For all the many mentions and questions about analytics, player development, and the Orioles’ new data-driven era on Saturday afternoon at the Baltimore Convention Center, there was one moment that stuck out. And it was when recently hired Orioles assistant general manager Sig Mejdal, a former NASA engineer turned baseball front-office pioneer, took to the stage in front of hundreds of fans as part of a question-and-answer session titled, “Using Analytics Across Baseball Ops.”

For 35 minutes at the team’s annual preseason FanFest, the 53-year-old Mejdal (pronounced my-dell) sat on a brown wooden stool, the same one from which his boss and longtime co-worker, the O’s GM Mike Elias had earlier described the broad, long-term vision for the organization’s rebuild. Now Mejdal was in the spotlight, wearing a gray suit with a bright orange tie and black shoes, and he articulated details of what the presence of this new Ivy League and computer science-trained leadership regime means here and now—how blending numbers-based facts and analysis with the human nature of America’s pastime can work.

And Mejdal described the approach as only a true believer in the scientific method and the power of technology could do. He’s a guy who worked as a blackjack dealer in college, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical and mechanical engineering, and earned two master’s degrees—one in mathematical modeling and another in human-factors engineering (whatever that is). As he spoke, the day felt more like a Big Data business conference than a celebration and promotion of spring training kicking off in a few weeks.

“A lot of things that were just below the human’s ability to sense have now been revealed,” Mejdal said, as he detailed how it’s possible to use high-resolution video and radar to record things like velocity, location, and spin rate of a baseball thrown by a pitcher. “What you see as an exceptional slider, or a wonderful fastball, can be quantified. Instead of saying, ‘He just has good stuff,’ we’re able to describe the stuff to three decimal points and begin to see the specific idiosyncratic behaviors of the different hitters, and how they succeed or struggle against pitches that aren’t just called ‘a slider,’ but instead a pitch of 83 miles per hour with 18 inches of horizontal movement, and 1.5 inches of depth.”

Got all that? Mejdal said it without a pause. He’s been doing this sort of quantitative analysis, and finding data-driven ways to give teams an edge, almost as long as anybody in professional baseball, save for the early 2000s staff of the Oakland Athletics, who were featured in the book and movie Moneyball. That tale inspired Mejdal to consider his current career path and ultimately quit his job engineering for astronauts.

As was written in the 2005 book Fantasyland by Sam Walker, in which Mejdal was featured, he once worked in a windowless office on an U.S. Air Force base in California called the Blue Cube, a communications nerve center from which all satellite transmissions are routed and a security clearance is needed for entry.

That was 15 years ago, long before the numbers guys became fashionable hires in baseball, if not no-brainers to small-market owners like John and Louis Angelos looking to build sustainable winners. At the time, Mejdal, who grew up in San Jose the son of a career Army officer, and his wife, a nurse from Colombia, worked a hotel lobby in New Orleans during MLB’s winter meetings. He handed out packets of information to general managers about why teams should hire him. On the laptop in his backpack, he carried with him data of every player who wore a uniform since the Korean War, and promised he could provide previously unrealized truths with his analysis and ideas. He didn’t mention he hadn’t played baseball since Little League.

Mejdal landed with the St. Louis Cardinals 18 months later, a hire that not only gave him a dream job but also his first professional baseball lesson: “Even if it doesn’t seem broke, you fix it.”

“The owner of the Cardinals, at a time when they were winning 100 games, at a time when they weren’t persons like myself in baseball, brought in Jeff Luhnow [as general manager],” an MBA from Northwestern who hadn’t played baseball since high school. He hired Mejdal, and Elias, a former Yale pitcher, as a 24-year-old scout. Along with implementing an international scouting operation (just like the O’s are currently trying to do), they were key in developing several players on a team that won 2011 World Series.

“From day one of our incoming draft classes, they were taught and shown how we’re going to fix them,” Mejdal said. “Human factors are involved, there’s a sensitivity to it, but the underlying goal is to fix everything we can, because we have a good idea the opposition is trying to do that too.”

