Famed American poet Ice Cube once said, “I think I’m unique to the game ’cause of my versatility.”
Versatility was added to the Rockies’ roster on Saturday with the promotion of Garrett Hampson following an injury to DJ LeMahieu.
Hampson, a middle infielder, could slot in as the starting second baseman while LeMahieu recovers from an oblique injury. But, the third-round selection in the 2016 draft spent his collegiate career as a shortstop and has played there the majority of his minor league career. He also added eight games in center field this season.
He is the fifth player from his draft class to break into the majors, and the second position player behind outfielder Austin Hayes of the rebuilding Baltimore Orioles. A year after spending his entire season in High-A Lancaster, Hampson passed through both Double- and Triple-A in the first half of 2018. Now, he’s in the Show, before the majority of the 81 picks before him.
“I was still a high-round pick, but I think you always feel like you could’ve gone higher,” Hampson told BSN Denver in June. “So, a little chip on the shoulder. But, I think that’s just competition and everyone else should feel that way as well.”
… Griffin’s 2017-18 season was filled with change, (more) health problems, and the bleak possibility that his best days might officially reside in the rearview mirror. After the trade to Detroit, he averaged the fewest points per shot attempt and lowest two-point field goal percentage of his career, according to Cleaning the Glass. It’s a decline that was largely thanks to him only taking 30 percent of his shots at the rim (during his last full season in Los Angeles that number was 47 percent!), and even though a majority of his long twos were replaced by threes, neither shot was close to efficient.
But add context to the conversation and there are several reasons why it’s OK to think Griffin can reassert himself as an upscale commodity. What first pops out looking back at his perception-changing season is how elusive easy baskets became. Griffin used to make NBA dominance look easier than a thumb-scroll through Instagram. That reality didn’t exist in Detroit, where he suddenly had to adjust to new surroundings, teammates, and structure.
Too often, Griffin decided what to do well before he analyzed the defense. The incentive to rush never revealed itself, but unnecessary step-backs and 18-foot jumpers were a frequent sore spot; instead of taking his time to survey the floor and flow into the next action, Griffin acted like his jump shots were a compromise between his body’s long-term wellness and disheartening field goal percentage. That should change in year two, with more confidence, trust, and familiarity.
EurekAlert! Science News, Wolters Kluwer Health from
Professional baseball players who score higher on a test of hand-eye coordination have better batting performance – particularly in drawing walks and other measures of “plate discipline,” reports a study in the July issue of Optometry and Vision Science, the official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
During the last 30 years we have witnessed significant progress in the field of football injury prevention. Large-scale randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that exercise-based prevention programmes can substantially reduce the incidence of football injuries. But while it is commonly assumed that the positive results of these RCTs will automatically lead to real-world injury rate reductions, long-term analyses indicate that the rate of some football injuries, including hamstring and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries, are actually on the rise1,2. One of the reasons for this paradox is that many teams don’t perform evidence-based injury prevention programmes as prescribed, decide not to use them or have no knowledge of the programmes. Bridging this gap between RCT evidence and everyday injury prevention practices in clubs represents one of the biggest future opportunities for football medicine. This article focuses on implementing injury prevention (that is, putting programmes into practice), including the research progress made so far and the challenging road ahead.
There are lots of noisy environments in life in which we are expected to learn. Classrooms filled with students can have a buzz consisting of background noise from the outside or from ventilation as well as the hum of conversations going on. Similarly, the modern open office environment is filled with conversations, phones ringing, and papers being shuffled and crumpled.
This environment can make it hard to learn new information.
It should come as no surprise that the consensus of research is that noise makes it hard for children and adults to learn new things. The question is why?
Many sports require athletes to rapidly transform visual information into a targeted motor response, a process referred to as visuomotor reaction. On the behavioural level, athletes have long been established to achieve faster simple visuomotor reaction times when compared to non-athletes. However, although the superior performance in athletes has been attributed to the central nervous system, the underlying neural mechanisms remained poorly studied. More recently, a growing number of neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies systematically addressed the functional and structural modulations in the athletes’ visual and motor systems as well as their contribution to visuomotor performance. This article reviews current research on structural and functional characteristics of the athletes’ cortical visuomotor system associated with simple visuomotor reactions, sports-specific visuomotor performance and visuomotor training. The primary objective is to shed light on the neural mechanisms potentially contributing to superior visuomotor reaction performance in athletes participating in visuomotor demanding disciplines. A more comprehensive understanding of performance-determining neural functions could provide great potential for diagnostics and training to improve athletic performance.
