Experience Spotlight - Melissa Kelly, Major League Baseball

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Melissa Kelly '15.  Melissa is a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. She has been a dedicated member of the club since her first year at Cornell, serving as Social Impact chairperson in 2013.

Melissa worked this summer at Major League Baseball's Office of the Commissioner, serving as an Economics Intern in the Labor Relations Department. She originally interned in the same position during an ILR Credit Internship in Fall 2013.  Melissa was kind enough to answer some questions about her experiences.

What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

Over the duration of my internship I was asked to complete a myriad of tasks in all different formats and for a number of different people. Although I was technically on the economics side of the Labor Relations department, I was also asked to do work for the legal side. The legal side included research projects to find information regarding past Collective Bargaining Agreements and the legal statutes that were used in them. The economics side of Labor Relations is where I spent most of my time, and where I really learned a lot about the field. 

As a fall intern, I was fortunate enough to experience the Salary Arbitration process and how players are statistically valued. Through the utilization of MLB’s databases and Excel formulas, we are able to come up with a value that a player is worth based on their Platform Season performance as well as their career.

During the summer, the tasks were a little bit different. Two of the main projects I worked on were to create an Offensive Splits tool and to research information on the Tommy John epidemic. The offensive splits tool was something I created in excel that would generate all of the platform season and career splits statistics for any position players in the last 15 years. This tool will help the Labor Relations Department during the offseason to be able to look at up to three comparable players splits side by side.  

Any baseball fan knows the biggest current issue with Major League pitchers is the amount of UCL tears that are occurring. As the player loses between 12 and 18 months rehabbing this injury, it is great concern to the teams and the league. I assisted my bosses in researching information about Tommy John surgery including the theories on what makes a player more vulnerable to the tear, the best ways to rehabilitate an injured elbow, the top doctors in the field and what they have to say about the problem, and how past players have rebounded from this injury. I hope that my contributions to this effort and help the league develop programs to reduce the amount of UCL tears for the future.

How were you able to get the internship?

Originally, in Fall 2013, I received the internship through the ILR Credit Internship Program. I was fortunate enough to be asked back for the summer.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

The baseball industry is very tough to get involved in. The ILR’s credit internship program is a great way to get your foot in the door for an amazing opportunity at the Commissioner’s office. Any students that are interested in this internship are more than welcome to contact me with any questions about the application process or the internship itself! 

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

What was fulfilling about this experience was the degree of freedom that my supervisors gave me not only in the tasks they assigned me, but also in how the assignments were completed. I was fortunate enough to be given the responsibility to meet high profile clients, which helped me mature as a worker and learn how to handle myself in those types of situations. The experience that I have gained from this internship is invaluable, and the skills I can take away will help me in my future. I am so grateful that I was fortunate enough to be able to be a part of the Credit Internship program and is the best decision I have made at Cornell.

When I returned for the summer, I had a great time taking place in MLB’s Summer Internship Program. They do a great job hosting events for the interns to go to every few weeks and hear from leaders in the industry. The room that I spent my summer in was filled with Labor Relations Interns (both legal and economic) as well as interns from the HR department. My experience working with the other interns and collaborating on certain projects made the work even more enjoyable.

Thank you to Melissa and Major League Baseball for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Alex Gimenez, Cleveland Indians

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Alex Gimenez '15.  Alex is a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. He has been a dedicated member of the club since his freshman year at Cornell, serving as the Ivy Sports Representative in 2013.  Alex has also founded Cornell at Bat, and eventually, the Big Red Sports Network.  He can be reached at ajg322@cornell.edu.

Alex worked with the Cleveland Indians from January through August 2014 as part of the ILR credit internship program.  Alex served as a Strategy Intern with the Indians, and was kind enough to answer some questions about his experience.


What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

The day-to-day responsibilities surrounding my job really vary depending on the projects I’m working on. I’ll typically have two major projects and one smaller project. It is basically up to me to manage my time in a way that allows me to complete the projects effectively and efficiently. I’ve worked on everything from realigning our pricing locations down the foul lines and creating a "point pricing system" for our season ticket holder loyalty program, to redeveloping our program for customer service initiatives and helping in the creation of our dynamic ticket pricing models. 

How were you able to get the internship?

It’s actually a fairly long story. I was paired with an ILRSBS alum, Gabe Gershenfeld through an ILR alumni mentorship program my freshman year, and Gabe helped to facilitate a meeting with one of the Indians' Senior Vice Presidents during the MIT Conference. We really hit it off and remained in touch over the next year. Last May, he invited me out to Cleveland to meet others in the organization and I presented the possibility of using the ILR Credit Internship program as an opportunity to do an internship. Five months later, after many interviews,  a new internship position  was created through the Indians HR Department, and approved by the ILR  credit internship office, I accepted the offer in late November.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

My experience has helped me to really understand myself, my interests, and my skill set and how they best fit in the sports industry. I’ve had interest in working in professional baseball for a long time and this experience helped me to focus in on more specific areas. Being able to gain this experience as a junior where I still have a full year of college left was crucial. I feel like I am in a much better place to make an informed decision on my next steps that will allow me to be happy and successful while providing high value to my future employer. Ultimately, the experience helped show me that the broadcasting, media and PR side of the industry may be the best fit for me, and realizing that this early on was really beneficial.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

1. You are going to be challenged in ways that you might not have ever imagined. I’ve been lucky that the Indians have really trusted me with some challenging and important projects, but that definitely brings with its fair share of pressure. There are a lot of days where my 9-5 job becomes a 9-8 job so you have to be prepared to work hard and do what is necessary to get the job done and get it done the right way. 

