As a low scoring sport, soccer has relatively more random outcomes. This project examines the English Premier League team Everton’s results from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons to determine the cause in the observed drop in performance. We find that Everton’s drop off was due mainly to structural factors. Factors which include the departures of ...Read More

Over the past 20 years, baseball has reduced the rate of stolen base attempts and devalued baserunning. Our project examines team level baserunning statistics to discern if there is a correlation between a team’s baserunning and its winning percentage. A factor, BsR, was created that includes all plays on the basepaths. BsR was found to ...Read More

In tennis, players alternate who serves in each game. Often players can hold their serving game while breaking your opponent’s serve is far more difficult. Our project examines how important break points are and how break point percentages affect the outcome of a match. Winners were found to have a higher break point percentage by ...Read More

In the NFL, when playing in poor weather (cold and/or windy), teams often choose relatively run-heavy gameplans. We examine how different NFL weather conditions impacted the effectiveness of both run and pass plays. Using data from nflfastR, the Expected Points Added (EPA) per play from all plays between 2014-2021, was assessed over different temperatures and ...Read More

As a low scoring sport, soccer has relatively more random outcomes. This project examines the English Premier League team Everton’s results from the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons to determine the cause in the observed drop in performance. We find that Everton’s drop off was due mainly to structural factors. Factors which include the departures of ...Read More

The Liaoning Flying Leopards won the Chinese Basketball Association championships in the 2017 and 2021 seasons. In both 2018 and 2019, the Leopards kept their 2017 lineup but lost to the Southern Tigers. In the past, people thought the 2017 team was better because the team was unstoppable on offense. Comparing the 2017-18 Flying Leopards ...Read More

The Zero-Running Back (RB) draft strategy is to ignore RB until around the 6th round, and to draft the leftover RBs (usually consisting of high upside players or backups that might play or can be used for trade value). Instead focus high draft rounds on WRs, TEs, and QBs in the early rounds of the ...Read More

The NFL MVP award is chosen each year by a panel of 50 sportswriters who are selected by the Associated Press. As the MVP is chosen by humans who do not necessarily base their decision on statistics, but on watching all the games and talking to coaches and players, it is natural to wonder whether ...Read More

Traditional methods of computing WAR (wins above replacement) for pitchers are based on an invalid mathematical foundation. Consequently, these metrics, which produce reasonable values for many pitchers, can be substantially inaccurate for some. Specifically, Fangraphs and Baseball Reference compute a pitcher’s WAR as a function of his performance averaged over the entire season. This is ...Read More

Successful NCAA Division I Football (FBS) programs can recruit better high school players and they also produce players that are highly drafted into the NFL. This work explores which FBS programs are better at developing their players for the NFL draft, factoring in player recruiting quality. Recruiting class rating data from 247Sports.com was combine with ...Read More

Predicting Career Wins Above Replacement from Rookie Stats in Baseball: Addressing the Esteban German Dilemma, by Jack Blumenstein, University of Pennsylvania (Moneyball Academy), Josh Braverman, University of Pennsylvania (Moneyball Academy), Lekh Murthy, University of Pennsylvania (Moneyball Academy), and Wilson Wendt, University of Pennsylvania (Moneyball Academy) Read More