In seven years in St. Louis, Mejdal was credited with developing an analytics model that helped the team draft more future major leaguers than any other organization during that span. In 2012, he followed Luhnow to the Houston Astros, where Mejdal became the inventively named Director of Decision Sciences. There, as the right-hand man to Elias, Mejdal was instrumental in the development on the Astros farm system and turnaround from three straight seasons of at least 106 losses to a World Series championship in 2017.

Next stop on the success train? Hopefully Baltimore, where Elias took over leadership of O’s personnel two months ago, and brought the guts, ideas, and ethos of those previous stat-driven revolutions with him.

“Over the years, as we add some things to our draft and scouting process, as we bring in a lot of the analytics that Sig and I have really developed together for the draft, across two different organizations, the depth in our system will benefit greatly,” Elias said Saturday. “You’ll see the product of that the next couple years.”

That’s right, this may take a while. Elias and new manager Brandon Hyde are preaching patience. But in the immediate was Saturday’s stage scene, where Mejdal, sitting next to recently hired director of international scouting Koby Perez, fielded questions from the most dedicated fans on a variety of topics. And they gave insightful, honest answers and lessons that could be applied to a business or classroom as much as they will be to the Orioles clubhouse.

A few current and past players, like pitcher Paul Fry and Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, were even listening on Mejdal. He spoke about everything from how to start learning about analytics (go to baseball-reference.com—that’s what we use, too) to advice for college students interested in the field (you can’t go wrong with a computer science education), to the nuances of gathering, analyzing, and sharing usable statistical information to players and coaches.

On how the O’s analytics department is developing, Mejdal said:
“When we came here seven weeks ago, the analytics department consisted of zero analysts. I don’t know what the ideal number is but I’m pretty confident it’s not zero.”

On whose responsibility it is that players or coaches use the information provided to them:
“It’s the analyst’s responsibility to ensure that whoever the customer is—whether it’s the coach, the scouting director, the GM, the director of international, or a player—that they understand what the insight is and that you’ve done all you can to present it and to them. You’re asking them to change and that doesn’t just come with a printout from the computer saying, ‘Here, go change.’”

On what information analysts can provide to a player:
“We can provide a general behavior. ‘This is generally where you struggle. This is generally where the pitcher is going to throw at this point.’ It’s a model. It falls short of what’s going to happen in real life. But it’s still going to be useful.”

On how to keep the Orioles ahead of the analytics curve:
“We’re going to fill our department with the most skilled and innovative analysts and developers we can find, and we’re going to create a culture where a big chunk of their time is directed at, ‘What is the next big thing?’ Is it going to be computer vision, some artificial intelligence, something less sexy than that? We’re going to do our best to position ourselves to be better than any other club out there.”

On if the Orioles will have a better season than last year’s franchise-worst 47-115 record:
“I’m not going to make that prediction sitting up here in front of all of you, but what I can tell you is there in an amazing amount of young talent not just at the major league level, but throughout the system, and the future of the Orioles is right in front of you.”

It’s a new era, indeed. Could you imagine former manager Buck Showalter or GM Dan Duquette discussing artificial intelligence? At FanFest over the last several years, all they did was talk about playoffs. But for all the seemingly programmatic talk about customers, models, and data sets from the new leadership, there’s also a very interesting, human part of Mejdal’s story that blends the traditional and new-age ways of approaching team-building.

Two summers ago, Mejdal spent the season as an assistant coach for one of the Astros’ minor league teams, the Tri-City ValleyCats of the New York-Penn League, based in Troy, New York. The idea was to interact with minor league players in the flesh, to see what they really needed, and how best to turn office concepts into baseball field realities. It was similar what Mejdal did in his previous life in engineering.

“We could go to lunch and come up with wonderful ideas about how to help the minor leagues, but we’re ignorant to a large degree of really what it’s like,” he said. “There’s no better way to see what it’s like than be in a bus and bad hotels for 82 days.”

