regressing Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
A Quick Note On Darren Sproles To The Eagles
Darren Sproles landed on the Eagles this morning, and while this is obviously a boost to any offense, it's worth a few seconds to look at just how big of a hole he's filling. ...
Some Gorgeous Visualizations Of All Movement In An NBA Game
SportVU data is the key to the next wave of useful, incisive analytics the NBA, and also some of the most stupid and pointless. This probably splits the difference. Here's what it would look like if every player on an NBA court had an Etch A Sketch pixel taped to his back. ...
The 49ers Traded For A Historically Awful Quarterback
Sure, you know that Blaine Gabbert had a very bad season last year. But just for anyone who managed to forget, he was unbelievably bad, doing more damage to his team in just three games than anyone else managed in a full season. ...
Would A World-Class Sprinter Be The Best Baserunner In MLB?
Originally published on Baseball Prospectus. ...
This Model Has Predicted 73 Of 74 NCAA Tournament At-Large Bids
Part of the fun of March Madness is obsessively guessing who'll fall on either side of the bubble, but a model known as the "dance card"—which has predicted 73 out of 74 at-large bids over the last two seasons—might be spoiling the surprise....
Do NBA Players Really Get Arrested More Than Usual? (No, Stop This)
Because this is an enormous waste of everyone's time and brain energy, but also because you should have at least a functional grasp of how stupid it is, here is a very quick rundown on how often NBA players are arrested, compared to the rest of the country....
The Pleasures Of Watching The Most Versatile Big Man In The Country
He doesn't look like anyone's idea of a superstar, which is perhaps one reason Jerrelle Benimon is among the most underrated college basketball players in America. He's 6-foot-8, 245 pounds, built big and a little on the soft side, more along the lines of a tight end than a power forward. When he br...
Two Days At Sloan: How Sports Analytics Got Lost In The Fog
"You're hiding all the good numbers from me." ...
NFL Won't Chip In On A $100 Million Football Brain Study At Harvard
According to Outside the Lines, a $100 million grant to fund a Harvard study that would take a long-term look at CTE and brain trauma in former players has been changed into, essentially, an NFL contract. ...
Title IX's <em>Other</em> Effects: Do Sports Make Women Less Religious?
How does playing a sport in high school affect a woman after she has graduated? We know from Betsey Stevenson's 2010 study in The Review of Economics and Statistics that female former high school athletes tend to go further in school and make more money. But what about the effects on a woman's socia...
MLB Announces Revolutionary New Fielding-Tracking System
Even in their recent state of repair, defensive metrics have always had a certain reverse-engineered, SABR-in-retrograde quality to them, even in a statistically mature sport like baseball. MLB Advanced Media just announced a new system that would slam the door shut on that era. ...
New Study Says NBA Referees Aren't Racist Anymore
Seven years ago, a couple of economists from Ivy League schools dropped a study on the NBA's head saying that its referees called more fouls against black players than they did against white players. ...
Every NBA Team's Season, In One Chart
Here's a chart by Houston Rockets analyst Ed Kupfer (you might remember him from that NBA strength of schedule chart a while back) that does the simple, useful job of lining up how each NBA team's offense and defense have stacked up to the rest of the league. You aren't going to find too many surpri...
Do The Olympics Really Screw The Best NHL Teams?
Since the Nagano Olympics in 1998, NHL players have played Olympic hockey, and NHL coaches have bitched about NHL players playing Olympic hockey. It punishes and best teams, with the best players, they say. But is there any evidence to actually back this up? Well, it's complicated. ...
When Do Umpires Mess Up Balls And Strikes Calls?
Baseball umpires are not immune to psychological biases, and it's an old adage of baseball commentating that strike zones get smaller when there are two strikes, and larger when there are three balls. In their Sloan finalist paper "What Does it Take to Call a Strike? Three Biases in Umpire Decision ...
When Should Managers Pull Their Starting Pitchers?
"A Data-driven Method for In-game Decision Making in MLB" is easily the worst title of the eight Sloan paper finalists, which is a shame, given that it's actually an interesting application of machine learning that's directly related to one of the most important aspects of baseball game management. ...