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C.R.E.A.M. (Or, “How to Win a Championship in Any Sport”)
Does cash rule everything in professional sports? Obviously it keeps the lights on, and it keeps the best athletes in fine bling, but what effect does the root of all evil have on the competitive...
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The Aesthetic Case Against 18 Games
By most accounts, the NFL’s plan to expand the regular season from 16 to 18 games is a done deal. Indulge me for a moment as I take off my Bill-James-Wannabe cap and put on my dusty old...
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The Case for Dennis Rodman, Part 2/4 (a)(ii)—Player Valuation and...
In my last post in this series, I outlined and criticized the dominance of gross points (specifically, points per game) in the conventional wisdom about player value. Of course, serious observers have...
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Graph of the Day: NBA Player Stats v. Team Differentials (Follow-Up)
In this post from my Rodman series, I speculated that “individual TRB% probably has a more causative effect on team TRB% than individual PPG does on team PPG.” Now, using player/team differential...
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Google Search of the Day: Player Efficiency Rating is Useless
From the “almost too good to be true” department: Hat tip to whoever the guy was that used that search to find my blog yesterday. See for yourself here. Note the irony that I’m actually saying the...
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The Case for Dennis Rodman, Part 2/4 (b)—With or Without Worm
I recently realized that if I don’t speed up my posting of this series, Rodman might actually be in the Hall of Fame before I’m done. Therefore, I’m going to post this section now, and Part 3 (which...
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The Case for Dennis Rodman, Part 3/4(b)—Rodman’s X-Factor
The sports analytical community has long used Margin of Victory or similar metrics as their core component for predicting future outcomes. In situations with relatively small samples, it generally...
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MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Day 1: Recap and Thoughts
This was my first time attending this conference, and Day 1 was an amazing experience. At this point last year, I literally didn’t know that there was a term (“sports analytics”) for the stuff I liked...
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The Case for Dennis Rodman, Part 4/4(a): All-Hall?
First of all, congrats to Dennis for his well-deserved selection as a 2011 Hall of Fame inductee—of course, I take full credit. But seriously, when the finalists were announced, I immediately...
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The Case for Dennis Rodman, Part 4/4(b): The Finale (Or, “Rodman v. Jordan 2”)
[ADDED: Unsurpisingly, this post has been getting a lot of traffic, which I assume includes a number of new readers who are unfamiliar with my “Case For Dennis Rodman.” So, for the uninitiated, I’d...
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Game Theory in Practice: Smackdown Meta-Strategy
Going into the final round of ESPN’s Stat Geek Smackdown, I found myself 4 points behind leader Stephen Ilardi, with only 7 points left on the table: 5 for picking the final series correctly, and a...
View ArticleESPN Stat Geek Smackdown 2011 Champion
. . . is me. Final Standings: Benjamin Morris (68) Stephen Ilardi (65) Matthew Stahlhut (56) (Tie) Haralabos Voulgaris (54) (Tie) John Hollinger (54) David Berri (52) Neil Paine (49) Henry Abbott’s Mom...
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Graph of the Day: Alanis Loves Rookie Quarterbacks
Last season I did some analysis of rookie starting quarterbacks and which of their stats are most predictive of future NFL success. One of the most fun and interesting results I found is that rookie...
View ArticleNew! This Sunday: Wire-to-Wire NFL Live-Blog
With a nice vacation under my belt and the NFL season underway, I figure it’s a good time to shift some of my attention back to the blog. I’m working on finishing and writing up some of the research...
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9/25 NFL Sunday Live Blog
As promised, I’ll be live-blogging all day. Details here. I’ll finally be getting NFL Sunday Ticket later this week (DirecTV is cheaper than cable, who knew?), but for now I’m stuck with what the...
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A Defense of Sudden Death Playoffs in Baseball
So despite my general antipathy toward America’s pastime, I’ve been looking into baseball a lot lately. I’m working on a three part series that will “take on” Pythagorean Expectation. But considering...
View ArticleSports Geek Mecca: Recap and Thoughts, Part 1
So, over the weekend, I attended my second MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. My experience was much different than in 2011: Last year, I went into this thing barely knowing that other people were...
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Graphs of the Day: Bird vs. Bron
One of my favorite stat-nuggets ever is that “Larry Bird never had a losing month.” So, yesterday, I figured it was about time to check whether or not it’s, you know, true. To do this, I first had to...
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Sports Geek Mecca: Recap and Thoughts, Part 2
This is part 2 of my “recap” of the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference that I attended in March (part 1 is here), mostly covering Day 2 of the event, but also featuring my petty way-too-long rant about...
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I’m Joining FiveThirtyEight
The title pretty much says it all. In January I’ll be starting a real j-o-b as a “Senior Writer, Sports” for the new ESPN-backed FiveThirtyEight, due to launch in February. So I thought I’d better say...
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