Mets Hire Ben Zauzmer to Oversee R&D Department

In his press conference, Sandy Alderson announced the have Mets hired Ben Zauzmer away from the Los Angeles Dodgers to oversee their R&D department. Zauzmer graduated Harvard in 2015 with a degree in Applied Math and Computer Science and has worked for the Dodgers ever since.

Martin Kessler of WBUR did a profile on Zauzmer back in 2019. While on a road trip with his father, Zauzmer fell in love with baseball by listening the audio book for “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis. According to the article, “Ben had decided he wanted to work in baseball.” He worked his way up from an intern with the Phillies to the Dodgers R&D department.

The article also notes his close relationship with Justin Turner, who is still a free agent. Turner was one of the first poster child for the launch angle and swing change. Zauzmer is an analytics guy so naturally, they worked together, right?

The answer is yes, but their partnership had nothing to do with baseball. Turner and Brandon McDaniel, the Dodgers director of athletic development and performance science, recruited Ben to help them with their fantasy football draft. Turner and McDaniel wanted to use Zauzmer as their secret weapon to beat Farhan Zaidi, the Dodgers GM from 2015-2018 and now the President of Baseball Ops for the Giants, in their league.

Here is a video of the draft and Ben Zauzmer will appear at about the 1:00 mark.

In addition to baseball, Zauzmer is the author of a book, “Oscarmetrics.” The book uses math to predict Oscar winners. Here is a profile on the book from the Harvard Alumni page.

In the profile, Zauzmer had this to say about using analytics in baseball, “It is a game of trying to blend the conclusions we get from mathematical sources with non-math information to make the best decisions.”