May 1, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode of The Profectory Podcast - Mastering the Mind and Market, we dive into the story behind the story with Dr. Ricardo Valerdi — professor, engineer, and founder of the groundbreaking nonprofit Science of Sport.
What started as a small baseball statistics camp for middle schoolers in Tucson has grown into a national movement partnering with over a third of Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA, and more. Ricardo shares how the intersection of STEM, sports, and systems thinking can inspire the next generation to love math and science.
He also teases his upcoming book, The Five Tools for Great Decision Makers, a story-driven, actionable framework (acronym: FLASH) designed to help anyone—from students to CEOs—make better decisions in today’s data-driven world.
Tune in for powerful insights on numeracy, decision-making, career advice, and how big trends like esports, AI, and analytics are shaping the future of education and innovation.
#ProfectoryPodcast #ScienceOfSport #STEMEducation #DecisionMaking #EngineeringMindset #SportsAnalytics #EducationalPodcast #LeadershipDevelopment #YouthSTEMPrograms #RicardoValerdi
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Episode Transcript
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Manny Teran (00:04):
The Profectory Podcast, mastering the mind and
market, hosted by Manny Teran.We explore what it takes to
succeed, both in business andwithin yourself, from a strategy
and business growth to mindsetand resilience, we provide the
tools to lead with clarity,confidence and wisdom.
(00:31):
Today, we have a little bit ofan atypical guest. Dr Ricardo
Valerie is a universityprofessor and did also spend
time in industry. He isdepartment head. He's got so
many accolades, I'd spend 10minutes just reading them off.
But today's conversation has todo with something that he
started, called The Science ofsport. Welcome to the show.
(00:52):
Ricardo, thank you. Great to behere. Yeah. So we've known each
other for a number of years, andI kind of remember around the
time where you decided to makethis a go. So give us a bit of
the background. Give us pin us apicture of how that all kind of
occurred with the science ofsport, and tell us what it is.
Also
Ricardo Valerdi (01:10):
absolutely, science of sport is a nonprofit
dedicated to inspiring kids tolook at STEM in a more
interesting and interactive waythrough sports. So we bring math
and science to life throughsports is our tagline. I would
(01:33):
probably need to rewind back towhen I lived in Boston and I was
a big and a Big Red Sox fan.When I moved there, initially,
about 20 years ago, they hadjust broken the Curse of the
Bambino. So if you're familiarwith baseball lore, that's when
(01:53):
the Red Sox had gone on thateight decade drought of not
being able to win the WorldSeries, right? And it was
credited to the Red Sox making aterrible trade of Babe Ruth from
the Red Sox to the Yankees,greatest player of all time,
even at today's standards. Andwhat happened about 20 years ago
(02:15):
is the Red Sox finally won aWorld Series, and they broke one
of baseball's curses, which is amassive thing, and that that
sort of Boston is just a bigsports town anyway, with the
Patriots and and the Celtics andthe Bruins. So what that really
translated to, for me, is agreat example of passionate fan
(02:39):
bases, right? And what it doesin terms of how they see the
world. And around that time, thebook muddy ball was published,
right? And Michael Lewis wrotethe story about the Oakland
Athletics in the early 2000s andhow they were basically more
(02:59):
efficient as a business becausethey were winning this as much
as the New York Yankees, but ata much lower payroll, right? So
it was like this businessefficiency of wins per million
dollar and Moneyball was also agreat way to tell the story
about how baseball is a greatway to understand statistics.
(03:24):
That's what's saying to me. Soput those two ingredients
together, the Red Sox breakingthe Curse of the Bambino money
ball coming out around the sametime, and I'm moving to Tucson
around that same time as well.And guess what? The University
of Arizona baseball team winsthe College World Series in 2012
(03:49):
perfect storm. It's justeverything is beautiful and and
if you know anything about majorleague baseball and its
relationship with the state ofArizona, we host spring training
here for half of the teams. Sowe have the cactus league here
in Arizona. The citrus league isin Florida. So that also tells
(04:09):
you a lot about the interest andthe attention that baseball has
in a state like Arizona, becauseyou can play it year round. You
put all those things togetherand and me coming at it from an
engineering perspective, andalways looking for ideas on how
to relate engineering to thereal world, I just thought to
(04:31):
myself, wouldn't it be fun toteach kids how to read the back
of A baseball card? Right?That's it.
That's, yeah, that's somethingthat is, you know, as you hear
the stats, and, you know,especially in baseball and now
other sports, you know, nowwe're seeing, like the NFL,
(04:51):
that's making more decisionsbased on statistics and all of
that. You know, your backgroundis in systems and industrial and
industrial engineering and sothat. Not a typical run of the
mill degree from the we'll saythe big four, the big three,
electrical, mechanical, civiland maybe mining. So tell us
what that is all about.
Unknown (05:13):
Absolutely, I
Ricardo Valerdi (05:14):
actually got my undergrad in electrical
engineering and worked for a fewyears for wireless
communications company,Motorola. And interestingly,
when I started my job atMotorola, they handed me my box
at business cards, and on thebusiness card, it said, right
underneath my name, my title wassystems engineer. That was very
(05:39):
confusing. I didn't know whythey had done I thought maybe it
was a typo. So I went over to myboss and said, Hey, can you help
me understand why that's mytitle? I thought it was a
wireless communicationsengineer, right? And he went on
to explain about the role thatI'm playing in building a
(05:59):
solution for a client. In thiscase, public safety was the
market that we were providingsolutions for. And the idea was
not just to sell them radios orwalkie talkies, but the idea was
to sell them solutions. And thenI understood what he meant by
systems engineer. And of course,then I read some books, took
(06:21):
some classes, got a master'sdegree, got a PhD, and it sort
of went on from there. But Iquickly understood that if you
have a background in almost anyengineering field, and then you
take that expertise and youapply it to bigger problems.
You're already talking aboutsystems right right away.
