Fairness is part of the promise of sports analytics. By judging an athlete’s performance through good data — as opposed to reputation, image, or outworn clichés — analytics creates the possibility that people can be judged more consistently on merit than often occurs elsewhere in life. But that promise of fairness only goes so far in a sports world shaped by the same social forces as everything else: Men’s sports have traditionally commanded more resources than women’s sports, including access to data, and the analytics industry has not employed many…
