Skip to content

Category: Research

Published on

By Michael Bond '25

Introduction

Shohei Ohtani took the MLB by storm in 2021, winning the American League MVP in his first season free from injury and rehab limitations since his impressive rookie debut three years prior. Before he was dominating the American game, Ohtani put together a decorated career in his home country of Japan. His time in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) gave him an opportunity to polish his pitching and batting skills before making the jump to harder competition.[1] His success, and that of other baseball legends such as Ichiro Suzuki, highlight the merit of the NPB within the international baseball community. This paper aims to compare the NPB with the MLB, and discuss how league structure and rules affect trends of team success.

...continue reading "The MLB and Japan’s NPB: A Quantitative Comparison"

Published on

By Fintan Letzelter '26 

Introduction

It is week 12 of the 2022 NFL season, and the Baltimore Ravens lead the Jacksonville Jaguars 27–20 with 20 seconds left in the game. Quarterback Trevor Lawrence has just led the Jaguars on a methodical 2-minute drill down the field, and now faces first-and-goal at the Ravens’ 10-yard line. Lawrence drops back and throws to Marvin Jones in the end zone, who brings it in for a touchdown. Head coach Doug Pederson now faces a choice: go for a 2-point conversion to try to win in regulation or kick an extra point and go to overtime. Choosing to go for two puts the result of the game into the hands of the offense that just marched down the field.

...continue reading "To Tie or Not to Tie: Should NFL Teams Go for Two at the End of Their Games?"

Published on

By Luke Wisniewski '26

Introduction

The Masters Tournament is perhaps the most famous tournament in all of men’s professional golf. However, the tournament has not been without issue in recent years. Despite modifications to make the course longer and more difficult, golfers are still finding ways to keep scores low. In the 92-year history of the tournament, eight champions have shot 273 (15 under par) or better. Six have come in the last 25 years. But this trend is not merely limited to Augusta National. Across the PGA Tour, scores have been decreasing. The graph below shows the scoring average for each tour season since 1980. Given this information, I set out with one main question in mind: what is the cause of this decreased scoring?

...continue reading "Man vs. Nature: The Factors Influencing PGA Tour Scores"

Published on

By Isabel Pantle '23 for QSS Final Research Project

1. Introduction

This project explores the relationship between offensive holding penalties and various game-level, play-level, and player-level variables to understand features that may increase the likelihood of holding penalties.

...continue reading "Analysis of Holding Penalties in the National Football League"

1

Published on 1 Comment on Evaluating the Effectiveness of Deploying Kyle Schwarber in the Leadoff Position

By Ari Nathanson '26

INTRODUCTION

Philadelphia Phillies’ left fielder Kyle Schwarber is your typical three-true-outcomes slugger: he hits for a low average, with thirty-plus home runs to go along with a surplus of walks and strikeouts. According to common practice, a player of this profile bats in the heart of the order, often in the four- or five-hole.[1] Yet, throughout his career, his managers, including the Phillies’ Rob Thomson, have opted to use him as a leadoff hitter. The trend of power hitters batting at the top of the order extends beyond just Schwarber—Aaron Judge hit leadoff 34 times en route to setting a new American League record for single-season home runs, and Mookie Betts led off for the 111-win Dodgers with a team-high 35 dingers.[2] ...continue reading "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Deploying Kyle Schwarber in the Leadoff Position"

Published on

By Pratim Chowdhary '25

Introduction

One of the most important aspects of basketball has been the shooting foul and the free throw shot. Throughout NBA history, free throws have decided games — especially in close situations. During the 2020-21 NBA season, in games decided by 10 points or less, the team that had more free throw attempts (FTA) won the game 60% of the time, with an r-value of .26 between free throw attempts and point differential. ...continue reading "How Are New Changes in Foul Rules Affecting NBA Offense?"