Imagine, for a moment, that you had no birth certificate and your age was simply based on the way you feel inside. How old would you say you are?
Like your height or shoe size, the number of years that have passed since you first entered the world is an unchangeable fact. But everyday experience suggests that we often don’t experience ageing the same way, with many people feeling older or younger than they really are.
Scientists are increasingly interested in this quality. They are finding that your ‘subjective age’ may be essential for understanding the reasons that some people appear to flourish as they age – while others fade. “The extent to which older adults feel much younger than they are may determine important daily or life decisions for what they will do next,” says Brian Nosek at the University of Virginia.
… French soccer has never had a problem with a lack of talent. It’s always had among the best skilled players in Europe and an abundance of talent emerging from the country’s vast immigrant communities. French pro clubs plow enormous resources into recruiting young players, and the French federation has been at the forefront of player development initiatives.
Nowhere is there more talent than in Ile-de-France, the region around Paris with its banlieues that produced Paul Pogba, N’Golo Kante, Blaise Matuidi and Mbappe, plus four other members of France’s World Cup team, as well as players Morocco, Portugal, Senegal and Tunisia took to Russia.
It wasn’t always like it. In 1984 only one player on France’s European championship team came from the region. When France won the 1998 World Cup, the only “banlieusards” were Lilian Thuram, Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry.
Huddersfield Town are about to embark on a new (and controversial) era for their Academy after scrapping all age groups below the Under-17s.
This season there will be just two teams: the U19s, who will play a ‘bespoke games programme’ against teams from around Europe; and the 17s, who will play in an U18s league.
TGG went along to the club’s Canalside training ground to meet Academy manager Leigh Bromby and lead physical performance coach Paul Bower to find out how it will all work.
… “Most people think that sports science is synonymous with data. For me, if I start at a high level, ultimately sports science performance in this type of setting is just about monitoring two main aspects,” Kolarcik explained. “First, what guys do—what do they do in training, how do they respond to travel, what do they do in the games—and the second piece is how do they respond to what they do. To me, at a very high level, those are the two things that we’re trying to capture within our department.”
How it works
That’s not to say that there isn’t a ton of data collection involved in sports science. “There are two things that happen on the field: there is an external load that someone does, an external amount of physical work that they do, which is primarily what GPS will be capturing,” Kolarcik told Burgundy Wave. “Or when we’re playing in games, we capture physical data using a camera in the stadium. So those would capture what someone physically, actually did. The heart rate data would basically capture the cost of them doing that work.”
“Using Keras to train a convolutional neural network to classify physical activity. The dataset was built from the recordings of 30 subjects performing basic activities and postural transitions while carrying a waist-mounted smartphone with embedded inertial sensors.”
CTE has been part of the national lexicon in the U.S. since the 2015 movie Concussion dramatized the discovery of this degenerative brain disease among football players.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is found among people who’ve had head injuries. Though not everyone with head trauma develops CTE, the group that’s come to be most associated with it is football players, whose brains can be routinely jarred by hard hits. The disease has been linked to depression, dementia and even suicide among those who play the game.
But the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease published a study Tuesday that helps broaden the understanding of who is potentially affected by CTE to include military personnel. And, perhaps more significantly, the study represents a step forward in developing a test for the disease in the living.
… Future ultrafast devices also will require much smaller metal components, which calls for a higher resolution to make them at these nanoscale sizes.
“Forming metals with increasingly smaller shapes requires molds with higher and higher definition, until you reach the nanoscale size,” Martinez said. “Adding the latest advances in nanotechnology requires us to pattern metals in sizes that are even smaller than the grains they are made of. It’s like making a sand castle smaller than a grain of sand.”
This so-called “formability limit” hampers the ability to manufacture materials with nanoscale resolution at high speed.
Purdue researchers have addressed both of these issues – roughness and low resolution – with a new large-scale fabrication method that enables the forming of smooth metallic circuits at the nanoscale using conventional carbon dioxide lasers, which are already common for industrial cutting and engraving.
