The Nationals nationals-journal/wp/2014/10/24/nationals-expand-analytics-department-with-promotions-and-additions/”>expanded their analytics staff with hires and promotions:

The Nationals promoted former director of baseball operations Adam Cromie to assistant general manager and bumped his top assistant Sam Mondry-Cohen to director of research and baseball analysis. They also promoted Mike DeBartolo to manager of baseball research and analysis and hired two more analysts.

“We’ve got ourselves a full-fledged analytical staff, which has grown,” Rizzo said. “The brainpower in that group is amazing – extremely intelligent people, some Ivy Leaguers and great minds.”

Cromie started as an intern with the Nationals in 2007 and, over the years, slowly built the infrastructure for the Nationals’ database, a virtual warehouse with scouting and statistical dossiers of every player in baseball. Mondry-Cohen, a Penn graduate who once worked as a clubbie in the San Francisco Giants’ visiting clubhouse, was hired full-time in 2010 after an internship.

Rizzo uses all the information available:

Cromie, Mondry-Cohen and DeBartolo mine and sort all manner of information, study and create advanced statistics and lend a different perspective to the Nationals’ front office. While Rizzo is a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of scouts, he has great respect for the role Cromie and Mondry-Cohen have played.

“I’ve always been a big proponent of it,” Rizzo said. “It’s important enough that we increased that department. It’s a hugely important aspect of roster construction and building up a franchise. You combine that with some of the finest evaluators and scouts out in the field, I think you have the best of both worlds.”

Indeed. The Nationals finished with the best record in the National League in two of the last three seasons.