Class of 2025: From PhD to pro sports: Andy Pohl’s path to the Phillies

Imagine graduating from university and stepping straight into a role that mirrors the plot of an award-winning sport film. For Andy Pohl, this is exactly what happened. 

“Yes, people compare what I do to Moneyball,” says Andy Pohl, referencing the 2011 film starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. “But we’ve moved beyond box scores and batting averages. What we do now is more like advanced Moneyball.”

For Pohl, the journey from PhD student to professional sport consultant began with a simple idea: combine what you love with what you’re good at.

“I’ve always been interested in sport. I was an athlete myself, a skier for many years, and I always wanted to combine that passion for movement with a career,” he says. “Kinesiology seemed like an obvious choice.”

Using data to forecast pitcher performance

Pohl recently completed his doctorate in kinesiology at the University of Calgary and now works as a biomechanics consultant with the Philadelphia Phillies. His role? Analyzing how players move.

“We’re working with complex, three-dimensional data,” he says. “How a pitcher moves on the mound or how a batter swings and then forecasting how they might perform in different situations or progress in their careers.”

Refining tools that evaluate how humans move

While at UCalgary, Pohl’s research focused on applying Bayesian inference, a statistical method, to biomechanics. Bayesian inference is a method of updating beliefs or estimates as new data becomes available. It begins with an initial assumption and refines that assumption by incorporating new evidence to improve accuracy. 

• Read more profiles of amazing Class of 2025 graduates 

Specifically, he worked on improving how we estimate joint angles and body positioning during walking or running. Though the research was technical and methodologically heavy, the goal was practical: how to better refine the tools used to evaluate human movement.

This research laid the foundation for his work with the Phillies, allowing him to blend his long-standing interest in math and sport with real-world application in professional athletics. Today, he uses similar data-driven methods to support coaching and performance decisions.

Seeing change happen in real time

Pohl is based in Calgary but travels regularly to Philadelphia and to the team’s spring training base in Florida. His workday mirrors that of a researcher with data collection, writing code and preparing reports. The only difference is now the results are meant for coaches and sport executives, not academics.

“What drew me back to industry was the pace,” he says. “In academia, it might take years to see the impact of your work. In pro sport, you can see change happen in real time.”

With more professional teams investing in analytics, Pohl believes demand will continue to grow for specialists who can bridge biomechanics and data science.

“There’s so much public sport data available,” he says. “Find a question you care about and start solving it. Share your work. That’s how I got noticed.”