‘Big data’ lies behind victory of baseball games; It was big data that lied behind the success story of Samsung Lions which was the first to win three consecutive South Korea’s baseball pennants

October 25, 2013 Leave a comment

‘Big data’ lies behind victory of baseball games

Hong Jang-won

2013.10.24 17:59:13

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The 140-year history of Major League Baseball (MLB) demonstrates that ‘big data has been at the core of baseball.’ There is even a belief among baseball clubs that ‘no big data, no victory.’  This is supported by an example of Oakland Athletics which left a profound mark in the major league’s history in the early 2000s. Billy Beane, who became Oakland Athletics’ general manager in 1999 and deputy manager Peter Brand, defied conventions and watched a baseball game only from the perspective of big data. Their analysis based on big data found that the biggest determinant of the victory was on-base percentage. At low prices, the two scouted players whose value was unappreciated in the market, but boast higher on-base percentage, opening the new chapter of the major league. It was big data that lied behind the success story of Samsung Lions which was the first to win three consecutive South Korea’s baseball pennants. Former Samsung SDS president Kim In ordered employees to establish big data solution ‘STABIS’ right after serving as the president of Samsung Lions at the end of 2010. The solution gathers data on pitching quality, features of batter, weaknesses of opposition team to analyze the interrelation of the elements. This is why people say the Korean Series which opened Thursday is all about the battle over big data.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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