Wharton Sports Research Journal
2024 Spring Edition
The papers in this issue include research from students at the University of Pennsylvania as well as high schools and universities across the country, ranging across sports and statistical techniques.
SET: Spatial Edge Technique – A Framework to Evaluate Edge Setters
Authors: Viren Bhatia, Smit Bajaj
New York University
A Holistic Examination of Streakiness and Consistency in Major League Baseball
Author: Ryan Feder
The Dalton School
Using a Novel Metric of Expected Points Above Average (EPAA) Versus Salary to Assess 2023 National Football League Kicker Value
Author: Jayan Gandhi
Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School
Understanding the relationship between mental health literacy and grit in a sample of high school female athletes
Author: Lisa Hone
Southern Utah University
The Sharpe Ratio and Hitter Evaluation: A New Application of Modern Portfolio Theory
Author: Chad Knight
Duke University
Analysis of Success Probabilities in Field Hockey with Machine Learning
Author: Jethro R. Lee
Northeastern University
High Value Football Transfers: A Win or Loss? Correlation of High Value Football Transfers, with their Subsequent Performances
Author: Shiv Mittal
New York University
Exploring the Evolution of the NFL Draft Pick Trade Market Over Time
Author: Ari Nathanson
Dartmouth College
Evaluating the Impact of Special Teams on Winning
Authors: Matthew Ladden, Ethan Seung
Trinity School ‘25, Harvard-Westlake School ‘25
Quantifying NFL Quarterback Aggressiveness Using aDOT Over Expected (AYOE)
Author: Amrit Vignesh
Seminole High School
Analyzing Force in Tackling with the Creation of the Force Over Expected Metric
Authors: Owen Yoo, Ben Weber, Eliana Detata
University of Michigan
2024 Moneyball Academy, Rookie Review
*Papers in this issue include research from students who completed our high school program Moneyball Academy.
Analyzing Leicester City’s 2015/16 Premier League Victory
Authors: Ethan Lu, Nassef Sawiris, Dustin Liu, Matteo Musicco
SET: Spatial Edge Technique - A Framework to Evaluate Edge Setters
Viren Bhatia, Smit Bajaj
Defensive plays on the football field require the effort of 11 players. However, defensive statistics only credit one or two defenders for the play’s end result (sack, tackle, interception, etc.).
Our project focused on the off-ball contributions of the oft-ignored nine or ten others. In particular, we focused on a vital skill to stop the run — setting the edge.
A Holistic Examination of Streakiness and Consistency in Major League Baseball
Ryan Feder
Streakiness and baseball go hand in hand, but accurately measuring streakiness and consistency in sports is difficult. While studying hitting streaks is an old idea, relatively few works have examined streaks for hitters at the pitch outcome granularity, or for pitchers more generally.
In this work, we utilize permutation tests, which we use to apply two metrics to four outcomes of interest from the perspective of both hitters and pitchers in order to quantify internal player streakiness in a holistic manner.
Using a Novel Metric of Expected Points Above Average (EPAA) Versus Salary to Assess 2023 National Football League Kicker Value
Jayan Gandhi
In the National Football League (NFL), team salary caps mean money spent on players on one position reduces the ability to spend resources on others. Salary cap hits for kickers in 2023 ranged from under $1M to almost $6M, with cash salaries exhibiting an even wider range (<$1M to >$9M).
This paper describes a new, up-to-date metric, expected points above average (EPAA), that incorporates significant weather-related factors in addition to kick distance to evaluate kicker performance. Performance is then compared to salary to determine 2023 kicker value.
Understanding the relationship between mental health literacy and grit in a sample of high school female athletes
Lisa Hone
A survey was conducted with 48 female participants from a rural high school in Utah to determine the correlation between mental health literacy and grit. Each participant completed the modified Multicomponent Mental Health Literacy Measure (MMHLM), shortened Grit-S scale, challenge and commitment constructs from the Mental Toughness Questionnaire 48-item (MTQ48), and additional questions about their views of elite athletes and mental health.
