Don’t be embarrassed if you have never heard of Ani Kilambi. The 31-year-old has been an assistant general manager with the Phillies since 2021 and is a rising star in analytics, research, and decision science. The Washington Nationals were able to swipe him out of the Phillies front office by offering him a promotion to be their GM, leaving a big hole in the Philadelphia leadership.

Kilambi is a guy who worked his way through the baseball ranks, starting as a front office intern with the Tampa Bay Rays, a team known for developing young talent during Kilambi’s stint with the team after being given the job of Director of Decision Science. He joined the Phillies as an assistant general manager, where he oversaw the R&D department and led the club’s use of analytics in decision-making across the organization. Under his tenure, the Phillies significantly expanded their research team.

While the Phillies had a group of players known as The Daycare, the Nationals front office is worthy of taking on that moniker. Paul Toboni was hired as the President of Baseball Operations this past September at the age of 35. Toboni hired manager Blake Butera, 33, who became the youngest major league manager since the 1970s. Now, comes Kilambi, the youngest of the group. Washington won the 2019 World Series under Mike Rizzo’s tenure but has not had a winning season since. The Nats cleaned house with the firing of Mike Rizzo as the GM and Dave Martinez as the manager.

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Mike DeBartolo had held the title of interim GM with the Nationals and oversaw the team’s draft this past summer, selecting high school shortstop Eli Willits, 17, with the first overall pick. Toboni’s first venture into free agency was to bring lefty Foster Griffin back from Japan where he had been pitching for the past three seasons. Griffin is signing a one-year, $5.5-million deal with Washington.

The Phillies lagged far behind in the use of analytics until Kilambi’s arrival in 2021. Under his leadership the team greatly increased the size of their research team and increased their use of analytics and decision science. Kilambi is a University of California, Berkeley grad who double majored in operations research and management science. He is said to be passionate about baseball and to be very analytical not just about players and statistics, but in how a front office operates.

Decision science is the discipline of making better choices using data, models, and structured thinking, especially when there’s uncertainty and trade-offs involved. Think of it as the bridge between raw data and actual decisions. It includes analytics, statistics, economics, psychology, and operations research into one process. In baseball, it is used particularly in roster construction, player acquisitions in terms of trades, free agency, and drafting. It also delves into in-game strategy to help decide things like when to pull a starter, use defensive shifts, and making pinch-hitting decisions. From an economic standpoint, decision science is also used in resource allocation (where and how to spend the money.)

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