Ron Yurko

Excited to share that I'm working on a book: 'Statistical Methods in #SportsAnalytics'! This is the culmination of my education, research, and experience in teaching #statisticalthinking and modeling in #sportsanalytics! Thanks to @robcalver.bsky.social and Chapman & Hall/CRC for the opportunity!

COLLEGE FOOTBALL SP+ TOP 772, WEEK 9 * So Dak St -7 Stanford * Ferris State -5.5 NIU * Indiana Wesleyan +1 Sac State * Boston College -116 New England College * With a 70-7 loss to No. 460, Judson TAKES BACK NO. 772 from Hilbert. Neck-and-neck there. Full list: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

I was agonizing over whether Jeremiah Smith or Colin Simmons should win Heisman of the Week, and then I remembered: I make the rules around here! They both win it! On Smith, Simmons, Kamario's lead in the horse race and JERRY KAMINSKI as Lockbaum of the Week: www.espn.com/college-foot...

Read how data is revealing a new side of athletic performance. From measuring defensive pressure in football to understanding the mechanics behind a baseball swing, #STATSSKY stattrak.amstat.org/2026/09/01/g...

I used SP+ to project what SHOULD happen (conference/CFP/title odds), then I grabbed random simulations to tell you what WILL happen. (Can't wait for "NDSU beats SEC champion Tennessee in the CFP.") One million sims = one million (increasingly wild) realities. www.espn.com/college-foot...

Research from the Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Center is powering "Heisman Hopefuls," a first-of-its-kind data, storytelling and fan voting platform. 🏈📈 CMU data scientists are providing fans with deeper insight into the race for the @heismantrophy.bsky.social. 🏆 #DataScience #SportsAnalytics

The @heismantrophy.bsky.social wants to be part of the conversation year-round and wants fans to have a louder say, so it created the Heisman Hopefuls platform. It'll have updated stats and EA CFB ratings throughout the season. Honestly a pretty cool setup. www.espn.com/college-foot...

🚨INTRODUCING GAME ON PAPER 2.0 🚨 Matchup builder Thousands of custom chart possibilities Data back to 2004 Better EPA models More team specific charts Smoother site experience gameonpaper.com

Hey, I did Wharton Moneyball podcast this week. More preseason projections and discussion of how the whole system works. Good inside nitty gritty stuff. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

The American Soccer Insights Summit is back for 2027. The Summit will be held at Rice University on March 26th and 27th, during a FIFA men's international break window. Registration is now open: americansoccerinsights.com/registration/

Does anyone (buzzing in the same circles as me) want to team up for a stats project? Just trying to break out of a funk, maybe try something new, nothing ambitious...

Enter this year's Carnegie Mellon #SportsAnalytics Conference (Oct 23-24) #ReproducibleResearch Competition! forms.gle/GUXbxGbkkoiq... NEW: Winning authors receive an exclusive invitation to submit to the Journal of Statistics and Data Science in Sports jsds-sports.github.io

It's a privilege and honor to be able to work w/ #Heisman - I consider the #HeismanTrophy to be the most prestigious award in American sports, and I'm beyond excited for #CMSAC to play a role in its rich history! #CollegeFootball #sportsanalytics

CMU's statisticians and data scientists will work closely with Heisman to redevelop a dynamic fan voting, providing fans with deeper insight into the race for college football's most prestigious award. #SportsAnalytics Read more:

CMU x #Heisman 🏈📊🏆 @heismantrophy.bsky.social has partnered with Carnegie Mellon and the Sports Analytics Center to develop metrics and tools to make it easier for fans to access and evaluate performance data for all positions.

If you like sports data, be sure to check out espnanalytics.com @deanolytics.bsky.social @sethwalder.bsky.social and the entire ESPN Analytics team have put together some very cool and insightful data products.

Strongly recommend checking out a new #sportsanalytics book by (one of the best in the field) Stephanie Kovalchik called - 'Out of Left Field: Improbable stories in sports analytics' leftfieldanalytics.com Order it now! sellercentral.amazon.com/nms/redirect...

Yo this is the last week (last days!) for abstracts! I just submitted mine today :) All baseball teams are represented at this conference. Most (all?) doing informational interviews for job seekers or the curious. May 15 is the deadline for abstracts. See y’all there in a few months

This year marks 50 years since Pittsburgh's most beloved neighbor stopped by our commencement. 🎓 In 1976, @cmu.edu awarded Fred Rogers an honorary doctorate in fine arts. At #CMU, our hearts remain in the work that #MrRogers championed for all of us. 🫶 Congrats to all graduates!

