Ground Control

absintheofmalaise

too many flowers
Dope
SoSH Member
Mar 16, 2005
23,741
The gran facenda
Many people here are familiar with the work of Kevin Goldstein and Mike Fast and are aware that they now work for the Astros. There was an article in the Houston Chronicle on other hires that the Astros have made and on the new system, that they call Ground Control, they have designed and built from the ground up that has all of the information on scouting, contracts, player development etc. that all of their baseball people have access to on a compartmentalized basis. They use the system to help them make all of their baseball decisions.
 
 
When the Astros hired general manager Jeff Luhnow in December 2011, he had a 25-page plan he presented to owner Jim Crane. In it were details for this website - a complex, built-from-scratch database - that would be fully tailored to every one of the club's needs.
Since senior technical architect Ryan Hallahan was hired in February 2012, the database has become just about the most useful baseball tool available. Some features, like a trade analyzer, seem ripped straight from a video game.
It's one of the coolest toys the public will never play with.