Data Career Podcast: Helping You Land a Data Analyst Job FAST 197: How to Become a Sports Data Analyst in 2026 (starting from 0)
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Feb 10, 2026 Nick Wan, Senior Director of Baseball Analytics at the Cincinnati Reds with a background in psychology and neuroscience. He discusses pivoting from academia into sports analytics. He explains how public projects and visibility led to hiring. He outlines day-to-day work beyond stats and the technical tools used. He shares practical advice on standing out in a competitive hiring process.
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From Grad Student Blog To NYT Attention
- Nick Wan got noticed after a New York Times piece picked up a sports-analytics blog post he wrote while in grad school.
- That visibility helped him pivot from a planned postdoc into applying to team analytics roles and eventually joining the Cincinnati Reds.
Signal Processing Skills Transfer To Sports Data
- Neuroscience signal processing (EEG) uses the same cleaning and time-series techniques as sports data preprocessing.
- Skills like filtering, artifact removal, and time-series analysis transfer directly from neuroscience to sports analytics.
Applied Widely And Landed The Reds Role
- Nick applied to ~20 baseball and player-operations jobs listed on TeamWork Online and got callbacks from most of them a decade ago.
- He used that wave of interest to accept a data scientist role with the Cincinnati Reds instead of pursuing an 18-month-delayed postdoc.
