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Brian Becker

Brian Becker is a sophomore studying Computer Engineering. He can be reached at brian.becker@tufts.edu.

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Columns

Lay of the Leagues: MLB edition

By Brian Becker | April 17

I’m genuinely torn on Major League Baseball’s future. On one hand, baseball is a revived product with high-scoring games, intense extra-inning battles and engaging pitching personalities that finish off the most intense matchups. I made the trip to Fenway Park on April 10, where I witnessed a feisty Boston Red Sox team close out a win in their four-game series versus the Toronto Blue Jays. While I only witnessed the final six innings, due to the brutal Thursday 4 p.m. start time, I certainly caught the majority of the relevant action, as the teams brought a 2–2 game to extra innings, featuring heavy hitters such as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and pitching talent like Aroldis Chapman.

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Columns

Lay of the Leagues: The sports analytics machine

By Brian Becker | March 31

Expected goals, player efficiency, ERA, slugging percentage, exit velocity, exit velo, exit velo. All these terms are very familiar to the sports analytics community and are terms that a small portion of fans within this community obsess over. Sports analytics have optimized and homogenized all major leagues in this country, especially the MLB. The rise of the information era has been synonymous with the rise of sports analytics. Billy Beane’s “Moneyball” tactics amazed baseball organizations by using statistics to build a cost-efficient organization after typing a few queries from a computer.

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Columns

Lay of the Leagues: ATP edition

By Brian Becker | March 10

For many years, Indian Wells, Calif., has served as a stopping point for prospectors seeking gold. Currently, it happens to host a tennis tournament on the ATP Tour. Many dub the Indian Wells Open the “fifth Grand Slam” because of the tournament’s status as a Masters 1000 tournament (just one level below the grand slams) as well as the increased media attention that Indian Wells receives compared to other Masters 1000 tournaments. Indian Wells draws all of tennis’s current and rising stars, and with the whirlwind of entertaining and disappointing first-round upsets this year, it feels only right to talk about the current state of the sport in our country — and why it’s worth watching.

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Columns

Lay of the Leagues: Premier League edition

By Brian Becker | February 24

The docks of Bramley-Moore are eager for the new construction project in town: Everton Stadium, the new home of the Everton Football Club. A state-of-the-art stadium occupies the new venue, standing ready to usher in a new era for the Toffees on the weekend of Aug. 16, when they will most likely play their first home fixture of the 2024–25 season. Many fans will certainly experience delight in singing along to the “Z-Cars” theme in the architectural masterpiece, but the modern-day bowl stadiums signify a bigger trend coming to the pinnacle of the English Football League.

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Column

Lay of the Leagues: The search for quality, long-term player development in the NFL

By Brian Becker | February 14

The NFL has entered a phase of expansion, where its leadership is determined to spread the market to destinations deemed unreachable just 10 years ago. The highest-grossing revenue league has cemented its gritty and purely American presence in settings across the globe. Becoming more worldwide than ever before and with the 2025 Super Bowl in the books, the league trails in building an effective player development model. Many teams feel burdened to fast-track their own rebuilding process, leaving a scarcity of “complete” teams league-wide.

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Columns

Lay of the Leagues: NBA edition

By Brian Becker | February 3

It is such a shame to see a league that was so focused on ball movement and masterful isolation in an effort to drive to the rim become diluted into a no-defense 5-out three-point contest. The NBA has reached a ratings cliff, where chic association edition jerseys and haute-culture-inspired parquets have become the focal point rather than the avant-garde ball mastery that many children around the world would spend countless hours mastering. Nowadays, you’ll be lucky to even turn on the TV and see a player even seriously attempt a one-legged fadeaway (Cam Thomas vs. Orlando Magic circa 2024).

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