In recent years predictions of athletic records have acquired a special significance in the scientific community. This article presents a method for calculation of probabilities of future records through modeling the tail of the distribution for performance measures. It utilizes an estimation...

The aim of this paper is to develop a game-theoretic framework to study the impact of player personnel changes on offensive productivity in American football. We develop a new model, the improvement in passing model, which is used to determine the optimal proportion of run and pass plays that a...

Football (soccer) is certainly the most popular sport in Belgium. In 2008-2009, the Belgian premier league (the so-called Jupiler Pro League) consisted of 18 teams, each having played others twice, home and away. Wins and draws earned 3 points and 1 point, respectively, and teams were first...

Judo is an intermittent sport. As such, it is important to characterize the actions involved in combat so that training may be structured in such a way as to simulate competitive demands. However, to do so, an objective notational analysis system is necessary. The aim of the present study was to...

A conceptual basis for examining team defense in the National Football League is presented. Based on these concepts, a simple method is proposed to analyze the weekly defensive performance of NFL teams. Using overall game data that is easily obtained, the procedure computes six indices which...

Although there is a modest amount of literature analyzing the career prospects of athletes in United States (U.S.) based football, basketball, and baseball leagues, little is known about the career prospects of professional soccer players in the U.S. In our analysis of Major League Soccer...

An important aspect of pitching is the progression through the count of balls and strikes. Using data from the Pitch F/X database, we examine pitch-by-pitch data for twenty starting pitchers of elite and non-elite types. We see that the current count has a significant effect on the quality of...

At young ages, a few extra months of development can make a big difference in size, strength, and athletic ability. A child who turns 5 years old in January will be nearly 20% older by the time a child born in December has their 5th birthday. In many sports, including hockey, children born in...

There is considerable interest in two consecutive game streak records in baseball, namely, the celebrated 56-game hitting streak of Joe DiMaggio and the less famous 84-games-reaching-base streak of Ted Williams, and how likely these records would be predicted to occur if the history of Major...

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the opponent block, i.e. the blockers starting points and the number of blockers, compared to the hitter chosen by the setter to attack in elite male volleyball competition. 4531 sequences were analyzed, corresponding to 97 sets,...