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Let’s try to understand the NBA’s defensive player rating and all its absurdity
Analytics can be misleading. Over the last decade, we’ve seen an influx of statistics take over the sports world, and basketball hasn’t been exempt from this revolution — just look at all the three-point attempts we see now across the NBA. But one stat in particular can be even dangerously misleadin...
Lawsuit Alleges NFL Directed Insurance Carrier To Deny Disability Claims
A medical clinic in Illinois is accusing the NFL of instructing its insurance carrier to deny claims made by former players under the auspices of the league’s disability plan. The allegations are outlined in a lawsuit that also accuses the league of retaliating against the clinic for providing indep...
MLB Advanced Media Made Billions For Baseball, Chewed Up Its Employees, And Spit Them Out
On the second Tuesday of February, at 3:00 in the afternoon, around 40 employees of MLB Advanced Media—one arm of MLB’s media empire, which also includes MLB.com, MLB Network and MLB Productions—nervously filed into a conference room at MLBAM’s office in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market. They had been liv...
So Your Spouse Wants To Bring Sushi Casserole To The Party
What do you do if your spouse, an amateur and not very skilled cook, makes a disgusting and possibly lethal “sushi casserole” and sets his or her heart on bringing it to and serving it at a large, fancy social event, where it almost certainly will meet with humiliating public rejection?...
The Chris Paul Problem Is An Analytics Problem
In broad terms, the Chris Paul Problem—there is one!—is as follows: Pretty much everybody agrees that Paul is, and has been for the past decade, one of the NBA’s best players. He made nine straight All-Star games from 2008 to 2016; he has made eight All-NBA teams and nine All-Defense teams; he is th...
Ron Jaworski Is Using Someone Else's Data Without Attribution
Until he got swept away by the recent round of layoffs, Ron Jaworski dissected Xs and Os for several of ESPN’s NFL-related programs. Those gigs gave him a prominent platform from which he could draw heavily on his knowledge as a former NFL quarterback. Jaworski still loves to boast about how much ta...
Are You Sure Russell Westbrook Should Be MVP? Consider These Stats
An NBA season is not a triple-double-getting contest. Yesterday, Albert Burneko argued that the discussion about who deserves the NBA Most Valuable Player award has lately gone off track—that Russell Westbrook, averaging a triple-double for the Oklahoma City Thunder, has been so thoroughly and overw...
Blue Jays Assistant Offers The Hottest Advanced Stats Take Of All
Are you seated? Are you prepared to hear the rawest, truest sabermetrics take of all time from Blue Jays scout Steve Springer?...
Everything's Coming Up Joe Maddon
Judging a baseball manager’s long-term, direct impact on his team is one of the hardest things to do with any true accuracy. There are of course the ostentatiously bad decisions—bringing a young starter out of the bullpen on three days rest, having the three-hole hitter sacrifice bunt, etc.—that are...
Joe Maddon Used Some Advanced Tactics
The Cubs needed 15 innings to beat the Reds last night, finally putting them to sleep with a Javier Baez grand slam. But before that, Cubs manager Joe Maddon, everybody’s favorite crafty old baseball man, did some fun things with his lineup....
Corsi And Fenwick Are Dead
Two fundamental measures of puck possession—that happen to correlate strongly with success—have hit the big time. NHL.com, as part of a redesign, will unveil a reported 35 new analytics on its stats page tomorrow. Corsi and Fenwick are painfully basic for "advanced" stats, and from here on out they'...
Harrison Barnes Forces Revision To The Definition Of A Shabazz Assist
Last week I introduced the Shabazz Assist, a revolutionary new statistic that properly credits a player for missing dunks that "ricochet perfectly to an open teammate in the corner." But like any forefront in advanced analytics, the Shabazz Assist remains a work in progress, and in hindsight its p...
Jim Harbaugh Doesn't Fuck Around At Laser Tag
Jim Harbaugh, who might become the next head coach at Michigan and get very rich along the way, is not a man who takes laser tag lightly. We know this thanks to a new column about Harbaugh on MLive, which contains this anecdote:...
We Really Need More Of This In NBA Advanced Metrics
ESPN Insider is doing something funny with its advanced nerds at the Las Vegas Summer League: The stat guys are talking shop with the players. ...
The Maple Leafs' Collapse Is A Victory For Rationality
Statistics, like any science, are functionally useless unless they can be tested. The 2013-14 Toronto Maple Leafs season may have been the single best test case so far for the first wave of hockey's advanced metrics—and it resulted in a rousing defeat for both the Leafs and those pundits stubbornly ...
What's Up With MLB.TV, And How Can It Be Fixed?
MLB's online offering has long been the technological leader among U.S. major sports. That's no surprise given the size and financial power of MLB Advanced Media, but repeated issues with the service across devices this season have made MLB.TV look more like NBA League Pass. ...
The Mariners Tried To Screw Randy Wolf, So He Walked Away
Veteran starter Randy Wolf asked for and received his release from the Mariners yesterday, the same day he was informed he would make the team's rotation. At issue was a little-known but increasingly used quirk of the CBA, a waiver that makes a guaranteed contract anything but. Seattle tried to spri...
Advanced NFL Stats has made some significant tweaks to its win probability model, which now incorporates team strength and the value of second half kickoffs while adjusting the likelihood that trailing teams will attempt fourth-down and 2-point conversions late in the game. It's good stuff. [Advance...
When Should Dallas Have Allowed Denver To Score A Touchdown?
Once Demaryius Thomas crossed the line to gain at the Dallas 14 yard line with 1:50 to play, the Dallas defense should have intentionally allowed the TD. With 2 timeouts and 1:40+ to play, they would have had a better chance of winning than allowing Denver to choke the life out of them and kick an e...
MLB's Crappy Replay Tech: It's A Miracle Umps Ever Get A Call Right
Much has been made of umpire Angel Hernandez's botching of replay review in last night's Oakland-Cleveland game, a mistake that might have cost the A's the game. You've doubtless already seen the play numerous times on your home TV or computer screen, but you've probably never seen it the way Hernan...