Weekly Sports Analytics News Roundup – June 26th, 2018
Football: Football Perspective examines Tyrod Taylor and Whether Race (Still) Matters, Part I and Part II. Football Outsiders’ 2017 Defensive Personnel Analysis and Offensive Personnel Analysis.
College Football: Football Study Hall on how wind and rain affects a game (and its over/under).
Baseball: FanGraphs writes about What a Smaller Strike Zone Can Do for Pace of Play. The Hardball Times with Some Physics of Ballpark Demolition. Baseball Prospectus Feature: The Universal Strike Zone. FanGraphs finds Matt Strahm Is Quite an Opening Act. Beyond the Box Score says The 2018 Astros might be the best team in the history of modern baseball. Alan Nathan’s slides from his SABR48 talk about the Chase Field humidor. SportTechie article: Seattle Mariners Embrace Data, Tech like Rapsodo, K-Motion, Motus, TrackMan.
Basketball: Daniel Tokarz’ Shiny App that allows you to compare NBA draft curves for different teams. Nylon Calculus: Deep 3s, NBA range and college basketball. FiveThirtyEight on Which Teams Made The Biggest Gambles On NBA Draft Night?. Counting the Baskets posts Some Play by Play Numbers by Age and Height.
Soccer: American Soccer Analysis on Pressing, Defensive Lines, and What Defensive Actions Correlate with Goals. American Soccer Analysis’ Tiny Differences: How Changing Small Things Can Have Big Consequences. Fancy Stats on Why set pieces are dominating scoring so far at the World Cup. FiveThirtyEight’s Sleepers To Watch In The World Cup Knockout Rounds. Fancy Stats writes Don’t blame Lionel Messi for Argentina’s struggles. Blame the coach. FiveThirtyEight says Russia Is Not This Good — Right?
Hockey: Hockey Graphs on Comparing Scoring Talent with Empirical Bayes.
Your moment of R: Ron York introduces fcscrapR which allows you to grab commentary data, shot attempts, substitutions, cards and fouls for any match on ESPN. Keith Lyons tutorial on Using RStudio, ggplot2 and ggrepel to visualize ball in play time at the World Cup.
Conferences: Joint Statistical Meetings 2018 July 28th to August 2nd in Vancouver.