Hokie ClubBLACKSBURG – Virginia Tech head baseball coach John Szefc announced today the hiring of Kyle Sarazin as the Hokies' Director of Player Development. Sarazin, a recent graduate of Elon University, comes to Blacksburg with strong credentials in the field of statistics and analytics.
His responsibilities at Tech will primarily focus on assisting the staff with coaching and development strategies, which includes technology enhancement and opponent scouting, while also providing administrative and recruiting support.
"We're really thankful to our administration for giving us the resources to have a director of player development position in our baseball program and we've chosen to use it for baseball analytics," Szefc said. "With Kyle coming in, it will help us dramatically in this area with how he can evaluate the technology we have in the new ballpark – Trackman, Blast Motion, Synergy – all the different technologies that are now available in professional and college baseball.
"Kyle has really in-depth experience in that area and is currently working with USA Baseball after graduating from Elon. He's in Florida right now and will be joining us in July. He will be a big-time addition to our coaching staff as far as being able to analyze information which will help our coaches prepare our guys for practices and games. Having this position on our staff is a really big step in the right direction with where we want to take this program as we continue to build our player personal and everything else within the program."
Sarazin earned his degree from Elon in Sport and Event Management with a minor in statistics. At the school, he was the Director of Analytics and Video Coordination with the Elon baseball program, who posted a 19-5 record in the Colonial Athletic Association this past season and advanced to the title game of the CAA Championship.
Under his direction, Sarazin led a group of students in collecting, cleaning, analyzing and transforming data into visualizations for coaches to assist in the development of current student-athletes. He also helped generate project ideas to help serve as reinforcement tools.
He is also currently interning with USA Baseball as a Trackman Data and Operations Coordinator, working directly with the coaches of the 18U team and its director Frank Jagoda. His primary responsibility is compiling his own data reports with the use of scouting information to aid in the effort in choosing the top 20 high school baseball players in the United States to go and compete in South Korea at the World Championships at the end of the summer.
In Florida, he's at the MLB Prospect Development Pipeline League at IMG Academy, a three-week experience where USA Baseball will pick 40 of the 80 players to move on to the National Team trials in August. The players are getting a chance to develop and learn from former MLB players such as Gerald Laird and Andy Pettitte, as well as accomplished college coaches such as Gregg Ritchie of George Washington, who has a wealth of experience with the White Sox and Pirates on the hitting side, and Jack Leggett, the former longtime coach of Clemson and current National Team manager.
"I first want to thank Coach John Szefc and his staff for this opportunity" Sarazin said. "When I was going through the interview process, I was thoroughly impressed with the university's commitment to the baseball program in recent years, the culture the current staff has built, and how stunning the campus is in general."
"My main goal is to help Tech's current and future student-athletes put themselves in the best position for success on the baseball field. This can be done through straightforward visualizations that reinforce coaching philosophies or studies to further understand where trends and advantages lie at the ACC level. I am excited to make an impact in this position by helping build buy-in to the player development cycle and helping the coaching staff take Hokie Baseball to the next level."
Sarazin also worked a pair of analytic internships with both the Boston Bruins and the Pawtucket Red Sox, and he was also a member of the Baseball Statistics & Analytics Club while in school. He was part of the March 2007-winning presentation at the Society of American Baseball Research Diamond Dollars competition, judged by members of MLB team analytics departments, which took 10 years' worth of data (six million data points) and transformed it into a user friendly input-output system.