Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Moneyball - Learning About Analytics in Sports


Have you seen the movie "Moneyball", featuring Brad Pitt, and Jonah Hill? You have? Great. If you haven’t then you’re missing a great film that teaches you how analytics is used in the all American sport, baseball.

"Moneyball" is a film that tells the story of how Paul DePodesta uses analytics to find undervalued baseball players and creates a winning team from a small budget. Other teams with larger budgets had looked right past these players because they didn’t realize how valuable these players were, and only focused on the top players that the entire league was raving about. Without DePodesta, the Oakland A’s wouldn’t have identified these players either. DePodesta was really the first person recognized in the industry to use data to analyze players’ performance and scout who he believed (according to the players’ data) to be the next best players to add to his team. Now all sports are using data to create their roster, not just baseball.    

When you have free time, I highly suggest that you watch “Moneyball”. As I said, the movie wasn’t just talented actors, and a well-produced film; you will actually learn how data is used in sports to construct a team of talented players.

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