The Business—and Life—of Professional Baseball
Scott Akasaki ’98
Scott Akasaki ’98 enters his 22nd season and sixth as senior director of team travel for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Akasaki was the first Asian-American to be named to the post in Major League history and is just the fifth team travel representative for the Dodgers since they moved to Los Angeles in 1958. In December 2017, he was voted by his peers as the Donald Davidson Traveling Secretary of the Year.
During his tenure, Akasaki has guided the Dodgers nationwide and internationally including on trips to Beijing, Sydney, Taipei, and Mexico. In the fall of 2014, Akasaki was selected by Major League Baseball to organize a team of MLB All-Star players on a two-week, four-city, seven-game trip to Japan. In 2020, he led the Dodgers’ travel logistics as the team won at a World Championship in a bubble-environment during the pandemic in Dallas, Texas. In 2021, his work with Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts against Asian Hate was featured in ESPN.
A cum laude graduate of Claremont McKenna College, Akasaki double majored in government and legal studies. He has served on pro baseball steering committees for both The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and Four Seasons Hotels Limited. Akasaki has been a featured speaker at the Japanese American National Museum, the Claremont Colleges, UCLA, USC, and also on various podcasts.
Emilee Fragapane
Emilee Fragapane is entering her 11th season with the Los Angeles Dodgers. She studied economics and statistics at Sonoma State University and at UC Santa Barbara. She joined the Dodgers as an operations intern directly out of college, and now works to help integrate analytics and baseball between the front office and the coaches and players, with a focus on the rising availability of biomechanical data.
Michael Voltmer
Michael Voltmer is entering into his eighth season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and his second as the director of baseball strategy and information. His focus is on roster construction and ensuring the Major League coaching staff has the data needed to make excellent in-game strategy decisions. He majored in economics at the University of Louisville and earned a master’s in data science from the University of Virginia.
View Video: YouTube with Scott Akasaki '98, Emilee Fragapane, Michael Voltmer