THE POWER RANK

Podcast: Professor Adi Wyner on sports analytics

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Professor Adi Wyner of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania joins the show for a wide ranging conversations. He has a math degree from Yale University and PhD in Statistics from Stanford University. Highlights include:

  • His first influence in sports analytics at Stanford (3:35)
  • His opera singing career after graduate school (7:50)
  • The optimal number of brackets to submit to a March Madness pool (12:53)
  • Better baseball player projections (23:45)

To listen here, click on the right pointing triangle.

This episode of The Football Analytics Show is also available on:

Podcast: Dr. Nick Wan on sports, business analytics

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On this episode of The Football Analytics Show, I’m joined by Dr. Nick Wan, Director of Analytics for the Cincinnati Reds. He got into baseball after earning his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Utah State. Highlights include:

  • How an early sports analytics project made the front page of the New York Times (4:52)
  • His tasks as Director of Analytics for a MLB team (10:35)
  • How baseball as evolved from event to process based metrics (13:21)
  • The frontier of player development analytics (16:58)
  • The prospects for the Cincinnati Reds (24:55)
  • Analytics for KFC, the fast food company (32:17)
  • Creativity in sports analytics, and the role of logic (44:11)

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, and you can find more of Nick on Twitch. Also, check out his music.

To listen to the podcast episode here, click on the right pointing triangle.

This episode of The Football Analytics Show can also be found on:

Podcast: Ben Reiter on how the Astros won the World Series

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Ben Reiter of Sports Illustrated joins me to discuss his book Astroball, now available in paperback.  This book tells the story how the Astros used analytics to win the 2017 World Series.

Among other topics, we discuss:

  • How Ben convinced Astros GM Jeff Luhnow to open up about his methods (5:20)
  • The synergy that allowed the Astros to become one of the best at player projections (7:26)
  • How the Astros use analytics to identify undervalued pitchers (17:52)
  • A hypothesis on small baseball players, and how this relates to parenting (21:26)
  • The frontier in analytics that will keep the Astros ahead (23:20)

The book is a must read for anyone who values analytics in any sport.  To grab your copy, click here.

To listen, click on the right pointing triangle:

To listen on Apple Podcasts, click here.

Walks in baseball are way down in 2015

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Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 4.31.25 PMEric Chemi wrote an excellent piece on CNBC on how walks are way down in baseball this season.

I made a small contribution to the story, pointing out the importance of walks as a pitching statistic compared with strike outs. Still, it got me quoted in the same story as Billy Beane, Oakland’s GM and the hero of Moneyball.

Bucket list, check.

It’s a really good read. I particularly like the two visuals they made that support the story.

To read Chemi’s story and see the visuals, click here.

The curse of small sample size in Tigers bullpen stats

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Screen Shot 2015-08-12 at 8.36.52 AMThe Tigers bullpen has been a mess all season. However, there are always some small sample size flukes with pitchers that throw so few innings.

In my latest Detroit News article, I look at Bruce Rondon, a hard throwing right hander that has shown Tigers fans his best and worst this season.

The crux of the article is how humans want to tell stories about small sample size flukes. The same obsession with patterns that gives us technological marvels like smart phones also gets us in big trouble when watching sports inherent with randomness.

This might be the first sports column to quote a neuroscience book.

To read my Detroit News article on bullpen statistics, click here.