Weekly Sports Analytics News Roundup – May 9th, 2017

Football: Football Perspective asks Is Having a Great QB More Important Than Ever To Win It All? FiveThirtyEight wonders How Good (Or Bad) Does A QB Need To Be To Land A TV Job? Football Perspective looks at How Often Teams Turn Over Quarterbacks. Football Perspective publishes 2016 Snap Counts.

Baseball: FanGraphs with It Remains a Game of Constant Home Runs. Bill James on What happens to a team after they have a day off. The Hardball Times Estimates Wind Effects at SunTrust Park. FanGraphs announces The Death of the Sinker. FiveThirtyEight’s 2017 Goose-Egg Reliever Rankings Are Here. BeyondTheBoxScore examines The effect of hitting infield fly balls.

Basketball: Nylon Calculus looks at Expanded free throw splits since 1997. FiveThirtyEight thinks Draymond Green Is Better Than Ever On Defense. Nylon Calculus examines if this is LeBron’s easiest path to the NBA Finals ever. FiveThirtyEight says NBA Playoff Defense Can’t Stop The Rise Of The Pull-Up 3. Meanwhile, Nylon Calculus writes that Playoffs teams are living comfortably by the 3-pointer.

Hockey: Hockey Graphs says Stop Worrying About Shot Parity. Stories Numbers Tell on Grit. Hockey Graphs’ 2017 NHL GM Report Card – Part 2 and Part 3.

Soccer: StatsBomb on Valuing Kylian Mbappe. American Soccer Analysis writes about Shots Not Taken: Exploring the propensity of teams to shoot from good positions.

Tennis: Heavy Topspin on Albert Ramos’s Record-Setting Doubles Futility.

Lacrosse: Moneyball Lacrosse with Blaze Invert Offense.

Your Moment of R: BaseballWithR gives code to analyze at What Age Do Baseball Players Peak. Bill Petti’s rshiny version of his Interactive Spray Chart Tool with Statcast data is live. Also from Bill Petti, baseballr 0.3.2 release includes Statcast functions for grabbing all batters/pitchers over a date range.