Published on

By Michael Bond '25

Introduction

Even as the NFL becomes increasingly pass-heavy, the all-time leaders in terms of yards per reception remain far in the past. In fact, the average year for a top 100 season by yards per reception is 1966. Only three players from this millennium even crack the top 100. So, is Don Currivan’s 1947 season with the Boston Yanks the best season by a receiver ever? Are Jerry Rice and Randy Moss not top 3 receivers because they played in the league after the premier era for wide receivers? The short answer is obviously no, but the role of yards per reception in evaluating wide receivers goes far deeper. To explain it numerically, this project looks at receiving stats from the past three seasons and specifically analyzes players with the highest yards/reception and All-Pro wide receivers.

...continue reading "Yards per Reception and Its Role in Wide Receiver Evaluation"

Published on

By Levi Port '24

Introduction

In today’s NBA, youth and potential are often the most coveted qualities of a player during the draft. With the birth of sports analytics and modern advancements, organizations favor raw talent that can be harnessed and developed over maturity and collegiate success. Even more, a plethora of current NBA all-stars drafted at a young age have proven this methodology correct. Players like Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, selected with insignificant amateur records and oozing potential, exemplify the NBA’s contemporary strategy for team-building. Losing franchises are incentivized to acquire the stars of the future, not to win now. In 2016, two senior college players were selected in the top seven picks of the NBA draft (Kris Dunn and Buddy Hield), a feat that had not been matched since 2006, which was the first year under the current eligibility rules established by the NBA’s 2005 collective bargaining agreement. These rules state that all drafted players must be at least 19 years old the year they are drafted or at least one year removed from the graduation of his high school class, thus popularizing the “one-and-done” method where elite recruits enter the draft immediately following their freshman year. Despite every Wooden Award winner, given to the most outstanding male and female collegiate basketball player, since 2012 being at least a sophomore (with the exemption of Zion Williamson in 2018), every NBA first overall pick, in the same time span, has been a college freshman. In the eyes of analytical-inclined NBA executives, potential outweighs production, and historic college players, i.e. Luka Garza, face the consequences.

...continue reading "Is Youth a Determining Factor of Potential in Today’s NBA Draft?"

Published on

By Ryan Tabibian '25

Introduction

Before the 2000s, NBA teams drafted players with the expectation that they would offer significant contributions immediately. It was only in the early 2000s when phrases such as ‘he’s raw’ and ‘needs developmental time’ became ubiquitous in pre-draft analysis. These ideas were emphasized by the formal creation of the NBA’s first summer league in 2002. This developmental process is perhaps most prevalent in the current construction of the Golden State Warriors. Along with the Warriors’s current core of Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson, they have young players such as James Wiseman, Jonathan Kuminga, and Moses Moody, who are seen as longer-term projects in need of ‘developmental minutes’ according to many pundits.

Recently, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr admitted that his approach to Wiseman’s minutes may have interfered with his development last year and said that he "thinks it's important not to automatically assume that minutes equal development...development also includes observation." However, some NBA head coaches correlate rookie development with amount of playing time even if they are not particularly efficient/effective because of the presumed value of experience gained through lots of minutes.

...continue reading "Do Higher Minutes Played and Higher Usage Percentage in a Player’s Rookie Year Result in Improved Efficiency in Their Second and Third Years?"

Published on

By Ella von Baeyer '24

Introduction

In this investigation I wanted to look at whether a history of soccer players playing together, and the subsequent interconnectedness of a team, impacted their match outcome. Like any other emergent network, I hypothesised that the coordination between players meant that their interaction results in an output greater than the sum of their skill.

As my case study, I chose the 2014 World Cup. Germany won the 2014 men’s soccer World Cup to the surprise of many pundits (it was third favourite to win - after Brazil and Argentina). In deciphering how this had happened, some fell to the conclusion that it was Germany’s mandate for Bundesliga clubs to operate training academies. Indeed, many of the players who made the German National Team came through these academies and subsequently have a shared history of playing together. Therefore, I thought this would be an ideal case study to assess whether Germany really managed to gain a winning advantage from the shared playing history of their team. To do this, I compared the team histories of the countries that made it to the quarter final, and looked at whether there was a correlation between winning and their network structure.

...continue reading "An Investigation Into How a Shared Playing History Impacts A Soccer Team’s Performance"