Back to the Detroit Tigers Newsfeed

O'Hara a trailblazer in Tigers' analytics dept.

Former UChicago softball player parlayed skill on field, love of numbers into big league job

DETROIT -- Maggie O'Hara was a college softball player with a theory.

"I thought one of our catchers seemed to be maybe not framing pitches as well," she explained.

O'Hara was not a pitcher, so she didn't have a personal stake in this. But she was the team captain. She was also an economics and statistics student at the University of Chicago. She read "Moneyball" when she was in middle school, and it changed the way she looked at baseball when her father took her to Cubs games at Wrigley Field.