My name is Ryder and something that you should know about me is that I’m really into sports. That is what led me to create this project. In college I plan to go into sports management, more specifically sports analytics. I wanted a senior project that could get me ready for my next step and teach something new to me. I’ve always been into both playing sports but also watching and keeping track of players and their stats and growth throughout the season. I took statistics in the third trimester of last year and it was the first time where I felt like I could connect the math that I am doing with real world scenarios. One thing that stood out to me during that class was probabilities. One example that connects probability to sports could be: what is the probability that they make this free throw? With prior data I can find and understand the answer.

For my project I will watch and go to Mets games this season, track their raw data, put that raw data into my spreadsheet, run it through an algorithm I will create,  and then find the batters batting average, on base percentage, and slugging. For the pitchers I will find the strikeout per nine innings, walks per nine innings, era. I will do this for the first 30-40 games. From there I will see the similarities and differences between my raw data that I converted into stats and what the MLB tracked for each player. To make sure that my algorithm makes sense before I do all this work I will take last year’s World Series and put all that raw data into my algorithm and compare it to the actual data to make sure I am doing this right. If something goes wrong, which will most likely happen,I will have time to fix it before the season starts. After I have each player’s stats I will find their probability anywhere from striking someone out to getting on base.

For me this project is important to me because when I look on the MLB app I can see players stats but I always wonder where they come from. That is why I want to create this spreadsheet because being able to do something like this on my own will open up a new concept and world to me.

For the service portion of this project I will work at an animal shelter called animal heaven. This shelter looks after dogs and other animals but I will be looking over dogs mostly, this includes playing, washing and feeding them. I have a dog at home who is a handful so I already know what it takes to deal with them.

I am very excited to learn and create something that I am proud of.