Wharton Sports Analytics Journal
Past Editions
Explore previous editions and immerse yourself in a world of insightful content.
2024 SPECIAL EDITION
Featuring Winning Team from the Inaugural Wharton High School Data Science Competition
The 2024 Special Edition highlights the 1st place winning team from the 2024 Winter-Spring Wharton High School Data Science Competition, showcasing their innovative approach and results.
Explore the work of these rising stars and gain insights into the future of sports analytics.
Authors: Ethan Seung, John Xu, Ryder Katz, Mason Wetzstein, Michael Barr
Harvard-Westlake School, CA, USA
Advisor: Andy Stout
Harvard-Westlake School, CA, USA
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
2023 FALL 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.
Algorithmic NBA Player Acquisition
Authors: Ryan S. Brill, Justin Hughes, and Nathan Waldbaum
University of Pennsylvania
Optimal Strategy for Defensive Pressure in American Football: Insights from an Expected Sack Model
Author: Tej Seth
University of Michigan
Sidelined: Using Natural Language Processing to Investigate Gender Bias in Basketball Sports Journalism
Author: Nathaniel Yellin
Leffell School
More Than The Sum of Their Parts: Evaluating Defensive Line Construction and Deployment
Authors: Krish Shah, Ezra Troy, Daniel Coale, Sam Pasco, Caleb Cannon
University of Pennsylvania
A Research Study on Formula One: Determining the Effectiveness of Drivers Based on Their Experience
Author: Ignacio Felix-Padilla
University of Pennsylvania
Serving to Win: A Statistical Exploration of Optimal Serves 1 in Beach Volleyball
Author: Zachary Zeng
Southridge School, BC, Canada
2023 MONEYBALL ACADEMY, ROOKIE REVIEW
The papers in this issue include research from students who completed our summer high school programs Moneyball Academy and Moneyball Academy Training Camp, as well as senior projects from Professor Adi Wyner’s capstone course at the University of Pennsylvania.
Against All Odds: Leicester City’s Triumphant Journey to Premier League Glory
Authors: Ethan Lu, Nassef Sawiris, Dustin Liu, Matteo Musicco
The Drafting Dynasty: Which NBA Franchise Dominates the Draft?
Authors: Vik Dandapani, Pranav Batra, Ben Wolf, Alex Min, and Juju Zhao
Optimal Rest Days for Pitchers: Maximizing Performance and Wins
Authors: Blake Zilberman, Philip Sherr, Lyev Pitram, Marc Sutton
Are “Surprise Teams” in the MLB in 2023 More Surprising?
Authors: Chad Federico, Kotaro Nagano, Alejandro Wick
2023 SPRING EDITION
The projects included in this issue include projects completed by rising high school students who completed Moneyball Academy: Training Camp FLEX and undergraduate students who completed Sports Analytics: A Capstone Course, taught by Professor Adi Wyner in 2023.
An Investigation of Sports Betting Selection and Sizing
John Beggy, Daniel Kim, Kejdi Mucaj, James Nordell
Calculating NBA MVPs Using Advanced Sports Analytics
Max Shen, Gergo Nagy
Predicting March Madness Cinderella Teams
Allen Sha, Noah Hyman, Joshua Sewell, Aron Ramsey
Why Did They Succeed? A World Cup 2022 Analysis
Aaron Lim, Harrison Goetz, Fangzhou Dai, Kelly Zhang, Neil Varwandkar
Effect of Increased Three-point Shot Attempts on Probability of Winning in High School Basketball
Samantha Kostacos
2022 FALL EDITION
The projects included in this issue include research from University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. student Ryan Brill in collaboration with Penn undergraduates and high school students from Moneyball Academy, as well as projects completed by rising high school students who completed our summer high school programs Moneyball Academy and Moneyball Academy Training Camp in 2022.
Introducing Grid WAR: Rethinking WAR for Starting Pitchers
Ryan S. Brill, Justin Lipitz, Emma Segerman, Ezra Troy, Abraham J. Wyner
Predicting the Quarterback-MVP in the NFL
Ryan S. Brill, Ryan Weisman
Zero Running Backs or Zero Points: An Analysis on the Optimal Fantasy Football Draft Strategy
By Andrew Heller, James Sohigian, Henry Bartz, Ethan Kawahara, Felix Wang
Predicting Career Wins Above Replacement from Rookie Stats in Baseball: Addressing the Esteban German Dilemma
By Jack Blumenstein, Josh Braverman, Lekh Murthy, Wilson Wendt
Stars Matter: an Analysis of College Football Recruiting, Development, and Draft Success
By Naya Kessman, Ellery Axel, Cotton Snoddy, Will Hoey
MLB Umpire Pitch Evaluation Declines with Age; Implications for World Series Selection
By Brooks Fischer, Ethan Schulman, Hayden Lee, Ethan Jin
The 2021-2022 Liaoning Flying Leopards: The Best Championship Team in Franchise History
By Yecheng Yue, Jason Shi, Sirius Xiao
Is Everton’s One-Season Drop Off Due to Random or Structural Factors?