Unknown (06:42):
Yeah, I mean, I can attest to that. I myself, and
I'm a mechanical engineer. Mypartner, Adam Hartung, is an
electrical engineer, and we'redoing this now. We're in the
business domain. So I can see, Ican draw the line in my head
between your that perfect,fertile ground you mentioned
when you came to Tucson, youcame to Tucson, you had all
these things coming together.You wanted to teach kids about
(07:04):
how to read up the back of abaseball card. And then you
couple that with your problemsolving skills in the systems
world, and boom. So give us anidea of how that pen to paper,
how it actually happened, howyou made the decision. And like,
what does that that initialpiece look like?
Ricardo Valerdi (07:26):
The problem I was trying to solve with the
science of baseball program wasto motivate kids who were either
told that they weren't good atmath or they were just
disinterested because they'retired of hearing. You know,
Johnny has five apples and Susiehas six oranges and Peter has,
you know, it's like, okay, comeon, make it, make it real. And
(07:51):
there's a middle school rightacross the street from the
University of Arizona, MansfieldMiddle School. I'm sure you've
driven by
Unknown (07:59):
it. Yeah, my kid went there, yep, okay,
Ricardo Valerdi (08:02):
so you have picked up there many times and
and I walked across the streetto that middle school, and I I
talked to the principal, and Iasked them whether he could
identify middle school studentsthat might be interested in a
baseball statistics camp. And hesaid, Absolutely. How many kids
(08:24):
can I send? Say, Well, how aboutwe just start with 20? Just to
start small. And that's I sortof realized, Okay, I got to put
something together. It's notjust going to be about baseball
cards anymore, but what else canwe use baseball for geometry,
physics, biomechanics,aerodynamics. I mean, it just
(08:48):
goes on and on right, and thatjust caused us to think about,
what are the various expertisethat exist at the University of
Arizona? I started calling myfriends at the medical school in
the math department, in thephysics department, and they
helped me put together a campfor these 20 kids in the middle
(09:09):
school. And that was back in2012 Wow,
Manny Teran (09:14):
yeah. So I can imagine those kids were, their
minds were blown away. I mean,illuminated. There's so many
things in in sport that, youknow, being an engineer, to
recognize all those things youmentioned. And then, then you
layer on top of that, the moneyside. You layer on top of that,
the social media that, I mean,there's, there's a whole thing
there. So that was in 2012 we'renow in 2014 and how are, what's
(09:40):
happening now? What's the what'sthe line, the progression that
got you from there till now?
Ricardo Valerdi (09:47):
Yeah, there was this tipping point about a six
months or a year later.Remember, I mentioned the U of A
baseball team won the CollegeWorld Series in 2012 12. That
was the same year I did the campwith the middle school, and I
invited coach Andy Lopez to be aspeaker at the camp, and I sat
(10:11):
in the back of the room. AndyLopez gave a very inspiring talk
about the importance ofeducation and the need to focus
on education before you thoughtabout being a college athlete,
and I remember the example hegave was, when you're at school,
(10:33):
you want to be the best studentpossible, but when you're inside
of the foul lines, you want tobe the best baseball player
possible. And you see kids,these middle school kids, their
light light bulbs are going off.And I'm experiencing this too,
and I'm looking around thing, Ithink we've got something here.
(10:53):
Baseball can be that vehicle.The Moneyball book is good
evidence. But how do wetranslate this into something
actionable. And somebodyrecommended that we meet with
the Arizona Diamondbacks andshare with them the idea that
(11:16):
that were that we wereimplementing in Tucson. And lo
and behold, six months later, wehave a partnership with the
Diamondbacks, and they want usremarkable roll out this program
statewide, and at that point, Ifelt like the the dog that
(11:37):
caught the car.
Unknown (11:41):
Now what I myself into here,
Ricardo Valerdi (11:47):
and fast forward to today. We we work
with over a third of MajorLeague Baseball. We work with
NFL teams, NBA teams, MajorLeague Soccer. It's massive.
It's exploded into a conceptthat is applicable across
multiple sports, across multiplegrade levels, and it's gone
(12:10):
nationwide.
Manny Teran (12:12):
That's, that's, that's amazing. So you're who is
your end customer, because, in away, your your customer is the
student, right? But who'sactually engaging with the
curriculum? Who's engaging withyour team and what? And what
does that look like?
Ricardo Valerdi (12:30):
Yeah, I'd like to think of it as a as a trio of
things that come together. Thatone leg of that is the schools.
They have a need for innovativecurriculum. They have a need for
improving their the math scoresor the science scores of their
(12:50):
students. The other part of thattriangle is the professional
baseball teams, or professionalsports teams. Their interest is
in growing their fan base, andimproving the community and
getting their brand out there.And then the third part of that
(13:11):
triangle is us. We are theservice provider that bring
those two worlds together. Weprovide something that the
schools need and want, and weprovide something that the
professional sports teams see asa really impactful way to serve
the community. And thecombination of those things, we
(13:32):
integrate them into a solutionthat ultimately serves the
student, but the to have thethree players at the table is
what makes the magic
Manny Teran (13:41):
happen. No, I can see that one of our biggest
things we have to talk about istrends. And you know, these are
big, mega trends, or metatrends. Are sometimes called
things like AI, the gig economy,demographics, climate change.
And among those, maybe not thetop six, but maybe the upper 50,
(14:02):
you have the idea of E Sportsand how they're taking off and
how they're challenging andgiving the traditional sports
domain a run for the money. Sohow do you see what you're doing
impacting that framework?
