Ross Ohlendorf played in the Majors for the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, Washington Nationals, Texas Rangers, and Cincinnati Reds, and in the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. He attended Princeton University, where he majored in Operations Research and Financial Engineering. In 2002, as a freshman pitcher, he was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Year. Ohlendorf, a second-team All-Ivy selection, was 3rd in the League with a 3.02 ERA. He finished with a 62 record. As a student, he penned a 140-page senior thesis entitled Investing in Prospects: A Look at the Financial Successes of Major League Baseball Rule IV Drafts from 1989 to 1993. He completed his degree at Princeton in 2006 while in the Arizona Diamondbacks' farm system. He received the George Mueller Award from the university for combining "high scholarly achievement in the study of engineering with quality performance in intercollegiate athletics". In his senior thesis, Ohlendorf used sabermetrics to demonstrate the return on investment from the Major League Baseball Draft.