And so he did, road-tripping to games against teams like the Vermont Lake Monsters, Lowell Spinners, and Aberdeen IronBirds. He learned things about the game he hadn’t realized before, like how little one-on-one time players and coaches experience during the season. Then last year he roved among other minor league teams, doing the same. The New York Times chronicled the story, and accompanying photos showed Mejdal—wearing jersey No. 21, in honor of his college blackjack dealer career—in the dugout and on the field, where he coached first base.

“It was bizarre, but it was wonderful,” Mejdal said, “and a great learning experience.”

That’s a statement that carries extra weight when spoken by a former rocket scientist. If Mejdal can still learn, so can we.

“Has anyone seen Manny?” relief pitcher Darren O’Day joked on the kids’ press conference stage late in the day, in response to a teenage girl’s question about Manny Machado’s whereabouts at Orioles FanFest.
 

It was close to 5 p.m. Saturday, and most of the more than 11,000 people who attended the annual rite of the approaching baseball season had left the Baltimore Convention Center with their free giveaways, purchased merchandise and player autographs. Vendors began to pack up. Kids headed home with memories, perhaps of asking a question to players like Adam Jones or manager Buck Showalter—and getting a funny answer, like this one:
 

(Buck also said he’s recently started to watch the Netflix series, The Crown. Nice! Jones said his favorite candy is Reese’s—to much applause—and that his most-liked transformer is Bubblebee. “He’s coddling and nurturing.”)  

Though Machado wasn’t present, the 25-year-old was nonetheless a big topic of conversation, too. First, just the fact he and buddy Jonathan Schoop weren’t there for undisclosed reasons ruffled fans’ feathers. Then Showalter casually mentioned to reporters that Machado will switch positions in 2018, to shortstop, and Tim Beckham will move to third base. The switch seems to acquiesce to Machado’s desire to showcase his skills at shortstop ahead of his impending (and unfortunate) free-agent status once this season is over.  

About that. The dissolution of the six-year marriage between the Orioles and their prized homegrown talent — who’s brought us so many great moments — appears inevitable. Especially when you hear this: “Stranger things have happened,” Showalter told fans Saturday. “We may sign him.”  

Machado, who the O’s would trade now in exchange for a big haul, including some starting pitchers, likely will command mind-shattering and life-changing money on the free-agent market, and be promised a bright future from many teams across Major League Baseball, two things mid-market teams like the O’s can’t necessarily do. General manager Dan Duquette uttered the words “those teams up North,” and spoke about the market advantages (i.e. more money) that they have—No, Yankees, no!—when answering question about what fans could do to convince O’s ownership to keep and sign players of Machado’s caliber long term.  

Alas, at least we have Buck’s pearls of wisdom and plenty of other fun to get us through Manny’s apparent lame duck year. 

A few other nuggets from FanFest:  

• Jones, whose contract is also up after this season, said he’d like to play six to eight more years, but that the team hasn’t approached him about a contract extension.
• Dylan Bundy, when asked if he’s wondering who will be in the starting pitching rotation with him and Kevin Gausman, said, “Yeah, definitely,” with a laugh. “We have no idea.”
• O’Day, who along with Brad Brach and Mychal Givens, is in the running to close games while the injured Zach Britton (Achilles’ tendon) is out to start the season, noted he’s growing a beard until spring training, and he’s feeling good. “I have two times dad strength now,” the 35-year-old veteran said. “I have two kids. I have a beard. I like where I’m at.” The O’s bullpen also seems to have great camaraderie. Brach said during games they play their own game, throwing balls against the bullpen wall a certain number of times to keep score of the real game. Givens said he has an assigned seat. To be a fly on the wall beyond left-centerfield for a night.
• Showalter was particularly concerned Saturday with getting sick, and he signed autographs later in the day with a container of hand sanitizer on the table with him.
• Just three weeks until pitchers and catchers report in Florida, and 60 days until Opening Day.

Five things to eat, drink, see, hear, and do with your Charm City weekend.

EAT

Jan. 28: Shrimp & Oyster Roast

Lee’s Pint & Shell, 2844 Hudson St. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. $10. 410-327-2883.

