A year and a half ago, St. Louis native Anthony Cacchione was graduating from the City College of New York through the Macaulay Honors College with both a bachelors and a masters in Economics. Today, he stands as the Coordinator of Player Evaluation for the Houston Astros, who are battling in the World Series.
Cacchione always dreamed of playing baseball professionally, but while playing for CCNY, he came to the reality that that dream wasn’t real. However, he would be able to change that realization and shift his focus to a new path, being in the sport he loves as a member of a major league front office.
We caught up with the 2018 CUNYAC Male Scholar Athlete of the Year during this highly busy week.
How did you land your role with the Astros?
I landed my role with the Houston Astros by applying to many baseball operations internships online. My position with the New York Mets was a significant factor in landing this opportunity. I was able to develop the needed technical skills to stand out during the application process. CCNY’s dual degree program allowing me to pursue my bachelor’s and master’s degree at the same time was also a significant advantage during the application process. Due to the large number of applications teams receive, an advanced degree with the technical skills I developed while with the Mets helped distinguish myself from the competition.
Tell us about your role as a Baseball Operation Apprentice. What does your day to day look like?
In my role as Baseball Operations Apprentice, I support our decision-makers in baseball operations. Most of my role is in building tools or visualizations that help explain a player’s statistics or our scout’s evaluations of a player in a way that makes the data easy to digest in order to draw conclusions. Most of my day is spent coding in R Studio or SQL to generate these reports. Outside of aggregating data for our decision-makers, I built predictive models to allow us to better understand the value of players based on their expected production moving forward. Some of the highlights of my time in this role include supporting contract negotiations during salary arbitration and being involved in the discussions at the Trade Deadline of who we should acquire.
Last year you were playing college baseball at Randall’s Island, this year, you’re working for the 2017 World Series Champions, with perhaps another championship by the end of the week. How was that transition for you?
The transition into baseball operations from playing the game just a year before was very exciting and the team here quickly made me feel comfortable. But it was certainly very daunting at the beginning to provide input on roster moves and areas to explore further. These were always thoughts and discussions I’d had, but now that they had actual implications it became a greater challenge to provide recommendations. The opportunity to play at CCNY certainly helped my transition into working in baseball. It provided me the ability to look at the game from different perspectives. I also don’t think the value of playing on a team can be overstated. I have used so many skills I learned from being a student-athlete since working for the Astros, including time-management, communication, learning from failure and ability to take criticism.
Tell us about your time at CCNY? Who left an impact on you that you can say helped you get to where you are at now?
My time at CCNY was fantastic. The opportunities I had both in the classroom and on the field were instrumental in getting me to where I am today. All my coaches and teammates obviously had a significant impact on me and made all the early mornings and hard work worthwhile. I also had some tremendous professors who helped me follow a path that would guide me to my goals by allowing me to pursue both my bachelor's and master’s degrees simultaneously and write a master's thesis on a topic I was passionate about and was relevant to my career goals. Some of the professors who were instrumental in my success are Kevin Foster (Interim Associate Dean of Economics and Business), Robert Mellman (Thesis Reader), and Hank Nguyen. In addition, my coaches connected me with Bob Adler, an outstanding alumnus of the CCNY Baseball program, who helped me earn an interview with the Mets. I wrote my Master’s thesis on the Net Present Value of MLB Draft Picks. It combined my background in economics with my passion for baseball and helped me throughout the interview process. I am grateful to CCNY’s professors for allowing me to work on something I was passionate about
What advice would you give to students who want to start a career in the sports industry?
The main piece of advice I would give to students wanting to start out in sports is number one to do independent work to demonstrate your passion. There are too many people that want to work in sports to be able to get a job just because you have the skills, you need to also demonstrate that you love what you will be doing. The best way to demonstrate this is to do that type of work on your own in your free time. I started a baseball blog in high school to show my interest and build a portfolio. I would also recommend reaching out to people in a position you are interested in to find out the necessary skills and ways to stand out. It can be quite daunting to reach out to people you don’t know, but many people within this industry understand the challenge of getting into the industry and are interested in helping those trying to break in.
You worked with the Mets as a Business Intelligence and Analytics and now with the Astros in your current position. What’s your goal in the baseball industry?
My goal in the baseball industry is to work in baseball operations as I am now and continue to add value to an organization as we try to build a World Series Championship team. My position with the Mets as a Business Intelligence and Analytics intern was beneficial in learning the business side of the industry, but my true interests lie in helping construct the team on the field.
You were enrolled as a Macaulay Honors student at CCNY, where you worked on both your bachelors and a masters in economics, all the while, playing baseball for the Beavers. What advice would you give to aspiring student athletes trying to do the same?
I think for all student-athletes the key always comes down to prioritization and time management. At the D3 level, academics should always come first, but we are still competitive and want to be the best in our sport. So it is important to budget your time properly to be successful in both areas. I think the unique challenge of CUNY schools is that so many student-athletes have jobs in addition to their coursework and athletics schedule. While it is a difficult challenge to juggle each responsibility, we are better prepared after graduation to succeed in whatever we go on to do.
For the link to Anthony Cacchione’s 2018 Scholar Athlete of the Year Highlight Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Tk0Os9L38
By Robinson Perez, CUNY Athletics