In November 2014, six months after the Arizona Diamondbacks named Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa their chief baseball officer, the organization announced that it had hired Dr. Ed Lewis as its first director of baseball analytics and research. His experience in the field was nonexistent. His doctorate was in veterinary medicine. Lewis came to the Diamondbacks because he possessed a quality far more important than developing algorithms or building models: For 35 years, he had been Tony La Russa's friend.
The hiring of Lewis prompted snickers around the game. At the time La Russa was stripped of power three years into the job, the Diamondbacks had gone 212-274.