Last year, Dave Carey launched Lee’s Pint & Shell, a rebrand of the former Canton brunch staple Saute, in hopes of attracting customers to a more relaxed seafood and beer bar. Needless to say, he’s been successful as neighbors fill up the barstools and pour in for family-friendly food events like this weekend’s shrimp and oyster roast. On Sunday, jump on the bandwagon for an all-you-can-eat feast. Peel all the shrimp you can devour—steamed with onions, potatoes, and Old Bay—and slurp back local oysters on the half shell. Wash it all down with a local beer and stay for the Sunday Funday after party with DJ Nick Paros.

DRINK

Jan. 27: Black & White Party

The Assembly Room, 316-318 Guilford Ave. 8 p.m. $150. 410-396-5430.

The Pratt Contemporaries’ Black & White Party always falls in the dead of winter, yet the annual fundraiser continues to be one of the hottest social events in the city. Now in its 11th year, the party boasts its largest attendance to date as they move a new location, The Assembly Room, due to the library’s renovations. With a fresh Cuban theme, a nod to the 1950s paradise heralded by Ernest Hemingway, enjoy a brief reprieve from the cold weather with a night in Old Havana. Revel in live music, local eats, and a hefty dose of handmade cocktails—from classic daiquiris to refreshing mojitos—plus local beer from Brewer’s Art. Best of all, the evening benefits the local library system’s programs for children, teens, and adults.

SEE

Jan. 27: Orioles FanFest

Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Times & prices vary. 410-649-7008.

Opening day may be months ahead of us, but we can hardly wait to see the O’s in action. If you’re like us, don’t worry—FanFest is back to hold us over until we return to Camden Yards. On Saturday, join thousands of fans for this beloved day-long celebration of the birds. Bring the kids to chat with players, snag coveted autographs, and win some prizes. With a little luck, you might even find out what is going to happen to Manny Machado.

HEAR

Jan. 27: Classical Revolution Chamber Jam

Motor House, 120 W. North Ave. 9 p.m. Free. 410-637-8300.

There’s something extra exciting about watching a Bach performance with a beer in hand, but maybe that’s what makes the Classical Revolution experience so satisfying. Swing by The Motor House on Saturday for a night of chamber music sans the fancy concert hall—with string and woodwind music performed by local artists Yoshi Horigushi, Dorothy Couper, Patrick Quinn, and the Pique Collective. Every performance ends with an open jam session so feel free to bring your own instrument.

DO

Jan. 25-27: Polar Bear Plunge

Sandy Point State Park, 1100 E. College Pkwy., Annapolis. Thu. 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. $75. 410-242-1515.

At the end of January, thousands of shivering souls brave the Chesapeake Bay’s frigid waters to benefit the Special Olympics of Maryland. This year is no different as more than 10,000 plungers will jump into the 30-degree bay once again. Join them if you can muster up the courage to dip your toes in the icy waves or cheer on the cause to benefit statewide athletes with special needs.

Black & White Party
Jan. 27. The Assembly Room, 316-318 Guilford Ave. 8 p.m. $150. 410-396-5430. The Pratt Contemporaries’ annual Black and White Party always falls in the dead of winter, but this year, enjoy a brief reprieve from the cold weather with a night in Old Havana. With a fresh Cuban theme and a nod to the 1950s paradise heralded by Ernest Hemingway, this library benefit will feature live music, local eats, and a hefty dose of handmade cocktails (daiquiri, anyone?). Tickets go fast, as this do-good party has become a can’t-miss event of the year.

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Cyrus Chestnut Meets Warren Wolf
Jan. 12-13. An Die Musik, 409 N. Charles St., 8 p.m., 9:30 p.m. $10-27. 410-385-2638. Baltimore sons Cyrus Chestnut and Warren Wolf have not let the light fade on the city’s rich jazz scene. The pianist and vibraphonist, respectively, have brought their homegrown talents into the national spotlight, with the former being dubbed “the best jazz pianist of his generation” by Time magazine, and the latter touring and recording with the likes of New York City’s Wynton Marsalis. The two musicians will team up and return home, bringing their swinging sound to the intimate, 90-seat venue of An die Musik. At one or all four shows in Mt. Vernon, fall under the spell of Chestnut’s blues-tinged keys and Wolf’s swift, skilled vibes. 