Brain-computer interfaces and other technologies that rely on reading and stimulating the brain require electrodes to obtain and deliver signals, as well as a way to transmit those signals from within the brain. Electric wires have usually served as the method of connectivity, but they create serious challenges, including potential for infection, safety issues, and lack of discreetness. Wireless technologies have a lot of promise, but most approaches require a battery or another source of energy to power an implant to beam data back and forth from deep within the brain.
Researchers at Purdue University have now developed a brain-reading implant that’s incredibly small and that doesn’t need any on-board batteries to power it. Instead, the device, which the researchers say is about the size of a piece of dust, relies on externally delivered electromagnetic waves to power it. It’s conceptually similar to how wireless charging works in some modern smartphones. The implant was produced from a commercially available electronic chip that was modified to include microelectrodes.
Today, there is a strong partnership between technology and sports. Almost all professional sports teams use technology in some capacity to help them win games. In the same vein, almost all professional sports leagues use technology in some capacity to help referee and manage the games. In baseball specifically, there has been video instant replay in use since the 2008 season, with the most current system (with manager challenges) in place since the 2014 season. Some people have proposed taking things to the next level, and using computers to replace some or all on-field umpires. Here is an article that surveys the current state of electronic umpires, and also includes opinions of some players and coaches, and here is an article where MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred discusses his views on the topic.
This post will explore building a robot umpire that calls balls and strikes based on actual game video, using a technique known as Deep Learning.
Nathaniel Peek started Spin Cycle Clothing four years ago in Adelaide, South Australia, to supply custom-made racing kit to serious cyclists, but he knew that if he wanted to grow the business he needed a point of difference.
He then combined his love of cycling – the 39-year-old has competed in all disciplines from road to mountain biking – with a decades-long career in design and technology to develop a laser scanning system that tailors each piece of clothing to the rider.
“More than 50 per cent of brands are made at the same factories in China from the same patterns,” said Peek.
“My system, which also knows the limits of the fabric, how much and which way it can stretch, is a massive point of difference.”
New statistics show youth sports injuries are on the rise.
According to the CDC, 3.5 million kids under 14-years-old are hurt playing sports each year. A report by a sports medicine center says it is reaching epidemic proportions.
“We all grew up playing sports in the backyard. Nowadays, our kids are playing sports in uniforms on so many different teams and playing at such a highly organized level,” said Dr. Jeff Nepple, who oversees pediatric sports medicine at Children’s Hospital.
Nepple says half of all injuries his team treats each year are connected to overused muscles and most of the injuries he sees are from soccer, basketball and football.
The young man delivered a driving kick that sent the ball hurtling toward the net. Even though this was just a friendly pickup game between family and friends, he felt the anticipatory rush of joy at scoring. But the goalie dived and caught the ball. A little disappointed, James headed out to the middle of the field to take his position and try again. He’d run just a few steps when suddenly he felt the soccer ball slam into the back of his head. He felt his neck snap forward from the force of this impact. Everything went black for a second and he experienced a sharp stab of nausea so strong that he thought he would vomit right there on the field. The game stopped, and the goalie ran up to him. “James, are you O.K.? I didn’t mean to hit you,” the goalie said. “I’m O.K.,” he told his friend, “Really.” Then he headed to the sidelines to sit and recover. He did a quick mental survey and then, after a couple of minutes, rejoined the game.
Journal of Sports Medicine & Physical Fitness from
BACKGROUND:
The coach’s perception of the quality of care provided by the athletic trainer (AT) is essential in providing the best care for the athlete given the coaches’ influential role on the sports medicine team. The purpose of this study was to examine National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) coaches’ perceptions of the quality of care provided by the athletic trainer (AT). METHODS:
A survey was used to assess NCAA coaches’ perceptions in both 1998 and 2016 in order to provide an analysis of change over time. RESULTS:
A total of 261 NCAA coaches (129 in 1998 and 132 in 2016) participated. There was a significant difference between the perception scores of coaches from high-profile sports (74.9±13.6) and low-profile sports (72.0±13.2; p=0.01) and between coaches surveyed in 1998 (75.9±11.7) and 2016 (70.2±14.3; p<0.01). However, there was no significant difference between the perception scores of coaches from Division I (74.3±13.3), II (70.1±13.9), or III (74.2±12.7; p=0.11) institutions.
CONCLUSIONS:
The perceptions of coaches from high-profile sports are greater than those from low-profile sports. The perceptions of coaches surveyed in 1998 are greater than those surveyed in 2016. The factors that appear to influence the perceptions of coaches include equality for all athletes regardless of sport, adequate staffing of the athletic training room, and effective communication between the coach and AT.
