Weekly Sports Analytics News Roundup – January 9th, 2018
Football: Michael Lopez and Derrick Yam’s paper on Quantifying the causal effects of conservative fourth down decision making in the NFL. MassLive.com article on Sean Harrington’s role with the New England Patriots. Football Perspective’s 2017 Team Efficiency Ratings: The Saints Were The NFL’s Best Team. FiveThirtyEight: 12 NFL Playoff Teams Are Enough, Thank You.
College Football: FiveThirtyEight says Nick Saban’s Alabama Has Reached A New Stratosphere.
Baseball: FanGraphs finds MLB Teams Have Learned to Wait on Free Agents. Walk Like a Sabermetrician examines Run Distribution and W%, 2017. Baseball Prospectus’ Baseball Therapy: Why The Shift Persists. FanGraphs details The Status of the Scouts vs. Stats Debate. Bill James Online’s piece on Hall of Fame Metric Similarity Scores. FanGraphs asks Have We Passed Peak Tommy John? Bill James starts a series looking at the best second baseman of all time.
Basketball: Tom Worville’s brief tutorial shows how you can use the Hoopsville package to create custom video playlists on NBA.com. Russell Goldenberg analyzes the NBA Last Two Minute Report. Nylon Calculus Defines and calculates luck-adjusted ratings for the NBA. NBA Math Analyzes the Impact of Pass Volume and Quality on Recent NBA Offenses. NBA Math’s Coach Spins’ Clipboard: Offensive Glass Value, Safe Attackers, Hassan Whiteside Biting and more.
College Basketball: The Yale Undergraduate Sports Analytics Group’s Mid Season Assist Network Report.
Soccer: Article from @Soccermatics talking about the success of his model as a betting tool and the role of luck in that success. StatsBomb on La Liga At the Break.
Hockey: HockeyGraphs’ 2018 NHL Trade Value Rankings. Neil Greenberg writes that Emphasis on slashing penalties isn’t the only reason scoring is up in the NHL. HockeyGraph’s Goal Scorer Cluster Analysis.
Lacrosse: Moneyball Lacrosse predicts Toronto Rock’s Unselfishness Due for Payoff.
Tennis: Tennis Hackathon (From AO to AI: Predicting How Points End in Tennis) online.
Your moment of R: BaseballWithR offers R code to make Hit Predictions from Statcast Data.
Conferences: OptaPro Soccer Analytics Event in Philadelphia on January 17th. SportCon in Minneapolis on February 2nd.