Tom Tango and "TangoTiger" are aliases used online by a

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

sabermetrics Sabermetrics (originally SABRmetrics) is the original or blanket term for sports analytics in the US, the empirical analysis of baseball, especially the development of advanced metrics based on baseball statistics that measure in-game activity ...

and

ice hockey statistics The following are statistics commonly tracked in ice hockey. Team statistics * STK – winning or losing streak * GD – ''Goal Difference'' (used as standings tie breaker) * GP – ''Games played'' – Number of games the team has played * W ...

analyst. He runs the ''Tango on Baseball'' sabermetrics website and is also a contributor to

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

's baseball blog ''TMI (The Max Info)''. Tango is currently the Senior Database Architect of Stats for

MLB Advanced Media MLB Advanced Media, L.P. (MLBAM) is a limited partnership of the club owners of Major League Baseball (MLB) based in New York City and is the Internet and interactive branch of the league. Robert Bowman, former president and Chief executive of ...

. Born in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

in 1968, he resides in

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

with his family and has insisted on keeping his true name secret. In 2006, Tango's book ''The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball'', which was co-written with Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin, was published featuring a foreword by

Pete Palmer Pete Palmer (born January 30, 1938) is an American sports statistician and encyclopedia editor. He is a major contributor to the applied mathematical field referred to as sabermetrics. Along with the Bill James '' Baseball Abstracts'', Palmer's ...

. In ''The Book'' he and his coauthors analyzed many advanced baseball questions, such as how to optimize a lineup or when to issue an

intentional base on balls In baseball, an intentional base on balls, usually referred to as an intentional walk and denoted in baseball scorekeeping by ''IBB'', is a walk issued to a batter by a pitcher with the intent of removing the batter's opportunity to swing at the ...

. They also introduced the wOBA metric to measure overall offensive contributions. Tango maintains the "Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System," a player projection system which uses three years of

weighted A weight function is a mathematical device used when performing a sum, integral, or average to give some elements more "weight" or influence on the result than other elements in the same set. The result of this application of a weight function is ...

player statistics with statistical regression and player age adjustment. He is best known for developing the FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) statistic, which attempts to more accurately assess the quality of a pitcher's performance than other statistics, such as

ERA An era is a span of time. Era or ERA may also refer to: * Era (geology), a subdivision of geologic time * Calendar era Education * Academy of European Law (German: '), an international law school * ERA School, in Melbourne, Australia * E ...

. 2009

American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is the younger of two sports leagues, leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western L ...

Cy Young Award The Cy Young Award is given annually to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball (MLB), one each for the American League (AL) and National League (baseball), National League (NL). The award was introduced in 1956 by Commissioner of Baseball ( ...

winner

Zack Greinke Donald Zackary Greinke ( ; born October 21, 1983) is an American professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. Greinke last played for the Kansas City Royals, with whom he played across two stints, from his 2004 debut to 2010, and from 202 ...

specifically mentioned FIP as his favorite statistic. "That's pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible". Tango works as a consultant for several

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...

teams, and has worked for

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

. Tango has worked for the

Seattle Mariners The Seattle Mariners are an American professional baseball team based in Seattle. The Mariners compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League West, West Division. The team joined the American ...

and

Toronto Blue Jays The Toronto Blue Jays are a Canadian professional baseball team based in Toronto. The Blue Jays compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League East, East Division. Since 1989, the team has p ...

as a statistical analysis consultant. He worked exclusively for the

Chicago Cubs The Chicago Cubs are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The Cubs compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (baseball), National League (NL) National League Central, Central Division. Th ...

in a similar role.Bleachernation.com
/ref> In 2020, he was awarded by the

Society for American Baseball Research The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and statistical record of baseball. The organization was founded in Cooperstown, New York, on Au ...

the Henry Chadwick Award. The award is given "to honor those researchers, historians, analysts, and statisticians whose work has most contributed to our understanding of the game and its history."

Books

*Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin. ''The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball''. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007. .

References

;Citations * Justin Sopp
"Q&A with SaberWizard Tom Tango"
''Beyond the Box Score'', 24 August 2011

External links

''Tangotiger''
(official)
''The Book—Playing The Percentages In Baseball''
(official)
Interview at Baseball Digest Daily - Part I

Interview at Baseball Digest Daily - Part II
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tango, Tom Living people Canadian statisticians Baseball statisticians Baseball people from Quebec People from Montreal Anglophone Quebec people 1968 births Unidentified people