Yankees, Mets ... and Virtual Gold's DM Software

By way of illustrating how its cutting-edge, patent-pending VirtualMiner software can be used to transform raw data into strategic insights, Virtual Gold Inc, a leading data mining and business intelligence company, is working with Major League Baseball, SportsLine.com Inc, and MasterCard to create the feature called "Game Within The Game" on www.mlb.com, the official Web site of Major League Baseball. Following each game, Virtual Gold provides MLB.com with unique statistical facts that have been mined from game data. Within minutes, the MasterCard sponsored feature is available on the site, providing Subway Series fans with additional facts from which to debate the superiority of their team.

A few examples from Game 2:

Rocket went outside, not inside, with a 1-2. Roger Clemens got ahead of batters with a 1-2 count on 20 occasions. Despite his tendency to throw inside, Clemens threw only one inside pitch with this favorable count, as opposed to 10 outside pitches. The Mets hitters went 0-for-6 with a 1-2 count against Clemens, making out twice on outside pitches and four times on pitches over the middle of the plate.

Hampton needed to go high or low for success. Mike Hampton performed well as long as he avoided belt-high pitches. Yankee batters went 0-for-5 on low pitches against the Mets starting pitcher, and 0-for-3 against high pitches. The Yankee hitters slugged Hampton when his pitches were at a middle-height, crushing eight hits in 16 at-bats (.500).

The complexity of this mining exercise is best understood by noting that a single pitch thrown by a World Series pitcher has more than 2 million combinations of circumstances, making it difficult for such patterns to be identified without the use of Virtual Gold's software.

Virtual Gold Inc has a comprehensive suite of products and services based on VirtualMiner to enable enterprise, e-business, and small business customers to transform their business data into strategic insights. The suite includes a joint offering of VirtualMiner and IBM Corporation's Data Management software, as well as 3-dV, an embedded offering of VirtualMiner in Dictaphone Corporation's da Vinci call center monitoring system. For more information, please visit www.virtualgold.com/mlb or e-mail Virtual Gold at info@virtualgold.com or call 914-761-2334.