Expected Value TruMedia Networks

Lance Brozdowski is a Player Development Analyst at Marquee Sports Network,
the regional sports network for the Chicago Cubs. He brings an analytical
insight and makes it more digestible for baseball fans. In this episode, he
discusses…

* Methods he utilizes to evaluate and breakdown MLB players and
prospects

* What a player development analyst does for a regional sports network

* Thoughts about the new, publicly available bat tracking data

* Working with and debating former big league players and managers

* Analytics and metrics that he hopes to have more access to in the
future

* Pathway to getting here from an accounting background

* Communicating complex topics on air

* Under the radar prospects, favorite current pitch, who he’d start a
franchise with, and much more

Tom Bliss is a Senior Manager of Football Operations Data Scientist for the
NFL. He and his team work to improve the game for fans, players, and
organizations through data analysis. They are constantly researching new
ways to make the game more entertaining and safer. In this interview he
discusses…

* NFL rule changes including the expectations around the new kickoff
rule

* The schedule release and the various considerations the league looks
at

* His day-to-day responsibilities and what programming is utilized in
his role

* NGS, PFF, and various player tracking tools

* Big Data Bowl and what leads to successful entries

* Statistics that are likely to become publicly available for this
season

* Pairing his physics/astronomy major with his current position

* Highlights of his career journey thus far

Dr. Curtis Goss is a Performance Support Specialist for USA Swimming where
he is currently prepping for the Olympic trials and the 2024 Summer
Olympics. He was a collegiate swimmer at Indiana University where he also
completed his PhD in Human Performance. In this interview he discusses…

* The current landscape of data and tech within the sport of swimming

* U.S. Trials and the anticipation for potential record breaking races

* Communicating data to swimmers of various ages and experience

* The ups and downs of current technology and the manual aspects to
data collection

* Evaluating swimmer performance and identifying areas of improvement

* Swimming techniques and philosophies

* His path to working for USA Swimming and his drastically different
career plan

* Working with Katie Ledecky, Caeleb Dressel, Kate Douglass, etc.

* Highlights of his career journey thus far

Tim Gibbons is TruMedia’s baseball professional services lead, dealing with players, agencies and facilities. He previously worked as a minor-league hitting coach in the Orioles system. In this episode, Tim talks about…
- His career path to becoming a hitting coach
- What a minor-league hitting coach does
- Data available to minor-league teams
- How a minor-league team’s approach is influenced by the parent club
- Communicating data to players
- Mixing data with coaching of mechanics
- How facilities and agencies use data
- New baseball data points available to coaches
- Follow Tim on Twitter: @LineDrivePro

Allison Loucks is the Director of Business Development and Innovation at ESPN, where she oversees ESPN’s Analytics group. Her team has created ESPN metrics including their Total QBR, Basketball Power Index and pass rush win rate. In this conversation, Allison talks about…
- What she does as a director of the analytics group and what a typical day looks like
- How ESPN creates proprietary metrics
- Challenges of using complex metrics in simple ways
- How sports betting has affected her team’s work
- Common misconceptions about ESPN metrics
- What’s on the horizon for the analytics team
- What she looks for when hiring
- Her ESPN career and journalism background
- Meeting one of her sports heroes
Show links
- ESPN Analytics home page

Matt Chang and his team won the 2024 NFL Big Data Bowl, an analytics competition with a $25,000 first prize. In this episode, Matt will discuss…
- His team’s submission, entitled Uncovering Missed Tackle Opportunities
- What the Big Data Bowl is and how he and his team became interested
- The data and question provided by the NFL
- Attacking that question through trial and error
- Creating a metric and its components
- Making the outputs easy to understand
- Ideal next steps with their metric
- Advice for anyone looking to enter contests like the Big Data Bowl
Show Links
- Kaggle notebook for Matt’s team’s winning submission
- Video of Matt’s team’s presentation
- Matt’s advice for future Big Data Bowl contestants
- Big Data Bowl home page
- Big Data Bowl Kaggle home page
- Matt’s transition from hardware to machine learning
- Follow Matt on Twitter and LinkedIn