Lucy Rushton began her career in 2007 as a Player Recruitment Analyst for the Watford Football Club before moving on to become the Senior Performance Analyst at Reading Football Club in 2008. She spent 7 years with Reading before heading building the Atlanta United FC roster from scratch as Head of Technical Recruitment and Analysis. Lucy became the first female MLS General Manager in decades in 2021. 

In this episode of the Winning With Data podcast, Lucy Rushton talks with Jake Schuster about how data can reduce risks in drafting players, as well as reducing personal bias when it comes to scouting and recruiting players. They discuss how data has also helped scouts and coaches identify the peaks and rates of declines for each player individually so their training and playtime can be optimized. When talent can be identified younger and trends analyzed sooner, developing and finding players can be easier, as well as serving to help scouts become more efficient with their time. 

Ari Kaplan is a leading influencer in analytics, artificial intelligence, data science, and high-growth business innovation. Nicknamed “the real Moneyball guy,” the popular movie of the same name included some of Ari’s analytical ideas and scouting experiences during his time with the MLB. Trusted at the highest level with analytical implementations across industries, Ari is at the practical forefront of advanced AI/ML and working to continue his innovative success at Databricks.

In this episode of the Winning With Data podcast, Ari Kaplan talks with Jake Schuster about how AI and machine learning has become more mainstream in the sports analytics industry, as well as how those teams are still lagging behind in how they are implementing predictive analytics into their schemes to help drive performance. They also discuss an overview of how a team starts down the pipeline of data analytics; most teams go from a small, individualized approach to an organized, larger-scale affair.