May 7th, 2009 |
Published in
Daniel Gettinger, other sports
by Daniel Gettinger
One of my more controversial opinions has been that the Padres should not worry about building a team aimed at winning a world series in any given year, but should instead strive to be consistently competitive. One of the reasons is that a “consistently competitive” approach is the one that will actually maximize world series victories. The full article can be read here.
Over at the Charger Nation, I have written a post detailing why I would not be content with a “consistently competitive” approach from the Chargers. In presenting my argument, I examine why the argument I made for baseball does not hold in football.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
In baseball, once a team qualifies for the playoffs, it is nearly as likely to win the world series as any other team. This is because no playoff team actually has a very good of a chance of winning the world series. For example, last season, James Holzhauer used a monte carlo simulation to generate the odds of each playoff team winning the world series. The Boston Red Sox were deemed most likely to win the championship. Their odds: 16.8% The Milwaukee Brewers were the least likely team to win it all. Their odds: 9.2%. Not a very big difference. In baseball, qualifying for the playoffs (ie. being competitive in the regular season) is important, but anything above that is unlikely to increase a team’s probability of winning a championship by very much.
The same analysis does not hold in football. There are two primary reasons. First, upsets in any given round are much less likely in football. Second, the structure of the playoffs are different, with the NFL granting two teams per conference first round byes…
April 26th, 2009 |
Published in
Daniel Gettinger, other sports
by Daniel Gettinger (quick note: I have returned from traveling, and will now be able to pursue a more frequent posting schedule)
With the NFL draft currently in progress, I know many of you have temporarily shifted your attention away from baseball, and towards football. Recently, I was approached by a friend who has started a Charger blog, and was asked to contribute to the site. I have agreed to write 1-2 posts per week. My posts will attempt to bring an analytical perspective to the site. The other writers (there are four of us in total) may provide more of a “fans, fan” perspective, but I expect all posts to be well thought out and articulated.
Because the founder of the blog already maintains one of, if not the, most active Charger fan groups on Facebook, there is already a bit of a built in audience, and I expect active discussion to soon be found on the site. If you are a Chargers fan, or even just a football fan, I highly encourage you to check out thechargernation.com
February 27th, 2009 |
Published in
off topic, other sports
by Myron Logan
With Baseball Prospectus’ introduction of their newest site, Puck Prospectus, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little hockey. Well, maybe not. I know very little about Hockey, but I think BP’s new site will be a good place to start, if you’re looking to get into analysis of the game, similar to what we see in baseball. Of course, it’s a vastly different sport, and hockey is nowhere near baseball, in terms of sophistication in analysis and research (at least, I don’t think it is). That said, it’s not like the game hasn’t been studied in-depth. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing in the first place, with many, many areas of the game yet to be explored.
Often times, when I find myself reading some hockey analysis, it’s like I’m entering the conversation midstream, and I’ve missed too much already to really follow along. Hopefully, PP will sort of start with the basics, while advancing the analysis of the sport at the same time. If their previous sites are any indication, I think it will definitely be something to keep an eye on (if you have any interest in hockey, of course). The stable of writers looks pretty impressive, though I’m admittedly not familiar with most of them. There’s some discussion at Tango’s blog, who I know has done lots of work in hockey, though I’m not sure how much of it has been released to the public.
By the way, here are a few of the other hockey analysis sites I know of:
Surely, there are many more ….