… What constitutes a win in medicine — and who’s responsible for it — is often unclear. Patients want longer lives, but they also want healthier lives, care that is more compassionate and more convenient, and judicious use of tests and treatments. Doctors work in teams as just parts of an increasingly complex health system, and they are often less in control of outcomes than we think, especially when treating patients with challenging social circumstances and coexisting medical conditions.
Measurement techniques may grow increasingly sophisticated, but doctors are not ballplayers, and health-care statistics are not as simple as a batting average.
That hasn’t stopped public and private payers from using pay-for-performance incentives to try to improve how doctors care for patients. The most notable recent example is Medicare’s Value-Based Payment Modifier, or VM, which measures the quality and cost of care and offers bonuses or imposes penalties accordingly. How often were patients readmitted to the hospital? What percent had their cholesterol checked? Did it cost a doctor more or less to care for his or her patients than it cost other doctors to care for theirs? While the VM program ends this year, it’s similar to Medicare’s next attempt at pay-for-performance, the Merit-based Incentive Payment System, or MIPS.
Many technology companies are working on artificial intelligence systems that can analyze medical data to help diagnose or treat health problems. Such systems raise the question of whether this kind of technology can perform as well as a human doctor.
A new study from MIT computer scientists suggests that human doctors provide a dimension that, as yet, artificial intelligence does not. By analyzing doctors’ written notes on intensive-care-unit patients, the researchers found that the doctors’ “gut feelings” about a particular patient’s condition played a significant role in determining how many tests they ordered for the patient.
“There’s something about a doctor’s experience, and their years of training and practice, that allows them to know in a more comprehensive sense, beyond just the list of symptoms, whether you’re doing well or you’re not,” says Mohammad Ghassemi, a research affiliate at MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES). “They’re tapping into something that the machine may not be seeing.”
Here’s another reason to fill up your water bottle this summer: Even mild dehydration can make you less smart, according to a new survey of research from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
For his doctoral dissertation, Matthew Wittbrodt, now of Emory University, reviewed 33 studies on dehydration and cognitive performance. His key finding: Some mental tasks are significantly impaired when dehydration levels reach two percent.
And it’s pretty easy to reach that level. If you weigh 150 pounds, for instance, a two percent loss of body mass due to dehydration equals three pounds—an amount you can easily lose during a hot, humid run.
That cannabis use causes the “munchies” is well established – why it does has been a bit of a mystery, until now.
A known side effect of cannabis has been a desire to snack – and snack, then snack some more. This attribute has been useful when consumed for medicinal purposes in some instances; for example, treating appetite issues in chemotherapy patients.
Researchers at Washington State University have confirmed what actually happens.
Arsenal have accelerated their sometimes left-field revolution off the pitch with the arrival of the Russian data expert Mikhail Zhilkin, who previously oversaw the launch of the Candy Crush video game.
A graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Zhilkin has a Master of Science in Applied Physics and Mathematics and has been appointed as Arsenal’s new data scientist, working under director of high performance Darren Burgess.
His arrival represents a continuation of chief executive Ivan Gazidis’s drive for all-round expertise and ideas from across different industries in an effort to build an organisation that can outperform their natural spending power.
Mes amis, it was a long night. World champions, a second star on the jersey and, naturellement, the celebrations were long and loud and joyful. I found myself in the changing room with the players after the game and the air was thick with laughter and song and then a certain dizziness, too, as the result began to sink in. I embraced my old friend Didier Deschamps, still soaked to the skin from the rain-drenched trophy ceremony. He was in a state of euphoria – he had done it!
By leading Les Bleus to a second triumph, 20 years after being our captain when we won the World Cup in France, Didier became only the third man to have won the competition as both player and manager. He’s in rare company, alongside Mário Zagallo and Franz Beckenbauer, but when he was reminded of the fact he just shrugged, smiled and said those two were far better players than he ever was. Typical Didier, that. Deflecting the praise, trying not to take himself too seriously. Humble.
But this triumph for French football is very much his. Didier has crafted a team and a spirit, very much in the way Aimé Jacquet did with us in 1998. Just like 20 years ago, when Aimé decided to do without Eric Cantona and David Ginola, so Didier opted to leave out Karim Benzema, arguably France’s most talented No 9. Just like 20 years ago, critics complained about the style of play and a lack of French flair but, just like Aimé, Didier’s mindset is all about results. It’s all about winning and Didier set up his teams accordingly.
