Our Team
Rock Island Analytics is led by a cross-disciplinary crew of quantitative investors, World-Series-winning baseball executives, data-science innovators, and full-stack engineers. Collectively we’ve managed multi-billion-dollar hedge-fund portfolios, devised projection systems cited by ESPN and The Economist, and shipped enterprise-grade software that powers decisions at Fortune 500 firms. This breadth of experience – spanning Wall Street, Major League Baseball, tech, and law – lets us attack player evaluation problems from every angle and turn complex data into simple, actionable insight for our partners.
Chris English
Christopher J. English is the founder of RockFence Capital, a $500 m lender hedging MLB players’ earnings. He was Partner/Senior Investment Officer at $5 b Magnitude Capital, led Deutsche Bank’s $1 b arbitrage team, and co-founded New Bond Trading. He also co-founded Trajekt Sports, produced baseball documentaries, and holds an economics A.B. from Vassar.
Read more
Kostya Medvedovsky
Konstantin Medvedovsky leads RIA’s data science team and created the DARKO NBA projection system, cited by ESPN, The Athletic, USA Today, and The Economist. He also practices antitrust law, advising on FTC, DOJ, and state mergers. He has a BA Bard, JD Michigan and lives in Washington, D.C. with his family.
Read more
Brandon Taubman
Brandon Taubman is an investor and former baseball executive with 15 years’ experience across investment banking, daily-fantasy sports, MLB operations and real estate. After Ernst & Young and Barclays, his DFS prowess brought him to the Houston Astros, rising to assistant GM (2013–19) over scouting and R&D. He aids RIA’s evaluation analytics and lives in Los Angeles with his family.
Read more
Sean Morash
Sean Morash is a renewable-energy analyst and solutions architect who combines engineering expertise to advance electricity technologies. He founded a baseball-analytics site and has written for FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Beyond the Box Score. At RIA, he supports data collection and player evaluation. He has a BA Vassar, MS Northeastern and is based in Knoxville, TN.
Read more
Darren DeFreeuw
Darren DeFreeuw is the lead software engineer at RIA and has 15 years of experience building decision-support tools. He was responsible for the Houston Astros’ MLB draft projection model and Columbia Records’ first data-driven A&R platform. His technical expertise is in Python, Django, PostgreSQL, and AWS (EC2, RDS, S3, SQS, Lambda). Darren holds a Rice B.A. in Applied Mathematics and lives in Tokyo with family.
Read more