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Lexington Market Catacombs
Jan. 13. Lexington Market, 400 W. Lexington St. 10:30 a.m. Free. 410-332-9992. They say Baltimore is a city built on tunnels, both heavily used and long-abandoned. The latter gets a little less mysterious this January with Baltimore Heritage’s guided tour of Lexington Market. Swing through the centuries-old marketplace and stop by its famous vendors, such as crab cake king Faidley’s Seafood and sweet-treat titan Berger Cookies, before journeying beneath the bustle for one of the city’s best-kept secrets. With the help of local historians, prepare to be awed by the city’s age-old catacombs, rumored to even have housed Prohibition-era distilleries.

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Martin Luther King Day Celebration
Jan. 15. Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St. 12 p.m. $5. 443-263-1800. Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 89th birthday with live performances, community talks, and arts and crafts at the African-American history and culture museum, including a step salute and freedom-square quilting party.

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LaxCon 
Jan. 19-21. Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Fri. 7 a.m.-7 p.m., Sat. 7 a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. 9 a.m.-12 p.m. $10-200. It’s no secret that Maryland’s favorite sport is lacrosse, with grown-ups still rocking their high-school pinnies and local universities coming out on top in the NCAAs. For the fourth consecutive year, whether you’re an active athlete or retired benchsitter, join your fellow laxers for this all-lax-everything event, where you can grab some gear, network with players, or hone your skills at one of the weekend’s many workshops.

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Baltimore Restaurant Week
Jan. 12-21. Locations & times vary. $20-35. 410-244-1030. As Baltimore’s food scene continues to boom, it’s hard to keep up with the ever-growing array of dining options around town. This month, make it your resolution to sample your way through the city, with more than 100 old favorites (Gertrude’s) and trendy newbies (Gunther & Co., pictured) offering discounted brunch, lunch, and dinner for 10 days.

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Polar Bear Plunge
Jan. 25-27. Sandy Point State Park, 1100 E. College Pkwy., Annapolis. Thu. 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. $75. 410-242-1515. At the end of each January, thousands of shivering souls brave the Chesapeake Bay’s frigid waters to benefit the Special Olympics of Maryland. Muster the courage to dip your toes in the icy waves, and warm your heart thinking about the 7,549 local athletes that your chilly dunk will benefit. 

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Shen Yun
Jan. 26-28. Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St. Fri. 7:30 p.m., Sat. 2 & 7:30 p.m., Sun. 1 p.m. $91-194. 410-837-7400. For one weekend, the hallowed Hippodrome stage will transform into Ancient China, also known as the Land of the Divine, as Shen Yun brings some 5,000 years of Chinese culture to life in modern-day Baltimore. Be sure to see this world-famous performance troupe, whose ancient dances, bright costumes, and mesmerizing movements have grown into a global phenomenon.

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Orioles FanFest
Jan. 27. Baltimore Convention Center, 1 W. Pratt St. Times & prices vary. 410-649-7008. mlb.com. Baseball has always been America’s great uniter—even in crazy and turbulent times—and this year proves no different. Thousands of fans will crowd the convention center for the annual Orioles FanFest. Bring the kids to chat with players, snag coveted signatures, and play games for prizes. It might be a few months until we’re back in Camden Yards, but this beloved event should hold you over until the spring. 

Those Days

January 30, 2015
South High Street

In the upstairs cabaret lounge at Germano’s in Little Italy, author Rafael Alvarez is reading a short story he wrote years ago about a retired burlesque dancer named Jean Honus, a platinum blonde who billed herself as the Jean Harlow of The Block and stripped until she was 56.