Ricardo Valerdi (14:18):
We've thought about that a lot, and there
actually happens to be a veryclean connection between what we
do, which is the traditionalafter school sports program, or
the Little League or the recleague and E Sports. And the two
connections are Madden
Unknown (14:40):
and NBA 2k
Ricardo Valerdi (14:43):
if you think about it, those are not the most
popular video games, but they dohave tournaments. They do have a
huge following. And you canthink about the connection, very
clear connection betweenunderstanding the science of
football and then competing in aMadden full. Ball game or Madden
Football Esports tournament. Youcan think
Unknown (15:05):
about the
Ricardo Valerdi (15:07):
probability and all the statistical, interesting
dimensions of basketball andthen playing NBA 2k and I think
those two are probably the mostlogical connections. Even beyond
that, though, take any othergame like I see my kids play,
(15:28):
you know, Fortnite, forinstance, and and there's a ton
of statistics in Fortnite.There's a ton of strategy,
there's a ton of things tomeasure, a lot of things to
understand, that I think youcould probably create a similar
curriculum around Fortnite, ifyou wanted to
Manny Teran (15:49):
interesting. Now, you're obviously a professor, a
distinguished professor at theUniversity of Arizona. What is,
and you sort of invented thisunder that umbrella to some
degree, right? So is thisuniversity property or I mean, I
know that there. I know techlaunch Arizona, because I used
to be on the board. So I knowthat there's that. What's the
(16:09):
relationship between science andsport tech launch Arizona, and
we'll say the world at large.
Ricardo Valerdi (16:20):
One of the advantages of being a faculty
member at a research universityis there are units like tech
launch that help youcommercialize your idea. So
shortly after we formed thepartnership with Arizona
Diamondbacks a decade ago, Iwent to David Allen, who was the
(16:40):
director of tech launch at thetime, and I said, Hey, David, I
have this idea to form a companyto provide educational services
to school districts around thecountry around this concept of
STEM and sports. And David kindof looked at me funny.
Unknown (16:59):
He said, Did you say nonprofit?
Ricardo Valerdi (17:03):
Yeah, interesting. What is do you have
a patent or a trade secret? No,we don't. So it wasn't a
traditional invention out of alaboratory in the College of
Engineering. It was a serviceand it was a curriculum. And so
we figured out, with David'shelp, how to structure the
(17:24):
curriculum in a way that itcould be considered intellectual
property. And since it wasdeveloped by me at the
University of Arizona, the IPfor the science of baseball
curriculum is actually owned byU of A, okay.
Unknown (17:41):
Now, does that give you advantages or disadvantages, or
what does that do for your foryour outreach?
Ricardo Valerdi (17:49):
I think it's a huge advantage, because it gives
credibility out of the gate.It's affiliated with an
educational institution. The Uof A has a brand, not only in
baseball, but in other sports,but it also gave me access to
the alumni network. And let metell you a quick example of
(18:13):
that, which is the very nextcustomer after the Arizona
Diamondbacks was the AnaheimAngels, and the reason that
relationship was created isbecause the owner and the
president of the team areUniversity of Arizona alums,
(18:36):
right? Artie Moreno Dennis coolthey I contacted them about what
I was doing in Arizona, andimmediately they said, let's do
this in Anaheim. Rock and roll.Bear Down.
Manny Teran (18:49):
Let's go nice. Yeah, I can see that. And you
know, Ricardo, I know you, andyou're not gonna just wait or
kind of just status quo, thisthing? So what's happening? What
are you working on that we canlook forward to down the road,
and how does that look witheverything happening in the
(19:10):
world? I mean, obviously, sportshave their own kind of world.
But mentioned earlier, theslight decline in some ways of
some of the sports, theincrease, exponential increase
in eSports. I mean, you havethis whole framework happening,
and you have, I mean, I knowyou, you're not just going to
settle for give me more of thesame what? What's happening
(19:31):
that's different.
Ricardo Valerdi (19:38):
If you're familiar with Simon Sinek, start
with why I've continuously beenasking myself that question, why
would we want to educate peopleto be better data scientists or
sports analysts? And I think theanswer to that question. Is
(20:00):
because we want them to makebetter decisions, and we want to
promote numeracy, which is theanalog to literacy. Numeracy is
the ability to make decisionswith data. So let's unpack that
a little bit if I ultimately mygoal as an educator and as an
(20:20):
engineer is to help young mindsbe better at making decisions.
Then where that put me? Manny,was I need to write a book about
decision making, okay, and andthat, that that's what I'm
working on. That. Oh, so,
Manny Teran (20:37):
yeah, that was, that's a perfect segue. I was
gonna shift gears slightly awayfrom what the your involvement
in the science of sport, andkind of talk about your
research. And let's start offwith with that. Tell us a little
bit more about that, that book,because it sounds very
interesting, especially, by theway, under the backdrop all this
(20:59):
AI stuff happening,
Ricardo Valerdi (21:01):
yeah, that's right. And what's interesting is
the My experience in in sportsanalytics and in using sports as
a way to educate has heavilyinfluenced how this book is
structured. And I'll tell youthe most obvious connection in
(21:22):
baseball, there's this thingcalled the Five tool player. And
every college, high school,college, minor league, pro
player gets evaluated on fivetools, which is hitting for
average, hitting for power,running, Fielding and throwing,
okay. And so there was thiswhole scorecard that's used for
(21:45):
each of those five dimensions.And I thought to myself, I
wonder if in decision making, ordecision makers have five tools
that they need to be good at aswell. And that's kind of where I
landed with the book. Iidentified five tools that are
important for decision makers,heavily influenced by baseball,
(22:07):
of course, but then it departsfrom sports, and it talks about
how, how are these toolsrelevant? How are they derived
from important decisions thatare made in business, in the
military, in education andsports. And ultimately, what I
landed on for the book title,working title, is the five tools
(22:29):
for great decision makers.
Manny Teran (22:31):
So you're saying that these are, they could be
used in any domain, business,everyday life, or is it more
targeted towards a particulardomain?
Ricardo Valerdi (22:47):
They can be broadly applicable to, what am I
going to make for dinnertonight? To, should I take this
job offer that's in front of me?To, should I make or buy a
certain solution. They are verybroadly applicable. Decision
making is everywhere,
Manny Teran (23:07):
do you so there's a lot of things out there right
now. Some words are they calledthem hacking. You know, like
when Tim Ferriss came out withthe four hour work week, there's
atomic habits. There's the workup at the other Arizona school
by by a guy named Dr Cialdiniinfluence. So there's all these
(23:29):
tools that are actuallyculminating, right? Do you see
this book as as one of thosetools as well?
