Weeks after his employer won the World Series, Dodgers director of baseball systems platforms John Focht earned a more personal honor. On one December day in Culver City, Focht demonstrated remarkable recall and won four episodes of “Jeopardy!” When the shows aired last month, he could finally celebrate his $103,800 earnings with friends and family.
Focht, 38, grew up in a home in El Paso, Texas, where “Jeopardy!” was a tradition. But until his recent run, the show had not often been a part of his adult life. It airs, of course, at 7 p.m. on weekdays, right about when the Dodgers’ games usually begin. He has been a baseball fan for most of his life. As he relayed on the show, he attended his first game at Arlington Stadium on August 4, 1993, also known as the night Nolan Ryan pummeled Robin Ventura. He has seen many more since, at 24 of the sport’s 30 current stadiums.
Advertisement
More recently, he learned he could make a profession out of this interest. After graduating with a physics degree from MIT, Focht worked for Tessella and Amazon. In 2015, he was working as a software development engineer when he learned that an Amazon co-worker and friend shared his sports analytics inclination. When that friend heard from the Dodgers about a software job, he recommended Focht, the bigger baseball fan. Focht started in August 2015, months after Andrew Friedman took over as president of baseball operations.
“Ten, 15 years ago, no one was really aware that math and science jobs existed (in sports) in the first place,” Focht said. “But then they made a movie out of the math part of it, with ‘Moneyball.’ No one still really knows that there’s a lot of support that goes into that, and more technology underneath it. There’s a lot of education to do about the fact that these jobs exist.”
Focht is now what he termed on “Jeopardy!” a software team lead. He works under what he calls a “broad mandate.”
“The best way to describe it is that my team does the work to build software to support the Dodgers’ baseball operations,” Focht said. “That could be anything from working with data vendors we have to bring data in for our analysts to work with, to providing a platform for our scouts to work on. Basically, anything in baseball that requires a technology solution, we’re probably at least consulted on for advice or direction, if not actually implementing it ourselves.”
Pre-pandemic, his team worked out of Dodger Stadium’s converted visiting clubhouse, now the organization’s research and development department. His team worked on developing — and maintaining — competitive advantages. The day-to-day work, Focht said, is not much different than it might be for a similar software team within any other large company. It’s just in sports.
Advertisement
“It really brings me a lot of pride to bring good engineering skills and practice into baseball,” he said.
At Amazon, Focht learned that the only outside measure of success is the company’s stock price. That often fluctuates through no fault or success of individuals within the company. He has had to re-learn a similar process while working for the Dodgers.
“When your work more directly affects the wins on the field, you’re like, ‘Am I smarter when we win a lot? Am I stupider when we lose?’” he said. “It feels a lot more direct.
“Along with everyone else that works in baseball, one of the key things is to learn that everyone loses a significant amount of the time, and you have to be able to deal with that. It is great here in Los Angeles to win more often than we lose, up to and including a world title. But being able to judge success in ways that are a bit more objective and a bit less subject to chance and probability than baseball can be is a really important skill to learn.”
Sometimes, success is clear, like when Focht reached two professional pinnacles in one 60-day span last year. He is awaiting his World Series ring and his “Jeopardy!” check. Of course, the pandemic rendered both achievements unusual.
“It’s been a time with a lot of highs mixed in with the overall low situation going on,” he said. “It’s been interesting to deal with mentally.”
Focht plays “Jeopardy!” in two ways and reacts in two others. His eyes scan for keywords within the clue. His ears listen for all the contextual information. For speed’s sake, he first decides if he will try to ring in or not, then identifies what answer he wants to supply. On the show, the latter process sometimes slowed him down, most notably in his second game with one $600 clue: “There is zero casual jogging involved with this hyphenated type of home run.”
Advertisement
Focht rang in first. When guest host Ken Jennings called on him, Focht froze for a few seconds before reciting the answer just in time.
“Lots and lots of people have commented on the fear in my eyes at that point,” he said.
Focht was relatively conservative with his Daily Double bets. He regrets only one of his eight such decisions, from that same second episode, when he bet only $3,000 during Double Jeopardy.
“If I get to play again,” Focht said, “I’ll make a different choice then.”
That is a possibility. As a four-time winner, Focht is eligible for the next Tournament of Champions but not guaranteed a slot. In case he qualifies, he is studying the show more than ever, including his own performances. He figures he is the rare contestant to understand how grueling it is to film five games in one day and to repeatedly change clothes and re-apply face powder. In the weeks since his episodes aired, he has calculated that he was at his best on his first show and a bit worse each time thereafter.
“This activates all the same questions in me that my job does,” Focht said. “I want to know what I did, and how can I do it better if I get to play again in a tournament.”
His colleagues do, too. Focht watched each of his episodes multiple times with varied groups from his life, including nightly online sessions with colleagues.
“Well,” an analytics staffer said when Focht’s first win was complete, “I think now we need to make a win-probability model for ‘Jeopardy!’”
Such models, public and private, are commonplace in baseball. In recent years, private iterations are said to have soared past what’s available publicly. Focht forwarded his co-worker some links to internet win-probability models.
“Much like everything else,” the co-worker replied, “we need to go beyond what’s in the public domain, do research and do it better.”
Advertisement
They’re not actually going to do it. But it was a thought.
(Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kW1obmhjaHxzfJFqZmlrX2V%2BcLDOnZ6eqqNit6a7z5qpnbFdmLWiuc%2BipqdlmqS1r3nFqJqhrF8%3D