But the headliner on this Friday night is Margo Christie, who recently penned These Days, a novel inspired by her own experiences dancing on The Block in the late 1970s and ’80s. Amid clinking glasses and applause, accompanied by jazz guitarist Michael Joseph Harris, the redheaded Christie takes the floor in a vintage, sequined lace gown and feather boa. Her only concession to aging: reading glasses.

Among the passages she shares is an anecdote about the long summers on The Block, the slowest time of the year, she quickly learned. “August on The Block dragged by hot and sleepy. . . . Lenny [the bar manager] said men took their families on vacation during the summer, but will be back with an appetite for some real fun in September.”

A Denver transit bus driver for the past 14 years, she has enjoyed returning home to promote her book, which received an Amazon Breakthrough Novel award. “I’ve been having great fun, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been in a newspaper,” she says with a wry smile. “[Between dancing stints ] I worked at the Mustang Inn and the East Baltimore Guide once named me the best-looking barmaid in Highlandtown. Of course, I was 17 then. Most of the barmaids in Highlandtown were over 50.”

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Pie Crush

January 31, 2015
West Pratt Street

The only thing more exciting than an actual ballgame might be Orioles FanFest at the Baltimore Convention Center. It’s still months until Opening Day, but manager Buck Showalter is here chatting with fans. Chris Davis and Manny Machado are signing tons of autographs. Nearby, the O’s bird is stirring up trouble and posing for photos. There are batting cages, a speed gun to measure your fastball, and even vendors hawking Esskay franks.

Among the highlights is a “Know Your Teammate” segment at the packed fan forum—a kind of Newlywed Game in which Orioles players are tested on how well they know each other—followed by some real mayhem with fans volunteering to get “pied” on stage by the O’s Adam Jones, per tradition.

After Jones smashes several fans who’ve won their Dangerously Delicious pieings via a social-media contest, including one lumberjackish fan who receives a double-whammy of chocolate cream, the colorful center fielder seeks volunteers from the audience. Asking for older people in the crowd, in order to avoid having to slam a pie into the face of one of the children pressing the stage, Jones reluctantly ends up pieing a Towson great-grandmother. “He asked me, ‘Are you sure?'” says lifelong fan Pat Shaw, 77, later. “I said, ‘Show no mercy, Adam.’ But he was gentle.”

Shaw then chooses the next participant, excited 13-year-old Eryka Milanicz (wearing, naturally, an official Jones jersey), to receive the last pie in the face.

Happily pulling banana-cream pie from her hair afterward, Eryka reveals that she has a poster of No. 10 on her bedroom wall. “He doesn’t know,” she smiles, “but he’s secretly my boyfriend.”

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Beautiful Minds

February 1, 2015
Key Highway

From start to finish, the discoveries of the presenters at the American Visionary Art Museum conference, The Human Guide to Our Creative Brain, are almost too far-fetched to fathom. Keynote speaker Martine Rothblatt, for example, explains how she created Sirius XM Radio after an epiphany about satellite transmission while visiting the Seychelles, then later entered the domain of bioscience, developing a breakthrough treatment for her daughter’s life-threatening pulmonary hypertension.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Thomas McNear discusses becoming the first member of the Army’s Stargate Project—an effort to investigate psychic practices with potential military applications and the inspiration for the George Clooney film, The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Other neuroscientists, biochemists, and anatomists present research into the effect of light on astronauts; the evolution of the human smile; and biofield therapies, such as reiki.

Then there’s Jason Padgett, a self-described former “goof”—a photo shows off the mullet he once rocked—who acquired savant mathematical ability after a concussion following an attack outside a karaoke bar. He literally sees shapes in the world around him as equations now.

Still amazed by his newfound insights, Padgett recounts telling another audience not too long ago that he’d come to the realization that the angles in stealth aircraft must be prime numbers like 89 and 101 degrees, which he believes would make them harder to detect by radar. Later, he got a phone call from someone claiming to be from the National Security Agency. “The person says to me, ‘You know what you said about stealth aircraft? Well, don’t tell anyone else.’

“I don’t know if that person was from the NSA, but I called them back and asked if I was right,” he continues. “They said, ‘We can’t tell you that.'”