Ricardo Valerdi (23:38):
Absolutely, and you can already tell that my
wish was to make the conceptsfrom the book very accessible.
So I almost imagined like I waswriting to a elementary or
middle school audience, so thatit was crystal clear what needed
to be done to be a good decisionmaker or great decision maker.
(24:01):
And my hope is that people whoread books about decision
making. I mean, there's theclassic Thinking Fast and Slow
by Kahneman, the former nobleorgan in economics, that's, I
think, the number one seller inthe decision making category. So
my wish is, people who read thatbook, they would want to read my
(24:25):
book next, because it gives themsome tangible advice and some
stories from sports. And sportsis a great teacher for decision
making, because you know veryquickly
Unknown (24:36):
whether you're doing well or not.
Ricardo Valerdi (24:39):
And that's my wish is that if you have
Thinking Fast and Slow on yourbookshelf, that five tools for
great decision makers will beright next to it.
Manny Teran (24:49):
And were these, these tools you came up with,
obviously, your academic andyour commercial background both
are part of this. Your sportsbackground are these. Are these
particular tools derived fromlooking at at case studies of
people making decisions? Or isit derived from the ground up or
(25:13):
from divination and crystal balllike, where did you come up with
these
Unknown (25:18):
five? Yeah, so I had to
Ricardo Valerdi (25:21):
ignore everything I learned about
writing academic papers andtechnical manuals and everything
that engineers do. I had to kindof put that aside, and I had to
learn how to approach because Iwant this to be a broadly, you
(25:42):
know, applicable book. So I'mnot saying that you're going to
see it at an airport bookstore,but, like, it's kind of that
that's kind of the goal for itto be of that that type of
business books and and so theidea was to write stories.
Unknown (26:01):
And there were so many great stories about
Ricardo Valerdi (26:03):
sports, uh, college, from college sports to
pro sports that are really goodteachers about decision making.
So it was, it was more like tella story about an event that
occurred, describe how it playedout, and reflect on what is the
crucial element that was a keypart of making that decision?
Manny Teran (26:26):
Okay? And you don't have to answer this, because I
know you're in the middle ofwriting the book. Do you, can
you enumerate the five so wehave an idea of what what the
framework looks like?
Ricardo Valerdi (26:37):
Yes, absolutely. So it's, I'm sure I
can remember, because I've beenlooking at it so much recently.
So I actually came up with aacronym, Flash, F, L, A, S, H,
the F, the first tool is F,which is first ask questions,
(27:02):
and that involves figuring out,well, what is the decision that
needs to be made? Who's makingthe decision, what kind of data
do we have to support theanalysis? How are we going to
analyze that data to support thedecision? So on, you can think
of many, many questions thatwould be necessary to begin to
understand what what is in andout of scope. The L in Flash is
(27:28):
look at the data. And I talkabout all sorts of techniques
that help with not just slicingdata and aggregating data, but
also the statistical tests thattell you one thing or might tell
you another. There's a lot ofreally cool examples from
baseball actually, that thatpoint to potential mistakes or
(27:54):
biases that can be made alongthe way. Yet the a the third
tool is analyze theconsequences. So think of
unintended consequences. Thinkof intended consequence. Think
of second order effects. Thesethe sort of gaming simulation
(28:14):
that you need to do tounderstand what the implication
of your decision is. The S, thefourth tool is scrutinize the
options. So you can think of allsorts of uh, sort of techniques,
like being devil's advocate ortry to figure out why you might
be wrong, and looking at thingsfrom different perspectives to
(28:38):
stress test the decision. Andfinally, the age in Flash is
humanize it. And the best way todescribe that is remembering
that in the world of artificialintelligence, those are decision
aids, but at the end of the day,it's human beings leveraging AI
(29:04):
to make decisions. The AI is notgoing to make the decision for
us, but it's knowing how toleverage the power of AI to
support a decision.
Manny Teran (29:13):
Wow, that's those are very compelling. I think the
the flash acronym really bringsit home. And you know, we talk a
lot, another one of the thingswe talk about is bias, and how
bias is really just superimportant to understand that
it's there figure out ways tomitigate it. So I'm really
(29:34):
excited to get a hold of yourbook. When's it going to come
out? Do you have an idea?
Ricardo Valerdi (29:40):
Yeah, I hope that next year it will come out.
I've written about threequarters of it, and hopefully
you'll invite me back to thepodcast once the book is
published, and we can talk aboutthe stories and talk about the
experience of. Are talking topeople about how flash applies
(30:03):
to their industry or theirproblem area?
Manny Teran (30:06):
Yeah, I'd absolutely love to have you
back. I think the idea istrends, bias, scenario planning.
You know, some of these are thetenants that we talk about, and
a lot of that is data driven.You know, there's this big idea
of follow your gut and your, youknow, gut, this, gut, that, and
(30:26):
there's nothing wrong with that,to some degree, but if you have
data in front of you, why notfollow the data? And you know,
there's many decisions I've madewhere I've gone against my gut,
and I'm glad I have, because Iwas leveraging data. And there's
other times when I have actuallyjust leveraged my gut. So
appreciate the opportunity.Ricardo, any final thoughts,
(30:48):
actually, I have one morequestion I almost forgot, if you
were to have a magic telephoneand you could call yourself when
you were 2423 years old and tellyourself some bit of advice
about the next 25 whateveryears. What would that be?
Ricardo Valerdi (31:13):
I would probably tell myself to relax a
little bit about career planningand what the future looks like.
Because what's more important iscrushing the current thing that
you're working on, keeping themain thing, the main thing,
(31:35):
because people are watching,they're they're observing what
you're doing, how you're
Unknown (31:40):
navigating
Ricardo Valerdi (31:43):
the problem, how you're solving the problem,
how you're interacting withpeople, and that's so much more
important than worrying aboutwhere do you want to be in five
years, that that exercise is isinteresting, but it's not
critical. It's not the mostimportant thing. So my message
to myself would be, relax, focuson the main thing. Do it well,
(32:07):
and that's going to open doors.
