The revolution is over. The last of the old guard has given in. Earlier this month, The Athletic reported that the LA Angels have hired Kevin Ferris to be the team’s new Director of Research and Development. The signing of Ferris, who was one of the Tampa Bay Rays’ research and development assistants, marks the end of an era for the Angels, who are famously one of the least sabermetrically inclined organizations in baseball.
Ferris cut his teeth in perhaps the most analytics-driven organization in the Major Leagues. A graduate of Montana State University-Bozeman, he majored in Mathematics and Statistics, and was big-brained enough to intern at NASA’s Jet Propulson Lab as an undergraduate.