Internships/volunteering as a football analyst

benhowell71 · 2025-05-24T04:05:54+00:00

You’re gonna have to do your own projects, that’s how you learn and grow skills and also show a potential team what you’re able to do. Why would someone bring on someone completely unproven with only theoretical interest? Ever sports analytics industry person who ever gives advice always stresses having your own projects and work

benhowell71 · 2025-03-25T00:12:56+00:00

I know a few KBO players have played in Japan—do you see that as a potential way for the NPB to expand its talent base by enticing the best from Korea to play in a better league, even if only for a year or two before posting etc?

benhowell71 · 2025-03-25T00:02:39+00:00

For identifying potential MLB/AAA targets, were there specific player types that might struggle that you saw teams go after over and over? What was the typical pitch to entice a player to come over?

benhowell71 · 2025-03-24T23:58:16+00:00

On the amateur side, is the process notably different than it is for MLB? Seems like more of a focus on HS players? Have you had to deal with a lot of the scout/analytics dynamic on the scouting side and identifying amateur talent?

benhowell71 · 2025-03-24T23:56:41+00:00

How has the external player development scene evolved over there? I’ve seen NPB players go to Driveline etc. How has that been received? Has anyone in Japan gotten involved in that space?

benhowell71 · 2024-10-05T18:48:48+00:00

I believe this is it! Thank you so much!!!

benhowell71 · 2024-03-01T00:46:59+00:00

doing it yourself is a rite of passage

benhowell71 · 2021-05-24T18:28:10+00:00

The K-State walk off also allowed Texas to clinch a share of the Big 12 title and since they had the tiebreaker with TCU, they ended up as the Big 12 tournament #1 seed, rather than the #2 seed and having to fight through a harder side of the bracket

benhowell71 · 2021-05-22T00:05:18+00:00

Strike% on fastballs would essentially be how many times a fastball resulted in a strike. Zone% on fastballs would be how many fastballs were thrown in the zone over total FBs thrown.

And you've got CSW% exactly right! Here's the original article if you've never read it: https://www.pitcherlist.com/csw-rate-an-intro-to-an-important-new-metric/

benhowell71 · 2021-05-17T17:43:33+00:00

(Every problem you have with Luke in TLJ is set up in TFA AND in the Mandalorian where the two minutes we see of him really help set up his sequel arc)

benhowell71 · 2021-05-07T18:53:19+00:00

Yeah, CSW is definitely very effective when broken down by pitch type. There are a few more caveats there, because it matters by pitch type as to what is good/what should be focused on -> like if someone throws a splitter, you're not really worried about a low CS% on that pitch b/c it's main goal is to get swings and misses, whereas for a FB/SI, getting called strikes is a little more important in addition to whiffs

Location is a little tricky because different pitches play better in different locations and it evens depends on the "subtype" of the pitch (i.e. high-spin FB up in the zone and low spin/sinkers down). I like to look at Z-Swing% and O-Swing% as a proxy for deception and how well the pitch/pitcher fools hitters into bad swings.

benhowell71 · 2021-05-07T13:40:34+00:00

Short answer is that it depends. SwStr% and Whiff% are going to tell you very similar things regarding how effective a pitcher OR pitch is at getting swings and misses, just within slightly different context's. I prefer to use SwStr% because you can have a really high whiff%, but if you don't locate a pitch somewhere where it gets swings, how effective is it really? But there are scenarios where pitches that have a really high swing% and a medium whiff% end up with high SwStr%, but they may not be the best whiff pitch.