Manny Teran (32:10):
Wow, that's really good advice. Good advice. I know
we have kids about the same age,and I'll definitely let them
know that that, you know, thoseare very, very good words.
Thanks again for your time,Ricardo, we'll have you back
when you get your book out, andwith that, make it a great rest
of the year. Talk to you
Unknown (32:29):
later. Thank you so much. Cheers. You.
The Profectory Podcast, mastering the mind and
market, hosted by Manny Teran.We explore what it takes to
succeed, both in business andwithin yourself, from a strategy
and business growth to mindsetand resilience, we provide the
tools to lead with clarity,confidence and wisdom.
(00:31):
Today, we have a little bit ofan atypical guest. Dr Ricardo
Valerie is a universityprofessor and did also spend
time in industry. He isdepartment head. He's got so
many accolades, I'd spend 10minutes just reading them off.
But today's conversation has todo with something that he
started, called The Science ofsport. Welcome to the show.
(00:52):
Ricardo, thank you. Great to behere. Yeah. So we've known each
other for a number of years, andI kind of remember around the
time where you decided to makethis a go. So give us a bit of
the background. Give us pin us apicture of how that all kind of
occurred with the science ofsport, and tell us what it is.
Also
Ricardo Valerdi (01:10):
absolutely, science of sport is a nonprofit
dedicated to inspiring kids tolook at STEM in a more
interesting and interactive waythrough sports. So we bring math
and science to life throughsports is our tagline. I would
(01:33):
probably need to rewind back towhen I lived in Boston and I was
a big and a Big Red Sox fan.When I moved there, initially,
about 20 years ago, they hadjust broken the Curse of the
Bambino. So if you're familiarwith baseball lore, that's when
(01:53):
the Red Sox had gone on thateight decade drought of not
being able to win the WorldSeries, right? And it was
credited to the Red Sox making aterrible trade of Babe Ruth from
the Red Sox to the Yankees,greatest player of all time,
even at today's standards. Andwhat happened about 20 years ago
(02:15):
is the Red Sox finally won aWorld Series, and they broke one
of baseball's curses, which is amassive thing, and that that
sort of Boston is just a bigsports town anyway, with the
Patriots and and the Celtics andthe Bruins. So what that really
translated to, for me, is agreat example of passionate fan
(02:39):
bases, right? And what it doesin terms of how they see the
world. And around that time, thebook muddy ball was published,
right? And Michael Lewis wrotethe story about the Oakland
Athletics in the early 2000s andhow they were basically more
(02:59):
efficient as a business becausethey were winning this as much
as the New York Yankees, but ata much lower payroll, right? So
it was like this businessefficiency of wins per million
dollar and Moneyball was also agreat way to tell the story
about how baseball is a greatway to understand statistics.
(03:24):
That's what's saying to me. Soput those two ingredients
together, the Red Sox breakingthe Curse of the Bambino money
ball coming out around the sametime, and I'm moving to Tucson
around that same time as well.And guess what? The University
of Arizona baseball team winsthe College World Series in 2012
(03:49):
perfect storm. It's justeverything is beautiful and and
if you know anything about majorleague baseball and its
relationship with the state ofArizona, we host spring training
here for half of the teams. Sowe have the cactus league here
in Arizona. The citrus league isin Florida. So that also tells
(04:09):
you a lot about the interest andthe attention that baseball has
in a state like Arizona, becauseyou can play it year round. You
put all those things togetherand and me coming at it from an
engineering perspective, andalways looking for ideas on how
to relate engineering to thereal world, I just thought to
(04:31):
myself, wouldn't it be fun toteach kids how to read the back
of A baseball card? Right?That's it.
That's, yeah, that's somethingthat is, you know, as you hear
the stats, and, you know,especially in baseball and now
other sports, you know, nowwe're seeing, like the NFL,
(04:51):
that's making more decisionsbased on statistics and all of
that. You know, your backgroundis in systems and industrial and
industrial engineering and sothat. Not a typical run of the
mill degree from the we'll saythe big four, the big three,
electrical, mechanical, civiland maybe mining. So tell us
what that is all about.
Unknown (05:13):
Absolutely, I
Ricardo Valerdi (05:14):
actually got my undergrad in electrical
engineering and worked for a fewyears for wireless
communications company,Motorola. And interestingly,
when I started my job atMotorola, they handed me my box
at business cards, and on thebusiness card, it said, right
underneath my name, my title wassystems engineer. That was very
(05:39):
confusing. I didn't know whythey had done I thought maybe it
was a typo. So I went over to myboss and said, Hey, can you help
me understand why that's mytitle? I thought it was a
wireless communicationsengineer, right? And he went on
to explain about the role thatI'm playing in building a
(05:59):
solution for a client. In thiscase, public safety was the
market that we were providingsolutions for. And the idea was
not just to sell them radios orwalkie talkies, but the idea was
to sell them solutions. And thenI understood what he meant by
systems engineer. And of course,then I read some books, took
(06:21):
some classes, got a master'sdegree, got a PhD, and it sort
of went on from there. But Iquickly understood that if you
have a background in almost anyengineering field, and then you
take that expertise and youapply it to bigger problems.
You're already talking aboutsystems right right away.
Unknown (06:42):
Yeah, I mean, I can attest to that. I myself, and
I'm a mechanical engineer. Mypartner, Adam Hartung, is an
electrical engineer, and we'redoing this now. We're in the
business domain. So I can see, Ican draw the line in my head
between your that perfect,fertile ground you mentioned
when you came to Tucson, youcame to Tucson, you had all
these things coming together.You wanted to teach kids about
(07:04):
how to read up the back of abaseball card. And then you
couple that with your problemsolving skills in the systems
world, and boom. So give us anidea of how that pen to paper,
how it actually happened, howyou made the decision. And like,
what does that that initialpiece look like?
