Weekly Sports Analytics News Roundup – February 5th, 2019
Football: Josh Hermsmeyer writes The Secret To The Rams’ Blocking Success Isn’t The Linemen. It’s Sean McVay. Football Perspective says Super Bowl LIII Was Even Lower-Scoring Than You Think. FiveThirtyEight ponders Where Did All The Lopsided Super Bowls Go? Football Outsiders’ Super Bowl LIII DVOA/Quick Reads. The Sports Information Solutions blog writes that the QB sneak is the most underutilized play in football. FiveThirtyEight says The Patriots Dynasty Just Won’t Die while The Rams Really Made A Mess Of This. Football Perspective points out Sean McVay Continues The Trend of Second-Year Coaches Making the Super Bowl.
College Football: Football Study Hall Revisits the 2007 college football season with advanced box scores. Bill Connelly’s 2019 returning production rankings.
Baseball: FanGraphs wonders Is This a Fun Offseason? Baseball Prospectus’ DRC+: Updates and Improvements. Hareeb al-Saq’s post on how DRC+ value correlates to wins. Bill James on Converting Win Shares Into Winning Percentages. Beyond the Box Score examines Which hitters are swinging at the wrong pitches. The Harvard Sports Analysis Collective analyzes Tommy John Surgery: Does Persistence have a Price? Beyond the Box Score declares Starting catchers are disappearing. Steven Goldleaf piece on Distinguishing the SHEEP from the GOAT. FanGraphs’ 2019 SABR Analytics Awards: Voting Now Open! Driveline Baseball’s blog post looks at high-spin fastballs and ball axis, then at the complex nature of spin, axis, and movement.
Basketball: Justin Jacobs’ blog posts on Quantifying the Stop and For the Love of 3: Columbia to Houston via China, Angola and Iowa. Nylon Calculus on The Rockets’ consistent 3-point threat. FiveThirtyEight on How The Milwaukee Bucks Brought Their Offense Into The 21st Century.
College Basketball: Luke Benz investigates whether Arizona State’s Curtain of Distraction Works. Jordan Sperber’s latest podcast.
Soccer: Philly.com article: U.S. Soccer brings analytics into picking players for national teams. StatsBomb: Newly Promoted Wolves Stake Their European Claim. American Soccer Analysis on Machine Learning the Crew. Garry Gelade’s latest blog post looks at possession sequences. Bill Reno’s new goalkeeping stat, Goals Saved Above Replacement.
Tennis: Heavy Topspin Unmixes the Gender Gap in Mixed Doubles. Heavy Topspin on Picking Favorites With Better Davis Cup Rankings.
Check out these Pythons: Austin Rochford has recreated Total Baseball/Baseball Reference’s park adjustment factors in Python in a Jupyter notebook.
Your moment of R: BaseballWithR’s tutorial on Getting Retrosheet Data / Clutch Home Runs. Sarah Mallepalle
has more pass_and_game_data.csv updated on the nextgenscrapy GitHub, and now includes pass location data for all 2018 postseason pass charts available on NextGenStats.
Conferences: The OptaPro Soccer Analytics Forum is February 6th in London.