Noblesville firm piling up phenomenal record at College World Series

When I wrote about Noblesville-based Diamond Charts LLC for this week’s IBJ, I suggested the headline “Batting a thousand.”

My editors thought the headline was too inside baseball (pun intended). In the end, I agreed.

For the baseball-ambivalent among us, batting a thousand essentially means having a perfect record. In baseball, batting a thousand means getting a hit every time you come to the plate. And we already know that Diamond has worked with every College World Series champion since its inception—including in this year's CWS that hasn’t yet ended.

Diamond Charts was founded by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology alums Kellen Hurst and Jeremy Hochstedler to provide college baseball teams with hitting and pitching patterns of opposing teams. And since their launch with a whopping $200 in startup capital in early 2013, the private company has counted every single College World Series champion as a client. With Vanderbilt and Virginia advancing to this year’s CWS final over the weekend, that streak will continue this year.

How can I be so sure? Both teams are Diamond Charts clients. That means five of the last six teams to make the CWS final over the last three years have been Diamond Charts clients.

In 2013, Diamond had 15 clients. They just so happened to include UCLA, that year’s CWS champ, and Mississppi State, that year’s runner-up. Beginner’s luck, right?

In 2014, Diamond had 125 teams as clients, including CWS winner Vanderbilt. Could this be a pattern?

This year, the company expanded into college softball. Lo and behold, one of its clients, University of Florida, won the NCAA women’s softball championship.

As I wrote my story on Diamond Charts, this year’s CWS in Omaha was getting underway. I wondered what the chances were that this three-employee company could catch lightning in a bottle one more time. With only two of its clients making this year’s CWS, I figured the odds were stacked against Diamond Charts. 

I watched in amazement as the company’s two clients weaved their way through the maze of competition to reach the CWS final. OK, this has to be more than a coincidence.

Virginia and Vanderbilt will play the best of three series starting Monday night on ESPN. No matter what happens, Diamond Charts is already a big winner.

With the company’s expansion into softball this year, the company’s client list grew to 250—180 in college baseball and 70 in softball.

That means more than 1,500 college baseball and softball teams are not clients of the local company with the perfect record.

If Diamond Charts doesn’t see significant growth before the beginning of next year’s college softball and baseball season, there are a lot of coaches who don’t have their heads in the game. And I don’t think that requires any translation. 

For the full scoop on Diamond Charts click here.