If you've had the chance to read Michael Lewis' excellent analysis of the impact of statistics on professional sports -- in this case, baseball -- then you probably have a pretty firm convinction that numbers don't lie.

The full title of Lewis' book was "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." In it, the author revealed how over a century of collective, subjective wisdom could be upended by the power of unbiased statistical analysis.

Sabermetrics, they called it.

Not unlike the power of collective wisdom being tapped through the increased democratization of information online, this new approach to statistically analyzing player performance allowed teams with less spending power (Billy Beane and his Oakland As were the pathfinders featured in the book) than the major market teams to find their way to putting together rosters that left them at least on somewhat of a more level playing field.

Now it's the players' turn to take advantage of those statistics.

Today, IBM announced that the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), which represents 1,200 MLB players, has selected IBM Cognos software to help better analyze, compare, and project player stats, as well as to rapidly explore and chart their progress.

The IBM-Cognos software will help analyze player performance during the season, compare their stats to other players, and project future performance based on their current and previous years' statistics.

Fantasy baseball players everywhere, I'm sure you are salivating at the mere notion.

But to my knowledge, alas, for now this offering is only available to the MLBPA.

Jerry McGuire and Sports Management International never had it so good.

Check out the details here.



Tags:  cognos baseball business_intelligence major_league_baseball statistics