Related papers: Learning To Describe Player Form in The MLB
Runs Batted IN (RBI) records the number of runs a hitter directly drives in during their plate appearances and reflects a batter's ability to convert opportunities into scoring. Because producing runs determines game outcomes, RBI has long…
As a dedicated follower of sports statistics and with the MLB season beginning in late March, I set out to predict how many wins each team would accumulate by the end of the 162 game season. The goal was to build a simulation framework…
Understanding a player's performance in a basketball game requires an evaluation of the player in the context of their teammates and the opposing lineup. Here, we present NBA2Vec, a neural network model based on Word2Vec which extracts…
It is often said that a sign of a great player is that he makes the players around him better. The player may or may not score much himself, but his teammates perform better when he plays. One way a hockey player can improve his or her…
Although basketball is a dualistic sport, with all players competing on both offense and defense, almost all of the sport's conventional metrics are designed to summarize offensive play. As a result, player valuations are largely based on…
Within baseball analytics, there is substantial interest in comprehensive statistics intended to capture overall player performance. One such measure is Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which aggregates the contributions of a player in each…
Cricket, "a Gentleman's Game", is a prominent sport rising worldwide. Due to the rising competitiveness of the sport, players and team management have become more professional with their approach. Prior studies predicted individual…
In baseball, every play on the field is quantitatively evaluated and has an effect on individual and team strategies. The weighted on base average (wOBA) is well known as a measure of an batter's hitting contribution. However, this measure…
In 2024, Major League Baseball released new bat tracking data, reporting swing-by-swing bat speed and swing length measured at the point of contact. While exciting, the data present challenges for their interpretation. The timing of the…
In the sport of cricket, variations in a player's batting ability can usually be measured on one of two scales. Short-term changes in ability that are observed during a single innings, and long-term changes that are witnessed between…
Traditional machine learning (ML) algorithms, such as multiple regression, require human analysts to make decisions on how to treat the data. These decisions can make the model building process subjective and difficult to replicate for…
In sports analytics, player tracking data have driven significant advancements in the task of player evaluation. We present a novel generative framework for evaluating the observed frame-by-frame player positioning against a distribution of…
Throughout the analytical revolution that has occurred in the NBA, the development of specific metrics and formulas has given teams, coaches, and players a new way to see the game. However - the question arises - how can we verify any…
Evaluating sports players based on their performance shares core challenges with evaluating healthcare providers based on patient outcomes. Drawing on recent advances in healthcare provider profiling, we cast sports player evaluation within…
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…
Evaluating a soccer player's performance can be challenging due to the high costs and small margins involved in recruitment decisions. Raw observational statistics further complicate an accurate individual skill assessment as they do not…
In Major League Baseball, every ballpark is different, with different dimensions and climates. These differences make some ballparks more conducive to hitting home runs than others. Several factors conspire to make estimation of these…
This paper introduces a new model and methodology for estimating the ability of NBA players. The main idea is to directly measure how good a player is by comparing how their team performs when they are on the court as opposed to when they…
We present a quantitative analysis of throwing ability for major league outfielders and catchers. We use detailed game event data to tabulate success and failure events in outfielder and catcher throwing opportunities. We attribute a run…
This work introduces a unified framework for analyzing games in greater depth. In the existing literature, players' strategies are typically assigned scalar values, and equilibrium concepts are used to identify compatible choices. However,…