Ricardo Valerdi (07:26):
The problem I was trying to solve with the
science of baseball program wasto motivate kids who were either
told that they weren't good atmath or they were just
disinterested because they'retired of hearing. You know,
Johnny has five apples and Susiehas six oranges and Peter has,
you know, it's like, okay, comeon, make it, make it real. And
(07:51):
there's a middle school rightacross the street from the
University of Arizona, MansfieldMiddle School. I'm sure you've
driven by
Unknown (07:59):
it. Yeah, my kid went there, yep, okay,
Ricardo Valerdi (08:02):
so you have picked up there many times and
and I walked across the streetto that middle school, and I I
talked to the principal, and Iasked them whether he could
identify middle school studentsthat might be interested in a
baseball statistics camp. And hesaid, Absolutely. How many kids
(08:24):
can I send? Say, Well, how aboutwe just start with 20? Just to
start small. And that's I sortof realized, Okay, I got to put
something together. It's notjust going to be about baseball
cards anymore, but what else canwe use baseball for geometry,
physics, biomechanics,aerodynamics. I mean, it just
(08:48):
goes on and on right, and thatjust caused us to think about,
what are the various expertisethat exist at the University of
Arizona? I started calling myfriends at the medical school in
the math department, in thephysics department, and they
helped me put together a campfor these 20 kids in the middle
(09:09):
school. And that was back in2012 Wow,
Manny Teran (09:14):
yeah. So I can imagine those kids were, their
minds were blown away. I mean,illuminated. There's so many
things in in sport that, youknow, being an engineer, to
recognize all those things youmentioned. And then, then you
layer on top of that, the moneyside. You layer on top of that,
the social media that, I mean,there's, there's a whole thing
there. So that was in 2012 we'renow in 2014 and how are, what's
(09:40):
happening now? What's the what'sthe line, the progression that
got you from there till now?
Ricardo Valerdi (09:47):
Yeah, there was this tipping point about a six
months or a year later.Remember, I mentioned the U of A
baseball team won the CollegeWorld Series in 2012 12. That
was the same year I did the campwith the middle school, and I
invited coach Andy Lopez to be aspeaker at the camp, and I sat
(10:11):
in the back of the room. AndyLopez gave a very inspiring talk
about the importance ofeducation and the need to focus
on education before you thoughtabout being a college athlete,
and I remember the example hegave was, when you're at school,
(10:33):
you want to be the best studentpossible, but when you're inside
of the foul lines, you want tobe the best baseball player
possible. And you see kids,these middle school kids, their
light light bulbs are going off.And I'm experiencing this too,
and I'm looking around thing, Ithink we've got something here.
(10:53):
Baseball can be that vehicle.The Moneyball book is good
evidence. But how do wetranslate this into something
actionable. And somebodyrecommended that we meet with
the Arizona Diamondbacks andshare with them the idea that
(11:16):
that were that we wereimplementing in Tucson. And lo
and behold, six months later, wehave a partnership with the
Diamondbacks, and they want usremarkable roll out this program
statewide, and at that point, Ifelt like the the dog that
(11:37):
caught the car.
Unknown (11:41):
Now what I myself into here,
Ricardo Valerdi (11:47):
and fast forward to today. We we work
with over a third of MajorLeague Baseball. We work with
NFL teams, NBA teams, MajorLeague Soccer. It's massive.
It's exploded into a conceptthat is applicable across
multiple sports, across multiplegrade levels, and it's gone
(12:10):
nationwide.
Manny Teran (12:12):
That's, that's, that's amazing. So you're who is
your end customer, because, in away, your your customer is the
student, right? But who'sactually engaging with the
curriculum? Who's engaging withyour team and what? And what
does that look like?
Ricardo Valerdi (12:30):
Yeah, I'd like to think of it as a as a trio of
things that come together. Thatone leg of that is the schools.
They have a need for innovativecurriculum. They have a need for
improving their the math scoresor the science scores of their
(12:50):
students. The other part of thattriangle is the professional
baseball teams, or professionalsports teams. Their interest is
in growing their fan base, andimproving the community and
getting their brand out there.And then the third part of that
(13:11):
triangle is us. We are theservice provider that bring
those two worlds together. Weprovide something that the
schools need and want, and weprovide something that the
professional sports teams see asa really impactful way to serve
the community. And thecombination of those things, we
(13:32):
integrate them into a solutionthat ultimately serves the
student, but the to have thethree players at the table is
what makes the magic
Manny Teran (13:41):
happen. No, I can see that one of our biggest
things we have to talk about istrends. And you know, these are
big, mega trends, or metatrends. Are sometimes called
things like AI, the gig economy,demographics, climate change.
And among those, maybe not thetop six, but maybe the upper 50,
(14:02):
you have the idea of E Sportsand how they're taking off and
how they're challenging andgiving the traditional sports
domain a run for the money. Sohow do you see what you're doing
impacting that framework?
Ricardo Valerdi (14:18):
We've thought about that a lot, and there
actually happens to be a veryclean connection between what we
do, which is the traditionalafter school sports program, or
the Little League or the recleague and E Sports. And the two
connections are Madden
Unknown (14:40):
and NBA 2k
Ricardo Valerdi (14:43):
if you think about it, those are not the most
popular video games, but they dohave tournaments. They do have a
huge following. And you canthink about the connection, very
clear connection betweenunderstanding the science of
football and then competing in aMadden full. Ball game or Madden
Football Esports tournament. Youcan think
Unknown (15:05):
about the
Ricardo Valerdi (15:07):
probability and all the statistical, interesting
dimensions of basketball andthen playing NBA 2k and I think
those two are probably the mostlogical connections. Even beyond
that, though, take any othergame like I see my kids play,
(15:28):
you know, Fortnite, forinstance, and and there's a ton
of statistics in Fortnite.There's a ton of strategy,
there's a ton of things tomeasure, a lot of things to
understand, that I think youcould probably create a similar
curriculum around Fortnite, ifyou wanted to
Manny Teran (15:49):
interesting. Now, you're obviously a professor, a
distinguished professor at theUniversity of Arizona. What is,
and you sort of invented thisunder that umbrella to some
degree, right? So is thisuniversity property or I mean, I
know that there. I know techlaunch Arizona, because I used
to be on the board. So I knowthat there's that. What's the
(16:09):
relationship between science andsport tech launch Arizona, and
we'll say the world at large.
