A star is born. Believe it or not.

All the highest-rated picks had been drafted. All the obvious blue-chip prospects were already slotted in somewhere. But looking over the remaining crop, an unassuming, unheralded kid caught the eye of the Meh brain trust.

It was an unassuming WiFi camera that all the analysts had written off as a poor man’s Dropcam. It would never make the first team at a data-driven organization like Amazon - clearly not Goldbox material. But our gut told us it had… something.

Maybe it was the plug-and-play ease of it. Maybe we just sensed that it would have great chemistry with the rest of our roster, and our fans. At this price, we thought we might as well take a flyer on it. It’s not like it would be crowding anything better off of the team.

Now, 20,000 units sold later, the Stem Izon Video Monitor has quietly become a star.

A keystone in the lineup. A fan favorite. A perennial All-Pro with a shot at the Hall of Fame. You never could have divined it from the data. You had to just feel the potential. We trust our gut around here. That’s why thousands of our fans have cheered for the Stem Izon, and not thousands of Goldbox fans. (Does Goldbox even have fans? “Hey, guys, let’s check today’s data-driven decision on Goldbox! It’ll be so logical!”)

The data-driven crowd thought, if you were lucky, its WiFi-enabled camera, motion and sound detection, and free recordings of the first 100 videos would make it an average performer. Replacement level, as the sabermetrics guys say.

Just goes to show you that prior data only shows you so much. It can’t always show you potential. Turns out the Stem Izon is actually pretty good. Maybe even bordering on great, believe it or not.

And after selling so many, we believe it. As the sabermetrics guys say, the numbers don’t lie.