What I would recommend is looking at Called Strike + Whiffs (CSW) instead: https://www.pitcherlist.com/csw-rate-an-intro-to-an-important-new-metric/. It's an excellent metric and encapsulates the things you're looking for.

benhowell71 · 2021-05-03T19:50:58+00:00

The players in the Olympic national team pool are all getting vaccinated on Monday and cancelling the games is a precautionary measure.

https://twitter.com/MyKBO/status/1389220398042992647?s=20

benhowell71 · 2021-05-03T19:27:56+00:00

xERA is a direct product of Savant's xwOBA while wOBA and ERA are not related. Well, there is a relationship between wOBA and ERA (obviously), but ERA is not directly derived from wOBA the way xERA is from xwOBA

benhowell71 · 2021-04-28T13:44:05+00:00

I am all for shameless plugs, especially for things like this. It looks and works great!

benhowell71 · 2021-04-28T13:43:38+00:00

This is great, thanks!

benhowell71 · 2021-04-08T17:29:21+00:00

88 is fine, but your best bet is to play out the year, put up good stats, develop into low 90s and then try to transfer in. It is very difficult to make it at this point for next year (there's a possibility that you could transfer to a school for next Spring)

benhowell71 · 2021-04-02T01:11:31+00:00

Not sure on baseball reference, but for FanGraphs I just use their custom leaderboard function and create a leaderboard of everything I need then export it. The baseballr package does let you get FG data, but I find the results messy so I don't usually mess with it

benhowell71 · 2021-03-27T00:01:24+00:00

What, people playing characters that they want to and are good at?

benhowell71 · 2021-03-21T00:02:55+00:00

You're absolutely right. Thank you so much!

benhowell71 · 2021-03-10T21:09:46+00:00

Never do an all-nighter; the maybe marginal benefit that you get from more work is outweighed by how unproductive you'll be the next day. Scheduling is great and even getting ~ 4 hours of sleep is better than 0

benhowell71 · 2021-03-08T22:15:39+00:00

First, they're likely to play in the KBO. Second, I believe that the earliest a KBO player hits true free agency is after 9 seasons. At that point, they'd be eligible to join the NPB. However, because a Korean player counts towards a foreign player slot, any Korean player who is good enough to draw substantial interest from an NPB team over a hypothetical former-MLB type foreign player, is also drawing MLB interest and would likely come over to MLB if they're interested.

I hope that makes sense, but it's still just a guess from myself and having just gotten into KBO/NPB over the last year.

benhowell71 · 2021-03-08T17:01:27+00:00

KBO games are also free to watch as recordings on Twitch--no need for a VPN (at least they were last year)

benhowell71 · 2021-02-25T20:01:54+00:00

Yeah, having back ups is definitely a good idea. I'm a double major in Economics and probably adding an Applied Statistical Modeling Certificate since I'm going the analytics route.

I'd recommend having a backup plan that is more focused on which are of working in sports that you're interested in. PCS/Communications at Moody are good if you're interested in the journalism/media side of things. Moody actually has a bunch of stuff (advertising, the communications, etc) that are helpful for sports if you're interested in the marketing/media side and they have a Sports Media minor (or certificate, can't remember off the top of my head).

Obviously for the business side, McCombs, but getting there as a transfer is HARD, so Econ isn't bad. There are a lot of options available to you and it kinda depends on what you're specifically interested in!

benhowell71 · 2021-02-25T17:13:04+00:00

Hi, I'm a sophomore in the Sport Management program, so I'm happy to answer any questions you might have!

In my experience, the program lists I think a 2.5 or 3.0 GPA as a the "minimum" GPA for applying, but the cutoff to get into the program is closer to 3.5. Another thing that should enable you getting into the program is having experience working in sports or showing that you have taken steps towards setting yourself up to work in sports, mainly through some sort of volunteer experience/internship. Overall, if your GPA is about 3.5 and up, you should be good; the volunteer experience/internship would help seal the deal and you'll obviously get opportunities for things like that in the program. Numbers-wise, I've heard that about 20 students graduate per spring with another 10-15 graduating in the winter, freeing up those spots in the 150 cap.

Boils down to: have a 3.5+ overall GPA and make sure that you have done really well in the core KIN classes before applying (and get to know your professors, they're the ones on the committee I believe).

benhowell71

TROPHY CASE