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Since the advent of high-resolution pitch tracking data (PITCHf/x), many in the sabermetrics community have attempted to quantify a Major League Baseball catcher's ability to "frame" a pitch (i.e. increase the chance that a pitch is called…
The field of quantitative analytics has transformed the world of sports over the last decade. To date, these analytic approaches are statistical at their core, characterizing what is and what was, while using this information to drive…
Can one understand the statistics of wins and losses of baseball teams? Are their consecutive-game winning and losing streaks self-reinforcing or can they be described statistically? We apply the Bradley-Terry model, which incorporates the…
Boxing has a long-standing problem with biased judging, impacting both professional and Olympic bouts. "Robberies", where boxers are widely seen as being denied rightful victories, threaten to drive fans and athletes away from the sport. To…
The knuckleball is perhaps the most enigmatic pitch in baseball. Relying on the presence of raised seams on the surface of the ball to create asymmetric flow, a knuckleball's trajectory has proven very challenging to predict compared to…
Clearly-defined rules are often assumed to be straightforward to automate and evaluate. We challenge this assumption through an in-depth study of Major League Baseball's (MLB) seven-year experimentation with the Automated Ball-Strike System…
Over the 1962 to 2016 period, the Canadian violent crime rate has remained strongly correlated with National Hockey League (NHL) penalties. The Canadian property crime rate was similarly correlated with stolen base attempts in the Major…
How often can we expect a Major League Baseball team to score at least 20 runs in a single game? Considered a rare event in baseball, the outcome of scoring at least 20 runs in a game has occurred 224 times during regular season games since…
Plate discipline is an important feature of a hitter's success. Hitter who are able to recognize good pitches to swing at and balls to take are generally recognized as disciplined hitters. Although there are some metrics that can provide…
Professional baseball players are increasingly guaranteed expensive long-term contracts, with over 70 deals signed in excess of \$90 million, mostly in the last decade. These are substantial sums compared to a typical franchise valuation of…
Baseball is a game of strategic decisions including bullpen usage, pinch-hitting and intentional walks. Managers must adjust their strategies based on the changing state of the game in order to give their team the best chance of winning. In…
Recent advancements in professional baseball have led to the introduction of the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system, or ``robot umpires,'' which utilize machine learning, computer vision, and precise tracking technologies to automate…
A Bayesian Survival Analysis method is motivated and developed for analysing sequences of scores made by a batsman in test or first class cricket. In particular, we expect the presence of an effect whereby the distribution of scores has…
We present evidence, based on play-by-play data from all 6087 games from the 2006/07--2009/10 seasons of the National Basketball Association (NBA), that basketball scoring is well described by a weakly-biased continuous-time random walk.…
We address the value of a baserunner at first base waiting to see if a ball in play falls in for a hit, before running. When a ball is hit in the air, the baserunner will usually wait, to gather additional information as to whether a ball…
There are $n$ players who compete by timing their actions. An opportunity appears randomly on a time interval. Whoever takes an action the fastest after the opportunity has arisen wins. The occurrence of the opportunity is observed only…
In most popular sports leagues, like the MLB, NBA, and NFL, none of the commonly used statistics take into account the strengths of the opponents a player faces. One of the main reasons for this is the conventional belief that a player's…
In the dynamic realm of One Day International (ODI) cricket, the sport has undergone significant transformations over the past four decades. This study digs into the intricate evolution of ODI cricket from 1987 to 2023, analyzing about 4000…
A same-score streak in sports is a sequence of games where the scores are equivalent in all games. The motivating problem arose from college basketball, however due to the difficulty in collecting data, streaks in Major League Baseball…
Superstars often dominate key tasks because of their exceptional abilities, but this concentration of responsibility may unintentionally limit on-the-job learning opportunities for others. Using panel data from Major League Baseball (MLB),…