2. Despite spending most of my life following sports and much of the last four years trying to better understand the business side of the industry, there is so much about the operation of a professional sports franchise that I never knew before stepping into the front office. Understand that, and try to gain as much knowledge as you can before you step in the door. It will really help you in getting a job if you can demonstrate that you understand the business. When you do get your foot in the door, be open to learning about every aspect of the operation, because you never know when you’ll be able to use that knowledge. 

3. Gain a mastery of Excel, Powerpoint, and Word and try to gain some coding experience in programs like SQL, R, or even C++. I know it sounds strange, but you will use Excel a ton and being able to manipulate data in the program will make your learning curve once on the job so much easier. Understanding code will give you an edge over a lot of people when applying for jobs in baseball (player) operations or business operations because coding is used to pull data from databases within these organizations. 

4. Network with people and find ways to get them interested in you by showing how you can provide value to them. I would not have been able to get this opportunity, but for my connections who were willing to make a sacrifice and take a risk on me in a professional setting. The only way to find jobs in the sports industry is to be proactive. 

5. In regards to networking, remember that the highest level people, the team presidents, the GMs, etc are in most cases not the people who are making hiring decisions for entry level positions. While networking with them can still lead to something great, don’t forget to network with middle level managers who make hiring decisions. They will be the people who end up giving you your first job, and in many cases, will end up moving up the ranks to become a high level executive down the road. 

6. In any entry level experience in sports or otherwise, make sure you are not just blindly accepting a position because the name of the company means something to you. Look for opportunities where you will be able to learn and grow your skill set while gaining valuable experience on meaningful projects. At the end of the day, people who are making hiring decisions care more about what you did at an organization , not the name of that organization.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience? 

It is difficult to pick just one. As far as one single event, it was having the opportunity to sit in the draft room for day 2 of the draft. I’m not in baseball operations, but I definitely have an interest in that side of the industry so getting to see what went on from within was a great opportunity. It was much less chaotic than I expected it to be. 

Aside from the draft, I’ve really just enjoyed being able to interact with a Major League Baseball team. Learning from meeting a lot of different people has been great, and I’ve been lucky to have some experiences outside of business and analytics such as watching the draft from the draft room or calling games in a spare radio booth for practice.

Thank you to Alex and the Cleveland Indians for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Mike Parnell, Texas Rangers

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Mike Parnell '14.  Mike was a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School, previously serving at the school's Institute for Compensation Studies. Mike had represented the club at the SABR Analytics Conference Diamond Dollar Classic in 2013, as well as several other events and conferences.  Baseball was always important to Mike, as he completed academic research on the sport for his thesis, as well worked in a collegiate summer baseball league.

During his senior spring semester, Mike worked as a Baseball Operations intern with the Texas Rangers. Cooridinated through the ILR Credit Internship Program, he will complete the internship in November. Mike was kind enough to answer some questions about his experience.


What are some Day-to-Day responsibilities of the position?

Airport runs, doctor runs, scouting Rangers' home games, daily organizational report, college stats updates, database tracking, independent projects. Everything baseball operations.

How were you able to get the Internship?

I interviewed for the position at Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings in December of last year. I then set up the internship through the ILR School's credit internship program.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

It has reaffirmed my desire to pursue a career in Major League Baseball, working for a MLB team.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

You’ll work longer and harder than you ever have whether that be as a student, or in another internship or job that you’ve done. But if you truly are passionate about pursuing a career in baseball or sports more generally it won’t feel like work and you will truly enjoy every minute of it. 

Be open to taking on any opportunity or experience regardless of how overqualified you may be for it. You won’t instantly be in charge, so you have to put in your time to earn the respect of those around you. 

These types of experiences aren’t usually posted in any place that you would normally find internship postings; you have to put yourself out there by reaching out to teams. I would recommend reaching out to several people in an organization a month or two prior to the Winter Meetings asking if they could meet for a few minutes. Provide a quick background on any relevant work that you’ve done. Keep the email succinct, they get a lot of these and are very busy so the more efficiently you write the email the better chance you have of getting a response. 

You have to do some relevant work on your own. Write for a website or blog so that you have some work to show. Go watch amateur or minor league games and write up reports on the players. You don’t have to be right or have a perfect report but it shows that you are truly interested in working in baseball. You’ll probably meet some people that may help you out down the road. I had someone vouch for me at the Rangers that I met on the road last summer while scouting a minor league game.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

So far the best experience has been by far being in the draft room for the amateur draft. Definitely a more fluid process than I imagined and very cool to see everything that goes into it.

Thank you to Mike and the Texas Rangers for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!