A chart published this week by Four Rings Consulting — the firm founded by Zack Scott, former interim GM of the Mets — maps the full-time headcount inside every MLB club’s analytics department. The number that jumps off the page: all three teams still playing in the 2026 postseason carry analytics staffs above the league average.
The Milwaukee Brewers have 46 full-time analysts. The Tampa Bay Rays have 39. The Cleveland Guardians have 30. That’s an average of 38.3 employees across the three clubs, against an MLB-wide mean of 28.5. The World Series opens Friday, October 23.
The numbers behind the pattern
Milwaukee is the second-largest analytics operation in the league — 46 full-time employees in R&D and baseball operations analysis — trailing only the Philadelphia Phillies, who have 51. Tampa Bay’s 39 puts them tied for sixth, remarkable for a franchise that has historically operated on one of the lowest payrolls in the sport. Cleveland, which reached the ALCS despite posting one of the lowest offensive OPS figures of any postseason team, ranks 14th with 30 analysts.
These headcounts include data scientists, coaches-embedded analysts, software engineers and department leads. They are not just video-room staff. They are institutional structures — dozens of people working on competitive edge year-round, not just during the draft or the Winter Meetings.
More analysts doesn’t guarantee wins — but the pattern is real
Here’s the easy trap: concluding that hiring more analysts leads directly to more wins. The same data pushes back on that. The Toronto Blue Jays employ 40 analysts — more than the Rays — the Tigers have 39 and the Mets 37, and none of the three made the 2026 postseason. The correlation exists among the finalists, but it is not a baseball law.
What the chart actually says is something different: analytics has stopped being a competitive edge and become basic infrastructure. Like a pitching coach or a minor-league system — no serious organization competes without it anymore. The debate is no longer analytics yes or no; it’s how well you use what you have.
Cleveland is the clearest illustration of that nuance. With 30 analysts — above average but nowhere near the top five — the Guardians reached the ALCS without a dominant offense, leaning on pitching and tactical decision-making that rarely happens by improvisation. They were eliminated by Tampa Bay in six games (Game 6: Rays 7, Guardians 3), but the road they took to get there was no accident.
From Moneyball to data armies
This story always starts with Billy Beane and the early-2000s Oakland Athletics: a low-budget club using statistics to find value where no one else was looking. Two decades later, that idea has been fully industrialized. Statcast — installed in every MLB ballpark since 2015 — tracks exit velocity, launch angle, real-time defensive movement and dozens of other variables. It multiplied the available data and accelerated the race to process it.
By 2026, all 30 clubs have formal analytics departments. Some, like the Phillies and Brewers, bet big on size. Others, like the Rockies or the rebuilding A’s, operate with staffs of just 11 analysts — a figure that may reflect budget cuts, a different model or the use of outside consultants like Four Rings itself to supplement internal capacity. What no longer exists is the team that says the numbers don’t matter.
The 2026 World Series between the Brewers and the Rays won’t be decided on a spreadsheet. It will be decided on the mound, at the plate and on the scoreboard. But both teams arrived there, in part, because someone in their front offices has spent years turning data into decisions.