Change is always good, especially when safety is involved. NFL Senior Vice President of Officiating Al Riveron made that clear as he officially started the 2018 NFL Officiating Clinic Friday afternoon.
“We (NFL) never shy away from safety and say we can’t officiate it (rules),” Riveron boldly stated. “Player safety is number one, number one, number one.”
Each year, the NFL Competition Committee and coaches revise League rules not only for competitive reasons, but to ultimately improve the safety of the game. Riveron and NFL Football Operations focus on target points each year and they are primarily directed towards player safety.
Alex Moderski may swim in individual events, but the McFarland High School senior knows it takes a team effort for success in the water. There was also a group of people who helped Alex and her parents, Mike and Susan Moderski, navigate the college recruitment process.
The family decided to get assistance from the recruiting website, NCSA (Next College Student Athlete). Alex said athletes can upload their statistics and post videos for recruiters to see.
Alex signed up for NCSA the spring of her sophomore year. Susan Moderski said this allowed them a bit of control over who would have access to her daughter’s information instead of just throwing information out into the ether.
“College coaches have to have log ins to be able to see it,” Susan Moderski said. “I want to have control over who can contact her. Everything goes through their platform.”
The NFL schedule makers — Senior Vice President of Broadcasting Howard Katz, Senior Director of Broadcasting Blake Jones, Senior Manager of Broadcasting Charlotte Carey and Senior Director of Broadcasting Michael North — must consider the fans, the league’s broadcast partners and many other factors when building the 256-game schedule that spans the 17 weeks of the NFL season and showcases the league’s best matchups and talent.
They have to work around events that are already scheduled to take place in or near NFL stadiums — events that may compete with the games, put undue stress on the playing surface, or create traffic or logistical nightmares. The league begins collecting information from the clubs in January about any events that may create scheduling conflicts.
They are also constrained by internal factors. A formula determines each team’s opponents every year, and a rotating schedule ensures that every team plays each of the other 31 at least once in a four-year period.
It takes hundreds of computers in a secure room to produce thousands of possible schedules — a process that sets the stage for the schedule makers to begin the arduous task of picking the best possible one.
Upon embarking on this assignment, I didn’t realize that it had the potential to become the text for a course in sports medicine. If you’re considering a career as an athletic trainer or rehab specialist this article is a treasure trove of information. You’ll learn the treatments and recovery times for a litany of injuries including knees, elbows and just about everything that can occur on a baseball diamond. I spoke with a Certified Athletic Trainer Dave Diers, who holds a Masters in Health Science in Sports Medicine and Orthopedics and has worked with professional athletes, to make sure we got things right (he’s quoted directly in some places). In the process I learned quite a bit myself.
However, I’m sure most of you are concerned White Sox fans who want to know when their favorite prospect will be back on the playing field and if they’ll have any long-term effects from their maladies. Luckily, there’s plenty of that too. So read on – it’s not as bad as it seems.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Chief Legal Officer Donald Remy has argued that the association must “evolve and expand”, in order help maintain its integrity post-PASPA.
The comment comes as the non-profit organisation, which regulates athletes from 1281 institutions and conferences, will launch a study into sports betting in the US.
“While we certainly respect the Supreme Court’s decision, our position on sports wagering remains,” Remy asserted. “With this new landscape, we must evolve and expand our long-standing efforts to protect both the integrity of competitions and the well-being of student-athletes.”
The governing body of US college sports will develop an advisory panel of experts examining the effects of betting throughout US sports value chain, focusing on ‘how best to protect game integrity, monitor betting activity, manage sports data and expand educational efforts’.