Ricardo Valerdi (16:20):
One of the advantages of being a faculty
member at a research universityis there are units like tech
launch that help youcommercialize your idea. So
shortly after we formed thepartnership with Arizona
Diamondbacks a decade ago, Iwent to David Allen, who was the
(16:40):
director of tech launch at thetime, and I said, Hey, David, I
have this idea to form a companyto provide educational services
to school districts around thecountry around this concept of
STEM and sports. And David kindof looked at me funny.
Unknown (16:59):
He said, Did you say nonprofit?
Ricardo Valerdi (17:03):
Yeah, interesting. What is do you have
a patent or a trade secret? No,we don't. So it wasn't a
traditional invention out of alaboratory in the College of
Engineering. It was a serviceand it was a curriculum. And so
we figured out, with David'shelp, how to structure the
(17:24):
curriculum in a way that itcould be considered intellectual
property. And since it wasdeveloped by me at the
University of Arizona, the IPfor the science of baseball
curriculum is actually owned byU of A, okay.
Unknown (17:41):
Now, does that give you advantages or disadvantages, or
what does that do for your foryour outreach?
Ricardo Valerdi (17:49):
I think it's a huge advantage, because it gives
credibility out of the gate.It's affiliated with an
educational institution. The Uof A has a brand, not only in
baseball, but in other sports,but it also gave me access to
the alumni network. And let metell you a quick example of
(18:13):
that, which is the very nextcustomer after the Arizona
Diamondbacks was the AnaheimAngels, and the reason that
relationship was created isbecause the owner and the
president of the team areUniversity of Arizona alums,
(18:36):
right? Artie Moreno Dennis coolthey I contacted them about what
I was doing in Arizona, andimmediately they said, let's do
this in Anaheim. Rock and roll.Bear Down.
Manny Teran (18:49):
Let's go nice. Yeah, I can see that. And you
know, Ricardo, I know you, andyou're not gonna just wait or
kind of just status quo, thisthing? So what's happening? What
are you working on that we canlook forward to down the road,
and how does that look witheverything happening in the
(19:10):
world? I mean, obviously, sportshave their own kind of world.
But mentioned earlier, theslight decline in some ways of
some of the sports, theincrease, exponential increase
in eSports. I mean, you havethis whole framework happening,
and you have, I mean, I knowyou, you're not just going to
settle for give me more of thesame what? What's happening
(19:31):
that's different.
Ricardo Valerdi (19:38):
If you're familiar with Simon Sinek, start
with why I've continuously beenasking myself that question, why
would we want to educate peopleto be better data scientists or
sports analysts? And I think theanswer to that question. Is
(20:00):
because we want them to makebetter decisions, and we want to
promote numeracy, which is theanalog to literacy. Numeracy is
the ability to make decisionswith data. So let's unpack that
a little bit if I ultimately mygoal as an educator and as an
(20:20):
engineer is to help young mindsbe better at making decisions.
Then where that put me? Manny,was I need to write a book about
decision making, okay, and andthat, that that's what I'm
working on. That. Oh, so,
Manny Teran (20:37):
yeah, that was, that's a perfect segue. I was
gonna shift gears slightly awayfrom what the your involvement
in the science of sport, andkind of talk about your
research. And let's start offwith with that. Tell us a little
bit more about that, that book,because it sounds very
interesting, especially, by theway, under the backdrop all this
(20:59):
AI stuff happening,
Ricardo Valerdi (21:01):
yeah, that's right. And what's interesting is
the My experience in in sportsanalytics and in using sports as
a way to educate has heavilyinfluenced how this book is
structured. And I'll tell youthe most obvious connection in
(21:22):
baseball, there's this thingcalled the Five tool player. And
every college, high school,college, minor league, pro
player gets evaluated on fivetools, which is hitting for
average, hitting for power,running, Fielding and throwing,
okay. And so there was thiswhole scorecard that's used for
(21:45):
each of those five dimensions.And I thought to myself, I
wonder if in decision making, ordecision makers have five tools
that they need to be good at aswell. And that's kind of where I
landed with the book. Iidentified five tools that are
important for decision makers,heavily influenced by baseball,
(22:07):
of course, but then it departsfrom sports, and it talks about
how, how are these toolsrelevant? How are they derived
from important decisions thatare made in business, in the
military, in education andsports. And ultimately, what I
landed on for the book title,working title, is the five tools
(22:29):
for great decision makers.
Manny Teran (22:31):
So you're saying that these are, they could be
used in any domain, business,everyday life, or is it more
targeted towards a particulardomain?
Ricardo Valerdi (22:47):
They can be broadly applicable to, what am I
going to make for dinnertonight? To, should I take this
job offer that's in front of me?To, should I make or buy a
certain solution. They are verybroadly applicable. Decision
making is everywhere,
Manny Teran (23:07):
do you so there's a lot of things out there right
now. Some words are they calledthem hacking. You know, like
when Tim Ferriss came out withthe four hour work week, there's
atomic habits. There's the workup at the other Arizona school
by by a guy named Dr Cialdiniinfluence. So there's all these
(23:29):
tools that are actuallyculminating, right? Do you see
this book as as one of thosetools as well?
Ricardo Valerdi (23:38):
Absolutely, and you can already tell that my
wish was to make the conceptsfrom the book very accessible.
So I almost imagined like I waswriting to a elementary or
middle school audience, so thatit was crystal clear what needed
to be done to be a good decisionmaker or great decision maker.