No statistically significant correlations were reported between MHL and grit for female athletes.
The Sharpe Ratio and Hitter Evaluation: A New Application of Modern Portfolio Theory
Chad Knight
When evaluating hitters, it may be very challenging or nearly impossible to consistently predict the future returns (total bases accumulated) of individual hitters due to a variety of uncontrollable random variables.
For this reason, I suggest we should shift our focus towards trying to identify hitters with minimal volatility associated with their skillset in an effort to find hitters with the highest Sharpe Ratio.
Analysis of Success Probabilities in Field Hockey with Machine Learning
Jethro R. Lee, Eric Gerber
The main goal of this project is to use modern machine-learning techniques to analyze field hockey player performance. Field hockey is a relatively heretofore unexplored application, and there would be a great benefit in building a model to predict players’ ability to score under different conditions.
We have scraped public data from Northeastern’s 2023 field hockey season, and implemented a prototype mixed effects logistic regression model with both glmer [2] and RStan [6].
High value football transfers: a win or loss? Correlation of high value football transfers, with their subsequent performances
Shiv Mittal
The study is based on the correlation of high value football transfers, and the change in market value of those transfers for their new clubs.
Analyzing pre covid data, from seasons 2017/18 to 19/20, a comparison has been made for the change in market value of the top 10 valued transfers, for goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, attackers over the course of 2 years from their transfer.
Exploring the Evolution of the NFL Draft Pick Trade Market Over Time
Ari Nathanson
This paper investigates changes and trends in the market for National Football League draft picks over the past 40 years. This period has seen significant advancements in the way NFL franchises approach the draft, including the Jimmy Johnson trade value chart, first employed by the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s. Still, many (including Massey and Thaler) argue that teams continue to significantly overvalue early draft picks.
This paper uses a Weibull distribution to model the market value of picks based on their position and year.
Evaluating the Impact of Special Teams on Winning
Ethan Seung, Matthew Ladden
This paper evaluates the per-play impact of special teams on the winning percentage of NFL teams compared to offense and defense. Employing data from the 1999-2022 NFL seasons in the nflfastR database, we developed a new calculation for Expected Points Added (EPA) to accurately assess the contribution of special teams plays.
This methodology allowed us to create our Special Teams Performance Index (STPI), a composite metric that consolidates the performance of all special teams units on a team.
Quantifying NFL Quarterback Aggressiveness Using aDOT Over Expected (AYOE)
Amrit Vignesh
The quarterback of a football team is typically described to be the leader of an offense as their performance and playstyle can highly impact the characteristics of an offense in comparison to other positions.
Using an XGBoost model with a dataset split into training data from the 2014 to 2020 NFL season and test data from the 2021 to 2023 season for an approximate 70:30 split, the aggressiveness of a quarterback was quantified using the amount of air yards they generate per pass attempt compared to their
expected amount influenced by the situational and system factors described previously.
Analyzing Force in Tackling with the Creation of the Force Over Expected Metric
Owen Yoo, Ben Weber, Eliana Detata
Given the access to valuable play-by-play data through the 2024 Big Data Bowl, we decided to investigate the force generated by tackles. We hypothesized that the force of the tackle is meaningful in tackling success and sought to quantify it accurately.
By modeling this metric, which we will refer to as “force generated at the spot of the tackle” against an array of potentially significant variables, we wanted to create an expected force metric that could be compared to the actual force generated on a specific play. From experimentation and analysis, we hoped to generate actionable insights and inspire further research into the relationship between force and tackling in the NFL.
2024 Moneyball Academy, Rookie Review
Analyzing Leicester City's 2015/16 Premier League Victory
Ethan Lu, Nassef Sawiris, Dustin Liu, Matteo Musicco
The fairytale of Leicester City winning the English Premier League in 2015/16 has been well covered. From beginning the season with odds of 5000-1 to win the league; uncovering hidden gems of N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez; the incredible form of Jamie Vardy; to the unique strategy they played compared to their competitors, there were many storylines and explanations that resonated within the soccer community.