tats Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Ben Roethlisberger Was Just Awarded A Touchdown, So You Might Want To Check Your Fantasy League
This play, in the second quarter of Pittsburgh's win over the Eagles on Sunday, was ruled on the field as a lateral from Ben Roethlisberger to Rashard Mendenhall, who scampered 13 yards for the score. So it went down in the books a rushing touchdown for Mendenhall, and that was that. Until yesterday...
How's That "Going For It On Fourth Down" Thing Going For San Diego State?
This August brought momentous news: San Diego State Aztecs head coach Rocky Long had done lost his mind, and would be implementing essentially the strategy all advanced football stats people have been stridently advocating since the dawn of advanced football stats. Long was going for it on fourth (i...
When Good Statistics Go Bad: The Case Against The Case Against R.A. Dickey
R.A. Dickey, objectively speaking, is the greatest human being in history. His knuckleball destroys cities and he climbed a huge fucking mountain. But should he win the Cy Young Award?...
Just How Tight Is The AL Playoff Race?
With three weeks to go in the season, over half of baseball is still in the race. Seventeen teams are within five games of a playoff spot. You might think that's mostly due to the new second wild card, and that's the case in the NL. With all three division leaders comfortable and the Braves safe at...
NFL Teams Can't Stop Scoring. When Will They Stop Running And Punting?
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Are Football Players Really Living Longer Than Baseball Players? Why Grantland's Study Is Wrong
Grantland recently published an article, "Mere Mortals," by Bill Barnwell, which claims that:...
32 Paragraphs About 32 NFL Teams From The <em>Football Outsiders Almanac 2012</em>
The following is excerpted from the team chapters of the always-excellent Football Outsiders almanac. Buy the PDF for $12.50 or order the printed book from Amazon....
Dear ESPN: A 77 MPH Little League Fastball Is Not Equivalent To A 100 MPH Major-League Fastball
An email from reader Tommy Leonardi:...
Here's A Washington Nationals Fan Firing A Gun From His Car While Driving
This is probably one of the dumbest things I've ever seen committed to pixels. This one has it all. We have this spider web-faced genius firing his gun out his window in a residential neighborhood, speeding through a residential neighborhood, pulling over so he can show the camera his other, bigge...
How Crazy Was The Pacquaio-Bradley Decision? Bradley Had A 0.03 Percent Chance Of Being Randomly Judged The Winner.
Republished from KenPom.com....
Pablo Sanchez Would've Used Steroids, And Other Real-Life Projections For The Greatest Youth Baseball Player In Video Games
As every Millennial knows, Backyard Baseball is the children's computer game in which neighborhood boys and girls play pickup ball with kid-sized incarnations of everyone's favorite major leaguers. The 2001 edition, for example, featured the likes of Mike Piazza and Barry Bonds, traveling across dis...
Math! Says Hero Ball Doesn't Work
Some interesting research from the TrueHoop gang today, meant to address the non-flop-related issue of the 2012 playoffs: Who should be taking those crucial last shots? If the choice is between a covered superstar and an open non-superstar, the numbers say: give it to the open man....
The Best Shooters In The NBA, And Why Field Goal Percentage Can't Identify Them
What does field goal percentage actually tell us?...
How Readable Are Bill Simmons, Jason Whitlock, Rick Reilly, And Other Sportswriters? Science Investigates
The last time we played around with sportswriter analytics, we wondered if we could algorithmically determine a column's author based on his favorite words. (We could!) For a followup, I decided to look at the readability of different writers. Reading level is a nebulous concept and hard to define p...
Bristolmetrics: <em>SportsCenter</em> Said "Fire Extinguisher" More Times Than "Kobe Bryant" Last Week
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: <i>SportsCenter</i> Might Actually Have Under-Covered The NFL Draft
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Scott Hairston Hits For Cycle, Mets Get Clobbered
Scott Hairston did that cool and meaningless thing where a player gets all the different kinds of hits possible in one game. Sadly, it was not a "natural" cycle, an even more meaningless occurrence made remarkable by the order in which the hits are made. The Mets, on the other hand, did that uncool...
Bristolmetrics: The NHL Received Twice As Much Airtime As The NFL
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke....
Bristolmetrics: Fidel Castro Received As Many Mentions On <em>SportsCenter</em> As Kobe Bryant
This is a regular feature breaking down, minute-by-minute, the content that appears on ESPN's 11 p.m. edition of SportsCenter throughout the week. Graphic by Jim Cooke. ...
You Can't Stop Kevin Durant, But You Can Force Him To His Right
Durant is known for being able to go left or right, and finish with either hand. The data shows that to be true from near the basket and from midrange. But if you can keep KD on the perimeter, he's significantly more likely to beat you from the left....