regressing Page 34 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Where Does David Ortiz Rank Among The Best World Series Hitters Ever?
Over the last five games, David Ortiz has hit .733/.750/1.267. This would be a crazy line for any stretch of the season, much less the fucking World Series, and it's brought his career line in the Fall Classic up to .465/.556/.814, which is good enough—the best of any hitter with at least 50 plate a...
How Good Was The Lakers Bench Last Night?
Last night's Lakers win was unusual for any number of reasons, but the biggest story is the unlikely performance by LA's bench. How well did they play last night? Here's a very quick—and slightly unique—look at the numbers of the five players on the court for the fourth quarter. ...
NFL Betting Lines, Visualized: Week 9
Here is your early betting info for Week 9 NFL; we'll update on Thursday with money lines and spread movements for these 12 games and add Eagles-Raiders (this line opened late). Two small tweaks from last week: Each team's actual record is included, and the games are once again ordered by start time...
NBA Stat Guru Kevin Pelton On Greg Oden, The Fraudulent Knicks, And More
Kevin Pelton is one of the smartest guys covering the NBA, and his SCHOENE projection system is one of the best predictive tools in NBA analytics. He was nice enough to answer a few questions about the upcoming NBA season....
How An Achilles Tear Affects NBA Players (Or, Why Kobe Is Screwed)
The Lakers season begins tonight with their home opener against the Clippers, but Kobe Bryant won't be playing. Bryant tore his Achilles tendon on April 12, and while he's still "ahead of schedule" in his six-to-nine-month recovery, he still hasn't begun running. He will miss at least the first seve...
How Statistically Unlikely Was The Lions' Comeback Against The Cowboys?
Maybe gawking at the convergence of unlikely comebacks and predictable collapses will get old someday, but by god, that day isn't today. So let's look at how the Cowboys went from a 99 percent chance of winning to a Matt Stafford impromptu Marino in less than 90 seconds. ...
Injury History Of Everyone On The Field When Jermichael Finley Got Hurt
The play above, from the fourth quarter of last weekend's Browns-Packers game, ended with Jermichael Finley temporarily paralyzed on the field after a major hit. He was carted off, began walking the next day, and was released from the hospital on Thursday after being diagnosed with a spinal contusio...
A Brief History Of The Sports Bra
Welcome to Patentspin. I'll use this space to take a look at some strange or interesting patents related to the world of sports. I will then, probably, make fun of them....
Why Are NFL Statheads Struggling So Much With Their Picks This Year?
It's still relatively early in the NFL season, but signs point to this being one of the worst seasons ever for simulation & statistics based predictors of game results. In fact, having followed several websites for the last few years, this is by far the worst I can remember each one doing as far as ...
NFL Spreads, Visualized: Week 8
We posted some initial lines on Monday, but below is updated gambling info for the 13 Week 8 NFL match-ups. Packers-Vikings and Giants-Eagles—which we held to wait for the result of the MNF game—are now included, as are money lines. Spreads, ATS performance, and bet trends are from SportsInsights.co...
What Happens When A Boxer Is Beaten To Death, And How We Can Stop it
After Jermichael Finley's recent spinal cord injury, a sportswriting friend of mine shook his head and referred to football as “America's sickness.” As severe as it was, though, Finley's injury wasn't nearly the worst a professional athlete suffered last weekend. On Saturday night, 26-year-old jun...
Here It Is: The Only Spurs Alley-Oop From The 2012-13 Regular Season
As we mentioned last week, the Spurs have had a league-low five alley-oop dunks in the last two seasons, and they had just one in the 2012-2013 regular season. Here it is. It's pretty sad, for a couple of reasons:...
Check Out These Beautiful (And Useful) Graphic MLB "Box Scores"
Michael Deal, who previously gave us this infographic of every pitch of the All-Star game as part of his Statlas project, has developed a new take on the MLB box score. The sample above shows the 8th and 9th inning of Game 2 of the ALCS, which, as Deal's line-and-node representations make clear, wer...
Stephen Curry's Numbers Are As Unlikely And Wonderful As Stephen Curry
Take a look at the two charts below. If you want to understand the unique appeal of someone like Stephen Curry—a player on whom both the basketball romantics and the quants agree, a guy who represents a rare intersection of narrative and analytics—there is no better place to start....
You Guys, It's A Pythagorean World Series This Year!
The Red Sox and Cardinals led the AL and NL in run differential this season, and now they're in the World Series. This is very far from breaking news, but still, it's the first time that's happened since 2007. To celebrate (kind of), Stats in the Wild put together a few fun bubble charts showing the...
Kevin Love Wins White Guy Award From NBA Executives
The NBA season is right around the corner, and you know what that means: Time for another preseason survey in which the league's 30 general managers answer various questions of varying degrees of inanity. You'll note that, way down at the bottom, the NBA asks an especially weird one:...
It's Too Soon To Say That Jermichael Finley Is "Going To Be Fine"
For the second time in the past month, Green Bay Packers tight end Jermichael Finley has sustained a serious head injury while playing football. And while he appears to be recovering movement following a temporary paralysis immediately after the injury, it's a stark reminder that the effects of head...
NFL Spreads, Visualized: <em>Monday Night Football</em> And Week 8
Based on your feedback from last Friday, we've made a few changes to our visual guide to NFL betting lines. Here's what's new:...
Chart: Friendly Reminder, Don't Bet On Favorites To Cover Huge Spreads
If you happened to bet on the Broncos to cover last week, David Yanofsky over at Quartz has put together a great chart to show just how much of a dumbass move that was....
NFL Betting Lines, Visualized: Week 7
So you want to gamble on football. Good—gambling is damn wonderful. Here's a resource to make looking at this week's lines a little more informative....