The Numbers Game

Mooresville resident's background adds up to a job with the New York Yankees

Lake Norman Currents | October 2019

By Aaron Garcia

Growing up, there were two constants in Matt Reiland's home: math and baseball.

Back then the Reilands were decidedly a baseball family. This was before one of his younger brothers defected for — gasp — lacrosse. The tinny broadcast of Carolina Mudcats or Durham Bulls games scored the spring and summer evenings and, almost always, there was a baseball scorecard on the kitchen table somewhere among the stacks of college textbooks being copyedited by the family.

Reiland's parents, Tom and Susan, were both statistics professors in college before Susan switched to a career in publishing. Matt, the second-oldest child of six, was an all-state shortstop at Raleigh Cardinal Gibbons High School before matriculating to Massachusetts' Holy Cross University. After two years he retired from baseball to focus on school and transferred to N.C. State, where he studied Mathematics and Physics. Inspired by the attacks on 9/11, he joined the Navy's Nuclear Equipment Program after graduating in 2002. He spent a year and a half in training, another three in a submarine and served a stint teaching classes at The Citadel. He then joined the private sector, joining oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips before landing in Mooresville with a finance job at Lowe's.

"I kind of realized office life wasn't for me," Reiland says. "I had that itch."

Following the path

Reiland took his first step toward the New York Yankees in the fall of 2017 with an unsolicited email to Jeff Burchett, the head coach of Mooresville High's baseball team.

"It was sort of out of the blue," recalls Burchett. Reiland was looking to volunteer as a coach and told Burchett about his background, which also included strength and conditioning. Burchett gave him a shot designing the team's offseason training routine.

The following month, Reiland left his job at Lowe's. He saw the trend toward analytics in the sport. He also knew many coaching staffs couldn't translate the higher-level statistics being collected. He started a company called Power Alley Analytics and quickly earned a following by breaking down the complicated data so coaches could use it for player development.

During that time Reiland also was an assistant coach under Burchett and helmed the Race City Bootleggers, a summer team for college players based in Mooresville. Burchett says Reiland introduced him to analytics, a different side of the game he'd been coaching for 22 seasons.

"It enhanced what we do on a daily basis as far as evaluating our guys," says Burchett.

The following offseason, late in 2018, Reiland attended several coaching conferences, including Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings. In a grassroots effort, he scheduled a presentation in a hotel meeting room during the MLB event and sent invitations and samples of his work to several teams. It worked — standing somewhere in the back of the room were a few representatives from the Yankees.

After a few conversations and phone calls, Reiland was offered a position as an advanced scouting analyst with the Yankees' AAA affiliate, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. He would need to report to spring training in Florida. The Burchett family helped: Jeff's twin daughters, Bailey and Brooke, were the Reiland boys' babysitters when Megan couldn't be in two places at once.

"That's what made this all possible," says Megan.

A new formula

So, when Reiland, who recently completed his first season as an advanced scouting analyst for the New York Yankees organization, says this past baseball season was "definitely different from anything I was doing before," it's not exactly accurate — at least not to those that know him.

Everything adds up

Megan and Matt Reiland's first date was at a Charleston RiverDogs baseball game. They met when Matt was in the Navy and Megan was studying physical therapy at the Medical University of South Carolina. So, it hardly came as a surprise when, after seven years of marriage, Matt got the itch to get back into the game.

"I had faith in him," says Megan. "I knew he'd do well. He's a smart guy."

After Matt was hired, Megan spent the spring and summer traveling with the couples' two boys: Luke, 8; and Andrew, 6, to whichever ballpark the RailRiders were playing in at the time.

Now, the Reilands are settling into the offseason. The RailRiders finished the campaign with a 76-65 record, a division title and a trip to the playoffs, where they were eliminated by the Durham Bulls on Sept. 7. Reiland drove home to Mooresville the following morning.

During the drive, while speaking with a former high school teammate, Reiland was reminded of that all-too-common scene atop his parent's kitchen table. Maybe, suggested the friend, this new role wasn't all that new to Reiland, after all.

"I've thought about that," says Reiland. "If there was ever an intersection of my passion for baseball, my interest and ability in math and physics, this is it. There's not another job like this that's going to have that intersection. I need to see what I can do with it."