Roundup 10/24

Two great articles from Chris Brown. Here’s an explanation of the Wildcat he did for Fifth Down prior to the Jets-Dolphins game a couple weeks ago. And at his own site, he explains zone run plays.

Ex-players and coaches are usually horrible analysts. Nowhere is this more evident than in baseball where analysts are forced to fill the endless dead time between each pitch with mind-numbing drivel, superstition, and flat out erroneous statements. Tom Tango points out some of the silliness from the MLB playoffs. It makes you wonder how these players and coaches became successful in the first place.


Also via Tango, here is an iPhone app from USS Mariner that tracks live win probability in MLB games. Plus, it calculates the best decisions regarding bunts, steals, etc. Fangraphs has their own version. I've been toying with an NFL version of this, but don't have the time.

Niel Payne at PFR ranks the best and worst NFL teams of the decade using Doug Drinen's Simple Rating System. SRS is based on net point differential, adjusted for opponent strength.

Wayne Winston, a consultant for the Dallas Mavericks, professor of decision science and a long-time sports researcher, has a new book out. It's called Mathletics, and I'm looking forward to reading it. It covers all major sports, not just the NBA, and there is plenty of NFL analysis.

  • Spread The Love
  • Digg This Post
  • Tweet This Post
  • Stumble This Post
  • Submit This Post To Delicious
  • Submit This Post To Reddit
  • Submit This Post To Mixx

3 Responses to “Roundup 10/24”

  1. Neil says:

    I read Mathletics last weekend. It is a really nice survey of various statistical strategies to dig deeper into baseball, football, and basketball, with roughly half of the book on baseball. While it doesn't hit basketball as in-depth as, say, Basketball on Paper, as a general book, it is great.
    My favorite part of the book is that Winston posted the spreadsheets behind the examples in his book on his blog, which makes playing around with the data fun. You should ask him for a copy, since he references this site a lot, which is incidentally how I remembered to add you to my newsreader.

  2. Anonymous says:

    I'd be interested in making an IPhone app for Real time Win Probability but don't know where to get the data? I've previously looked into this but everywhere I looked it cost a small fortune for real time play by play data...

  3. Tarr says:

    Brian, it appears you still have some work to do to elevate the concept of "going for it on 4th and 3 at midfield is a sound strategy" to the level of conventional wisdom:

    http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/sound_strategy_booed

Leave a Reply

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.