Read more:

CMU's sports analytics education produces big league talent. Shravan Ramamurthy and Toby Junker both have professions in research and development for #NFL teams. Today's sports analysts have access to more data than ever. CMU equips students with the skills to turn data into actionable insights. 📊

What is the value of a pick in the #NFLDraft? 📈 Carnegie Mellon researchers are tackling the question. A joint project from the NFL and CMU researchers Quang Nguyen and Ron Yurko explores the math behind how Draft value charts are built and which teams have the best track record for picks. #Data

Data is powering the future of sports. 📊 “Every tenth of a second, the NFL’s Next Gen data chips provide information for where every single player is positioned on the field — the direction they’re moving, the speed they’re moving." CMU researchers are tackling how to use the data at our disposal.

Carnegie Mellon research is helping #NFL teams see what game film can’t. Smarter #data means smarter draft picks. By measuring traits that aren't always obvious, from shiftiness to arm angle, we can study their impact on the game. Analyzing this data is shaping the way teams draft. @cbsnews.com

People responding to statistical computation diagnostic warnings.

Many thanks to @realfrankbrank.bsky.social for getting this started! #CMSAC is excited to work with FTN data - with multiple student #sportsanalytics projects already underway!

FTN is partnering with the Carnegie Mellon Sports Analytics Center to provide advanced charted data to students to help prepare them for a career in sports data and analysis. Special thanks to @stat-ron.bsky.social for being a leader in this partnership.

We have summer internships y'all! Come work at Posit on the PyData, tidymodels, shiny, or Connect teams: grnh.se/tigz810a3us. You will have an awesome time, learn a ton, and help advance our open source and pro tools 🧰 #rstats #pydata

This framework enables comparison of observed movement against a distribution of hypotheticals at each frame within a play We focus on evaluating RB movement after handoff in run plays, and present examples of play valuation breakdown & player performance metrics

Simulation details: Given an observed path, at each frame along this path, generate a local distribution of hypothetical next steps (only simulate the immediate next movement, 1 frame ahead) (work in progress: full path sim by repeatedly drawing posterior predictive steps & turns)

Full framework: 1. Movement characterization with tracking data features (step length & turn angle, inspired by animal movement literature) 2. Bayesian multilevel step-and-turn models 3. Posterior predictive simulation of player movement 4. Ghosting/hypothetical evaluation

Check out the latest from Quang Nguyen in the #CMSAC research lab #sportsanalytics #NFL #BigDataBowl

New paper by myself & @stat-ron.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2603.17866 We introduce a generative modeling framework to evaluate continuous-time player movement against a distribution of frame-level hypotheticals #cmsac #nfl #bigdatabowl #sportsanalytics #ghosting

🔔 New preprint w/ Catalina Medina ❓ We ran a quasi-experiment in an introductory stats course to see if giving students a choice of real data context on homework actually has impact 📄 Engaging students with statistics through choice of real data context on homework 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2603.04541

👍 Our recs based on our findings are 1️⃣ use real data with authentic contexts, 2️⃣ select contexts students care about 3️⃣ incorporate variety across data contexts 4️⃣ consider choice as a pedagogical tool.

Today we're releasing AI for RStudio. It's really, really good—I'd encourage you to point it at the messiest data sources you have and see what it can do. www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03...

BREAKING: Teamworks to Acquire Pro Football Focus www.wideleft.football/p/breaking-t...

Teamworks—which calls itself as "The Operating System for Sports"—is closing in on acquiring Pro Football Focus per @arif.bsky.social . PFF's valuation in the deal is between $130M-$140M. Cris Collinsworth purchased PFF for $6M in 2014. www.wideleft.football/p/breaking-t...

The list of why I should switch to Positron keeps getting longer.

Summary: Peak BBCOR same for all 3 bats but shifted to inside for Torpedos. Simple shift for Torpedo-1 but wider sweet spot for Torpedo-2. See baseball.physics.illinois.edu/ppt/Nathan-T... for my @saberseminar.bsky.social talk. This is an on-going study with additional research in progress.

ICYMI 🧵1st results of the Torpedo bat study by Lloyd Smith, @drussellpsu.bsky.social, and me. Measurements done at WSU Sports Science Lab and PSU. Will be presented at ISEA Conference in June. BBCOR, a surrogate for exit velocity, measured for 1 Standard and 2 Torpedo bats via high-speed impact.

So far, overturned ABS Challenges...

ABS Challenge report so far: - Fielders challenging 113 to 56 for batters (or only 33% challenges are by batters) - Fielders got 61-113 overturned (54%), earning 0.15 runs per overturn, 0.08 per challenge - Batters 27-56 (48%), earning 0.20 runs per overturn, 0.10 per challenge

The Defense Rests: A Tribute to Bill Mazeroski (1936–2026) blogs.fangraphs.com/the-defense-...

Just published in JOSS: 'SC2Tools: StarCraft II Toolset and Dataset API' https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.08889

Got to join the Wharton Moneyball podcast yesterday to talk about the state of the NBA and why @deanolytics.bsky.social belongs in the basketball hall of fame. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

Cade is the best, you always want to hear him on the draft. Ron is at least medium.