PLOS One; Yixiong Cui, Miguel-Ángel Gómez, Bruno Gonçalves, Jaime Sampaio from
Introduction
The aim of the study was to (i) analyze the match performance of professional female tennis players in different Grand Slams; (ii) model the relationships between match performance variables and relative quality; and (iii) build typical performance profiles for those players in Grand Slams. Method
Data of a total of 1369 matches were collected within 2014–2017 four Grand Slams (Australian Open: n = 499; Roland Garros: n = 249; Wimbledon: n = 249 and US Open, n = 372). Correlations between 37 performance variables and relative quality (difference of expected rounds between two competing players of given ranking) were determined and automatically classified into two groups of magnitudes via two-step cluster analysis. Higher-correlated variables were used to build players’ typical performance profiles via regression-based technique to give percentage evaluation scores (%ES), which means the percentage of matches where a performance variable value would be expected to be lower than the observed value considering the RQ of two competing players. Results
Players had more service winners, double faults, return winners and return unforced errors in the Australian Open and US Open, implying a “fast-fast” serve strategy, and higher dominance ratio and better serving performance in Wimbledon. While receiving players had better chances to break opponents’ service game in Roland Garros. Distance covered became similar in all Grand Slams. All studied variables showed obvious correlation with RQ expect for those of physical performance. Conclusions
The findings (i) indicate that female game in Grand Slams remained to be a contest over baseline, although players had good efficiency at net; (ii) demonstrate the influence of relative quality on serve and return, break point, net point and efficiency performance; and (iii) evidence the usefulness of applying %ES to evaluate performance of individual player.
… The SEC produces plenty of players, but they were no more likely than players from other conferences to be particularly good. In particular, their edge rushers stand out the way Big 12 quarterbacks did on offense: likely to get a shot but overall not as good a bet as players from a different conference. Pac-12 cornerbacks may not be numerous, but they are pretty good bets, while ACC corners are not. Smaller schools, mid-majors and below, produce plenty of players, but by and large, they are not good bets to become standout defenders. (If you don’t have FOA 2017 handy for comparison, similar analysis on offense showed higher success rates for offensive players from these types of schools.)
It’s the bottom of the ninth with two outs and it’s all tied up. You’ve got a runner on first base and you need to decide who you’re sending to the plate. You have a player with a stellar batting average, a player reliable for drawing walks and one who promises they can win it all for you—who do you play?
In the fall of 2002, the Oakland Athletics shattered a 55-year-old record with twenty consecutive games won. The A’s accomplished this on a shoestring budget and despite losing three of their best players at the start of the season. How, you ask? By applying rich data analysis to the sport, a practice known as sabermetrics. When we set out to design an engaging kickball unit for our middle school students, we asked ourselves how we could learn from the 2002 A’s.
In short, we wondered how we could combine data analysis, computational thinking and kickball to make the P.E. experience more personal, more academically rigorous and more inclusive to students of all athletic abilities.
Picked up pieces while making hotel reservations for Chicago in October (Sox-Cubs, finally), Atlanta in February (I’ll wear my 28-3 shirt), and San Francisco in June (Kyrie vs. Warriors, again) . . .
Red Sox vice president of pitching analysis Brian Bannister inadvertently explained what is killing baseball when he told the Globe’s Alex Speier, “Essentially, baseball has become a game full of data scientists. We’re finding ways to get better at what we do, and to provide the players with better information and better recommendations on everything we do on a daily basis . . . The biggest change in the game is the mind-set of ‘Get a hitter out in three pitches or less.’ Efficiency was the most prized thing in baseball. Now the whole art of pitching is the science of the swing and miss . . . When we control all the variables with a ball not being put into play, as opposed to a ball being put into play and all the chaos that causes, it’s worth our time.’’
Swell. Unfortunately for viewers, the “chaos” Bannister abhors is actually what made the game entertaining in the first place. Remember great defensive plays and triples in the gap? Bannister’s smart and winning philosophy is a classic explanation of how analytics is sucking the life out of the national pastime.
… When imagining what was possible when it came to data collection, U.S. Soccer looked at what other sports were doing in the analytics space.
“There is so much data, but analytics, as a space, is so young, especially in sports. And then when you talk about analytics and soccer, it’s even younger,” Moses said.
Major League Baseball is the obvious leader in the sports analytics space, followed by basketball. Both sports have understood before many others the value of data and have leveraged it to propel the sport forward.
U.S. Soccer has a relationship with Major League Baseball and has taken to heart its feedback on the federation’s data infrastructure, not just on the commercial side, but on the sporting side as well.
Still, soccer presents a different set of analytical challenges than other sports.
“At a certain point, it’s 22 players on the field running around in organized chaos and there’s not a lot of scoring, so you’ve got to think of different ways to measure things. It takes time and it takes more than one organization and more than a couple of minds. It takes an army,” Moses said, explaining the unique challenges soccer faces compares to baseball or basketball.