Keith Woolner (born c. 1968) is an author for

Baseball Prospectus Baseball Prospectus (BP) is an organization that publishes a website, BaseballProspectus.com, devoted to the sabermetric analysis of baseball. BP has a staff of regular columnists and provides advanced statistics as well as player and team perf ...

and is the creator of the statistic

Value Over Replacement Player In baseball, value over replacement player (or VORP) is a statistic popularized by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter or pitcher contributes to their team in comparison to a replacement-level player who is an average fielder at that ...

(VORP). VORP is acknowledged by the

sabermetrics Sabermetrics, or originally SABRmetrics, is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific ques ...

community as one of the key concepts in the analysis of a player's performance and market valuation.

Education and early career

Woolner grew up in

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

as a fan of the

Boston Red Sox The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight ...

, later moving to

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

as a teenager. He earned two bachelor's degrees from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

: one in Mathematics with Computer Science, and one in Management from the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

. He also earned a master's degree in Decision Analysis from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. After graduating from MIT, Woolner worked in software development and system management (for

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

) and several start-ups in Silicon Valley; and later in product management (for SAS). During this time he maintained his avocational interest in baseball statistics and analysis. According to Woolner,

...no matter how interesting the technology or how novel the application, it was hard to get truly passionate about helping another business improve their profitability or run more efficiently. The work was intellectually stimulating but not emotionally engaging.

What did engage me was baseball statistics. I spent a lot of my free time reading online forums devoted to baseball, and I discovered that baseball statistics had moved far beyond the stats on the backs of the baseball cards I grew up with. I started designing my own customized statistics in the mid-1990s and eventually posted them on Usenet newsgroups and my own Web page.

Sabermetrician and Cleveland Indians front office

In 1998, while still employed full-time in software development and management, Woolner became a regular contributor to a fledgling

, for whom he wrote both for the annual book and the website. He also authored six chapters of Baseball Prospectus's book ''Baseball Between the Numbers''. In May 2007, Woolner announced his departure from Baseball Prospectus to join the front office of the

Cleveland Guardians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central division. Since , they have ...

as their Manager of Baseball Research & Analytics. In this role, he is "responsible for advanced objective analysis, forecasting, and strategy analysis. e is alsoworking on integrating the information from the disparate worlds of scouting and stats in a way that makes each stronger."Keith Woolner, "Aim for the Head: Aim for the Front Office,

Baseball Prospectus (May 4, 2007).

Notes

References

*Kristi Birth, "Cogito Interview: Keith Woolner, Baseball Statistician,
Cogito.org, August 22, 2008
*Rob Neyer, "The World According to VORP,
ESPN.com
February 2, 2007. *Keith Woolner, "In Person: A Career Home Run,
Science Careers: From the Journal ''Science''
January 11, 2008. {{DEFAULTSORT:Woolner, Keith Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Baseball statisticians Major League Baseball executives Cleveland Indians executives Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni MIT Sloan School of Management alumni Stanford University alumni Writers from Cleveland