Wharton Sports Analytics Journal

Past Editions

Explore previous editions and immerse yourself in a world of insightful content.
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