nerds Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Red Wings Defenseman Mike Commodore Considering Jersey Number 64
Mike Commodore (@commie22 on Twitter) is not a particularly special hockey player. He's a -10 with 104 career points in 454 games, with a Stanley Cup and some great accompanying red beards. He just signed a one-year deal with the Red Wings....

The Yankees' Ticket Market Thinks Derek Jeter Is Ted Williams Or Something
It's pretty easy to estimate the number of hits a player will get over a small number of at-bats. For instance, any player batting between .125 and .375 obtains, to the nearest whole number, one hit in four AB. Walks complicate things, but not much. That's why, with Derek Jeter sitting three hits aw...

Grantland's Jonah Lehrer Loves Intangibles So Much He Made A Whole Argument Out Of Them
Aren't sports statistics terrible? Of course they are. Sports has been overrun by number-nerds, and the number-nerds get angry if you point this out. So Jonah Lehrer, writing at Grantland about the pernicious influence of numerical analysis, makes sure not to bring up any actual examples of how numb...

The Canucks Are On The Verge Of Historical Mediocrity
If the Bruins go on to win the Stanley Cup despite an inferior resume to that of the Canucks, no one will blink. There's nothing unusual about the better team losing a playoff series. Seven games isn't enough to guarantee a representative result. But if the Canucks win, they'll cap off one of the mo...

A Statistical Analysis Of "Macho Man" Randy Savage's Halfway Decent Professional Baseball Career
Randy Poffo spent four season in the minors, playing in the Cardinals and Reds systems, and never rising above Single-A ball. He put down his bat for good in 1975 and picked up a steel chair and became known to the world as Randy Savage, his brief and unremarkable baseball career amounting to nothin...

The <em>New York Times</em> Pushes Up Its Glasses, Issues Nerdiest Correction Ever
I'll just let the Times explain:...

The Epic Story Of A New Jersey Prosecutor Who Stole My Idea And Made Fantasy Baseball History
"I got Rickey Henderson and Roger Clemens."...

Timing The Trots For Six Famous Home Runs; Or, Bo Jackson Will Blow Your Mind
As a Brewers fan, it's pretty common to hear from others around the NL Central that no one is worse at watching and admiring his home runs than Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun. And while I can understand where these Cards and Cubs fans are coming from, I don't completely agree. After all, I get to see...

Was Scott Howard Actually Better Than Teen Wolf? A Statistical Investigation
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the past week, they've been applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). The series concludes wi...

Calculating The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air's Usage Rate, And What It Can Tell Us About Ball Hogs
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today we have some b...

It’d Take Trey Parker A Million Years To Lose, And Other Statistical Oddities Of <em>BASEketball</em>
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today: The offensivel...

Compiling The Absurd Box Score For <em>Space Jam</em>; Or, Shawn Bradley Sucked Against Cartoons, Too
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today: Space Jam by t...

An Advanced Statistical Analysis Of Jimmy Chitwood's Basketball Performance In <em>Hoosiers</em>
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective. Over the next few days, they'll be applying rigorous statistical analysis to some of the finest basketball movies in the history of cinema (and also Hoosiers). Today: Calculating Ji...

Six Degrees Of NBA Separation; Or, Why Buddha Is The Center Of The Basketball Universe
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. Today: Connecting Blake Griffin and Charlie Parsley in eight easy steps....

The Smart Way To Expand The NFL Season: 18 Weeks, Not 18 Games
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. Today: Why a second bye week makes sense....

Harvard Students' Sports Analysis Club Will Inherit The Sports, Winklevosses Probably Pissed
Deadspin contributor Ben Cohen writes about Deadspin contributors the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective in a story that is not to be missed by Deadspin readers. Among other things: these dorks are getting lots of jobs. Bully for you, dorks. [ThePostGame]...

How The NBA Ruined The H-O-R-S-E Competition
This is Regressing, a numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. Today: The NBA's H-O-R-S-E competition was doomed to fail....

How Much Does NFL Seeding Really Matter?
This is Regressing, a new, numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. Today: Why it's good to be king of the regular season....

Why There Are More .300 Hitters Than .299 Hitters, And Why It Matters
Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, authors of the Freakonomically inclined Scorecasting, explore the peculiar power of round-number milestones and how they affect a ballplayer at the plate....

All The Nut Shots Fit To Print
This is Regressing, a new, numbers-minded column by our clever friends at the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective. Today: What injuries got the most press in 2010?...