By Sammit Bal, Sanjay Bharadwaj, Carlo Sebastiani, Kevin Yu
Whether Weather, Wind Speed and Temperature, Impacts Offensive Success in the NFL
By Hudson Parks, Cole Ceklosky, Jake Roseman, Jonah Awad, Jimmy Yan
The Importance of Break Point Percentage
By Jenny Yu, Joshua Kwong, Amar Kumar, Jeffen Zhang
Running to Runs: the Importance of Baserunning
By Jaden Patel, Irene Bian, Matthew Ladden, Jackson Krump
2022 SPRING EDITION: VOLUME 4, CAPSTONE COURSE PROJECTS
The projects included in Volume 4 were completed by undergraduate students who completed Sports Analytics: A Capstone Course, taught by Professor Adi Wyner in 2021 and 2022.
Rocket League: esports (2022)
By Katie Lee, Hugo Leo, Linda Wang
Hot Hand Fallacy, Fallacy, Fallacy (2021)
By Kevin Babitz
Quantifying NBA play style drift using Finite Mixture Multinomial model (2021)
By Andrew Castle, Grant Cho, David Fan
Predicting Winners in Cricket: introducing sports analytics to one of the world’s most-watched sports (2021)
By Amy Liu, Sardar Cheema
2022 SPRING EDITION: VOLUME 3
The projects included in Volume 3 were completed by rising students who completed our summer high school programs Moneyball Academy and Moneyball Academy Training Camp in 2020.
Seattle Kraken Expansion Draft: Strategic Approaches (2020)
By Jacob Malter, Dov Shore, Maxwell Dubow, Michael Kuhl
Analyzing the Value of Starting Pitchers vs Relief Pitchers in MLB (2020)
By Vaibhav Jha, Joe Masters, Josh Marx, George Koral
Finding the NBA Draft Diamonds in the Rough (2020)
By Ayush Batra, Wesley Neidhardt, Pranav Nanda, Daniel Galper
Go For It? A Data Driven Analysis of NFL 4th Downs (2020)
By Solomon Lerman, Bennett Stein, Nakul Solai, Ricky Martin
Creating a Better Pythagorean Expectation for Basketball (2020)
By Richard Zhuang, Baillie Weil, Andrew Hyde
In a Rush to Pass: NFL Teams Pass on Rushing (2020)
By Andrew Cramer, Atharv Karanjkar, Dhruv Khurjekar, Ethan Schwimmer
Optimal Pitch: Spin Rate & Velocity to Maximize Whiff Rate (2020)
By Minsoo Park, Richard Yang, Neil Rowe, Wesley Fletcher
Home Field Advantage in English Premier League (2020)
By Sofie Aird, Madeline Kim, Connor Olson, Santiago Balbontin
How Rare is Pete Alonso’s 53 Home Run Season? (2020)
By Jason Burlant, Daniel Goldblatt, Aaron Visser, Jake Hart
Stolen Bases are Disappearing as Baseball Become More Analytical (2020)
By Nathaniel Yellin, Trevor Chen, Tobias Coker, Zeyad Shariff
2022 SPRING EDITION: VOLUME 2
The projects included in Volume 3 were completed by rising students who completed our summer high school programs Moneyball Academy and Moneyball Academy Training Camp in 2019.
Determining the Nastiest Pitcher in 2019 MLB (2019)
By Jacob Hahn, Crash Collier, Theodore Barton
The Importance of the Serve; Shining Through a Lack of Quality Data (2019)
By Eve Pennington, Zeke Kelz, Rita Li, Jenny Song
Judge Nationality Bias in Figure Skating (2019)
By Alexa Jin, Kexin Ding
Understanding the Importance of Each Point in Tennis (2019)
By Jiaxi (Barry) Wu, Jake Federman
Relative Age Effect in Elite Soccer, Consider Females (2019)
By Bryan Zhang, Joanna Yang, Roma Gandhi
Expected Value of an NFL Fantasy Draft on a Positional Basis (2019)
By Michael Hammer, Michael Butshansky, Dylan Oberst
The Rich Hill Index: Optimizing a MLB Pitcher’s Repertoire (2019)
By Alex Corb, Jeremy Swack, Henry Gutkin
Combine Performance vs NFL Success Football (2019)
By Adam Weiss, Ronak Thakker, Jatin Nayyar, Thompson Schmiel
2022 SPRING EDITION: VOLUME 1
The projects included in Volume 3 were completed by rising students who completed our summer high school programs Moneyball Academy and Moneyball Academy Training Camp in 2017 and 2018.
Year to Year Statistical Correlation in the NFL (2017)
By Elliott Cherry, Justin Witmondt, Fin Woodlief
Accuracy of ELO and Betting Odds in Tennis (2017)
By Tiffany Moi, Manav Sharma, Annie Dai, Dara Doft
Transitioning Opportunity? Transition Plays in the NHL (2018)
By Will Cooper, Ben Mandelbaum, Zachary Betron
Tanking Strategy and the Value of NBA Draft Picks (2018)
By Matthew Sherman, Ryan Shimek, Ezra Troy, Jason Kim
Effects of Injuries on a Pitcher’s Performance (2018)
By Braxton Reynolds, Olivia Miles, Scott Lehrfeld, Maddy Fay
Aspects of the Game Demands Across Golf’s Four Majors (2018)
By Sunny Whang, Fangxin Yu, Hilary Li
Positioning Strategy in Olympic Rowing (2018)
By Shayna Martin, Ethan Machen, Alex Goldberg, Maya Balan