Academics help schedule MLB umpires

EAST LANSING, Mich., July 20 (UPI) -- A Michigan State University business professor is part of a team that created a successful method for scheduling big league baseball umpires, the school said.

Today, Yildiz is part of a team of researchers whose complex scheduling method has proven so successful the league has used it five of the past six seasons, a university release said Wednesday.

"Major League Baseball has benefited from this study," said Yildiz, a faculty member in MSU's Department of Supply Chain Management. "The umpire schedules are more balanced and have fewer violations of league-imposed travel rules and restrictions."

Previously, the schedule for big league umpires was built on an Excel spreadsheet by a former umpire, a "daunting task that took weeks of planning," Yildiz said.

MLB teams play 2,430 games during the season, with each game officiated by a four-person umpiring crew. Scheduling these crews is difficult, Yildiz said, because of constraints such as union-mandated vacations and league rules that regulate, for example, coast-to-coast travel and potential overexposure to individual teams.

In 2006, major league baseball decided to use the research team's schedule, the first time the league had gone to an outside consultant.

The Turkish-born Yildiz says he's excited to do research dealing with sports, though he still hasn't become a baseball fan.

Growing up with soccer, he says he enjoys American football and hockey.

"For me, I like the fast-moving games," Yildiz said. "Baseball is a slow-moving game; it takes too long. I still can't seem to get my head around it."