(24:01):
And my hope is that people whoread books about decision
making. I mean, there's theclassic Thinking Fast and Slow
by Kahneman, the former nobleorgan in economics, that's, I
think, the number one seller inthe decision making category. So
my wish is, people who read thatbook, they would want to read my
(24:25):
book next, because it gives themsome tangible advice and some
stories from sports. And sportsis a great teacher for decision
making, because you know veryquickly
Unknown (24:36):
whether you're doing well or not.
Ricardo Valerdi (24:39):
And that's my wish is that if you have
Thinking Fast and Slow on yourbookshelf, that five tools for
great decision makers will beright next to it.
Manny Teran (24:49):
And were these, these tools you came up with,
obviously, your academic andyour commercial background both
are part of this. Your sportsbackground are these. Are these
particular tools derived fromlooking at at case studies of
people making decisions? Or isit derived from the ground up or
(25:13):
from divination and crystal balllike, where did you come up with
these
Unknown (25:18):
five? Yeah, so I had to
Ricardo Valerdi (25:21):
ignore everything I learned about
writing academic papers andtechnical manuals and everything
that engineers do. I had to kindof put that aside, and I had to
learn how to approach because Iwant this to be a broadly, you
(25:42):
know, applicable book. So I'mnot saying that you're going to
see it at an airport bookstore,but, like, it's kind of that
that's kind of the goal for itto be of that that type of
business books and and so theidea was to write stories.
Unknown (26:01):
And there were so many great stories about
Ricardo Valerdi (26:03):
sports, uh, college, from college sports to
pro sports that are really goodteachers about decision making.
So it was, it was more like tella story about an event that
occurred, describe how it playedout, and reflect on what is the
crucial element that was a keypart of making that decision?
Manny Teran (26:26):
Okay? And you don't have to answer this, because I
know you're in the middle ofwriting the book. Do you, can
you enumerate the five so wehave an idea of what what the
framework looks like?
Ricardo Valerdi (26:37):
Yes, absolutely. So it's, I'm sure I
can remember, because I've beenlooking at it so much recently.
So I actually came up with aacronym, Flash, F, L, A, S, H,
the F, the first tool is F,which is first ask questions,
(27:02):
and that involves figuring out,well, what is the decision that
needs to be made? Who's makingthe decision, what kind of data
do we have to support theanalysis? How are we going to
analyze that data to support thedecision? So on, you can think
of many, many questions thatwould be necessary to begin to
understand what what is in andout of scope. The L in Flash is
(27:28):
look at the data. And I talkabout all sorts of techniques
that help with not just slicingdata and aggregating data, but
also the statistical tests thattell you one thing or might tell
you another. There's a lot ofreally cool examples from
baseball actually, that thatpoint to potential mistakes or
(27:54):
biases that can be made alongthe way. Yet the a the third
tool is analyze theconsequences. So think of
unintended consequences. Thinkof intended consequence. Think
of second order effects. Thesethe sort of gaming simulation
(28:14):
that you need to do tounderstand what the implication
of your decision is. The S, thefourth tool is scrutinize the
options. So you can think of allsorts of uh, sort of techniques,
like being devil's advocate ortry to figure out why you might
be wrong, and looking at thingsfrom different perspectives to
(28:38):
stress test the decision. Andfinally, the age in Flash is
humanize it. And the best way todescribe that is remembering
that in the world of artificialintelligence, those are decision
aids, but at the end of the day,it's human beings leveraging AI
(29:04):
to make decisions. The AI is notgoing to make the decision for
us, but it's knowing how toleverage the power of AI to
support a decision.
Manny Teran (29:13):
Wow, that's those are very compelling. I think the
the flash acronym really bringsit home. And you know, we talk a
lot, another one of the thingswe talk about is bias, and how
bias is really just superimportant to understand that
it's there figure out ways tomitigate it. So I'm really
(29:34):
excited to get a hold of yourbook. When's it going to come
out? Do you have an idea?
Ricardo Valerdi (29:40):
Yeah, I hope that next year it will come out.
I've written about threequarters of it, and hopefully
you'll invite me back to thepodcast once the book is
published, and we can talk aboutthe stories and talk about the
experience of. Are talking topeople about how flash applies
(30:03):
to their industry or theirproblem area?
Manny Teran (30:06):
Yeah, I'd absolutely love to have you
back. I think the idea istrends, bias, scenario planning.
You know, some of these are thetenants that we talk about, and
a lot of that is data driven.You know, there's this big idea
of follow your gut and your, youknow, gut, this, gut, that, and
(30:26):
there's nothing wrong with that,to some degree, but if you have
data in front of you, why notfollow the data? And you know,
there's many decisions I've madewhere I've gone against my gut,
and I'm glad I have, because Iwas leveraging data. And there's
other times when I have actuallyjust leveraged my gut. So
appreciate the opportunity.Ricardo, any final thoughts,
(30:48):
actually, I have one morequestion I almost forgot, if you
were to have a magic telephoneand you could call yourself when
you were 2423 years old and tellyourself some bit of advice
about the next 25 whateveryears. What would that be?
Ricardo Valerdi (31:13):
I would probably tell myself to relax a
little bit about career planningand what the future looks like.
Because what's more important iscrushing the current thing that
you're working on, keeping themain thing, the main thing,
(31:35):
because people are watching,they're they're observing what
you're doing, how you're
Unknown (31:40):
navigating
Ricardo Valerdi (31:43):
the problem, how you're solving the problem,
how you're interacting withpeople, and that's so much more
important than worrying aboutwhere do you want to be in five
years, that that exercise is isinteresting, but it's not
critical. It's not the mostimportant thing. So my message
to myself would be, relax, focuson the main thing. Do it well,
(32:07):
and that's going to open doors.
Manny Teran (32:10):
Wow, that's really good advice. Good advice. I know
we have kids about the same age,and I'll definitely let them
know that that, you know, thoseare very, very good words.
Thanks again for your time,Ricardo, we'll have you back
when you get your book out, andwith that, make it a great rest
of the year. Talk to you
Unknown (32:29):
later. Thank you so much. Cheers. You.
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