a\u0026nbsp;major\u0026nbsp;league team down the road.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;I think that\u0026rsquo;s kind of right up my alley to be honest,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;The more I get educated and play baseball and\u0026nbsp;am\u0026nbsp;around it, it seems like a good direction to go in.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EGuldberg\u0026nbsp;has both\u0026nbsp;the athletic\u0026nbsp;and academic\u0026nbsp;backgrounds\u0026nbsp;for it, having been named a\u0026nbsp;First-Team\u0026nbsp;Academic All-American last year.\u0026nbsp;He is\u0026nbsp;only the fourth Georgia Tech baseball player to receive that honor.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAfter his baseball career comes to an end, of course. And that may be a\u0026nbsp;ways\u0026nbsp;down the road yet.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EMichael Guldberg has a knack for numbers. Just glance at his stat\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nline as a three-year member of the Georgia Tech baseball team.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Michael Guldberg has a knack for numbers. Just glance at his stat  line as a three-year member of the Georgia Tech baseball team."}],"uid":"35680","created_gmt":"2021-02-18 22:29:39","changed_gmt":"2021-02-23 19:01:41","author":"ehall46","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2021-02-18T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2021-02-18T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"644481":{"id":"644481","type":"image","title":"Michael Guldberg","body":null,"created":"1613684942","gmt_created":"2021-02-18 21:49:02","changed":"1614012784","gmt_changed":"2021-02-22 16:53:04","alt":"Michael Guldberg","file":{"fid":"244691","name":"Data Analytics are Key to Baseball Star Michael Guldberg\u0027s Athletic, Academic Pursuits.png","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/Data%20Analytics%20are%20Key%20to%20Baseball%20Star%20Michael%20Guldberg%27s%20Athletic%2C%20Academic%20Pursuits.png","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/Data%20Analytics%20are%20Key%20to%20Baseball%20Star%20Michael%20Guldberg%27s%20Athletic%2C%20Academic%20Pursuits.png","mime":"image\/png","size":325333,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/Data%20Analytics%20are%20Key%20to%20Baseball%20Star%20Michael%20Guldberg%27s%20Athletic%2C%20Academic%20Pursuits.png?itok=ekX5PCd-"}}},"media_ids":["644481"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39541","name":"Systems"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:swundersmith3@gatech.edu\u0022\u003EShelley Wunder-Smith\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EH. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}