No baseball team can tangibly measure the true impact of their analytics department. But most agree they were a positive contributing factor to the success of the Washington Nationals as the team increased their win total by 16.67 percent over last year. They were just three wins from a 20 percent improvement. Both numbers are significant.
Nats’ General Manager, Ani Kilambi, thinks overperforming teams “leave a trail of breadcrumbs” to trace back to where some part of that success comes from.¹ There are many contributors behind the scenes in any organization that never get fully recognized. In Nats’ lore, Jonathan Tosches, became front page news in the Nats’ World Series win. He is still with the team.
Kilambi refers to the analytics group as his R&D department, the acronymized version of: Research and Development. Others still refer to it with the old nickname from years past of “The Pentagon.”
Before the Nats hired Paul Toboni as their President of Baseball Operations, the analytics department was not what it is today. Headcounts are nearing three dozen per this graph:
Per Four Rings Consulting, the Nats R&D department is 31 people strong as of one week ago. On September 17, The Athletic wrote that the Nats analytics department “employs 19 people.” While we were told the Nats were adding to their Pentagon with about two dozen new analysts, that new number is significant if that is where the numbers are now.
The Phillies are tops with 51 employees in their analytics department. A year ago, Kilambi was the Assistant General Manager for the Phillies in charge of R&D, and the team’s use of data in all aspects of decision-making. He hired many of those 51 employees.
Kilambi, now 32, previously worked in the highly specialized front office for the Tampa Bay Rays front office, most recently as the Director of Decision Science for the Tampa Bay Rays. They have the 6ᵗʰ most employees in the size of their analytics department. Right now, the Rays and Brewers are in this year’s World Series. Both are analytics behemoths.
“Ani’s skillset and personality provide us exactly what we were looking for when we started this search,” Phillies executive Sam Fuld said in a statement when they hired Kilambi in 2021. “His critical thinking, humility and passion for the game are standout qualities that position him really well for this role. We are delighted to bring him on.”
As we know, it’s not the quantity of the people, rather the quality of the people. The White Sox, Braves, and Padres are near the bottom of the stack in the size of their analytics departments, and they all made the postseason this year.
The reason Toboni wants to add to his R&D department is because they are reportedly inundated with requests from all sectors of the team needing data and research. That sounds like good news. Old reports we got from a source is that the analytics department wasn’t utilized enough, leading to a reduction in staff size at the time.
In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, Kilambi discussed the financial backing driving the department’s growth:
“Ownership has been super, super supportive of us continuing to build out the operation, and I think a big part of that is continuing to add really smart, talented people who can help us win ball games.”
As Bob Dylan sung, the times are a-changing. More money is being deployed to the Nats’ front office staffing. Expect more progress going forward in Toboni’s front office.
This year, both World Series teams, Brewers and Rays, rank in the bottom half of player payroll, and both are in the Top-6 in the size of their analytics departments. The Brewers as we have pointed out seem to be the model organization, and voters agree as Matt Arnold was named to back-to-back MLB Executive of the Year awards for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. He could make that three in a row.
Those teams spent more on their front offices to get more bang for their buck. When the media analyzes the team payrolls, note how they never put the size of their front office next to those numbers. Again, those front office employees are the unsung contributors most of the time and hard to quantify in the results. If the Nats win a World Series, expect Kilambi to be counting breadcrumbs.
For Toboni, this is about building a better mousetrap, not recreating the wheel. Here are his three goals he set when he was hired a year ago:
1. The Near-Term Goal: A “Player Development Monster”
Rather than relying purely on massive free-agent acquisitions and short-term fixes, Toboni’s immediate priority was to create a minor league pipeline to build a strong foundation for the team. He did that in record time. He envisioned transforming the system into a “scouting and player development monster” that consistently produces internal talent and prepares prospects to thrive for the MLB team.
2. The Short-Term Goal: Annual Postseason Contention
Toboni has explicitly stated that a single fluke playoff run is not the target. The objective is a sustained ecosystem where the team resets its floor to be a perennial playoff contender, building roster depth that can survive the long, unpredictable nature of a Major League season.
3. The Long-Term goal is the Big Hairy Audacious Goal: “The Envy of Sport”
Toboni’s ultimate target—his BHAG—reaches beyond baseball. He wants to model the Nationals after high-performing organizations across all of athletics. By building a culture driven by accountability, advanced research, and positive energy, his objective is to make Washington the highest-performing and most envied organization in professional sports.
¹ The breadcrumbs partial quote was from Kilambi in The Athletic
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