Bill James’s remarks on the BCS are making all sorts of rounds on the internets, and when you do what I do it’s awfully hard not to pay attention to whatever Bill writes. This particular subject is important to me because I find the process of using statistical rankings to rank sports teams fascinating (in a variety of sports).
I think Bill is mostly spot on. One area I strongly disagree with involves getting Congress involved. As much as the NCAA bugs me on all sorts of levels, it hardly seems like Congress is likely to improve anything it touches, especially something like this. He is however bang on the money when he talks about the “goals of the method.” This is really critical as I will demonstrate. Whether we want to strictly evaluate the quality of teams or whether we want to reward teams for success, the end results could have significant differences. [Read more →]
A sincere and warm congrats to sabermetric fellow traveler Tommy Tango on his new consulting gig with the Seattle Mariners. Tommy’s first set of moves will be to replace Jim Presley at third with Edgar Martinez, install Ken Phelps as the fulltime DH, and use their first round draft pick on High School superprospect Ken Griffey Jr.
Seriously, good luck on your new endeavor Tom and don’t let the man get you down. The Mariners got one of (if not the) best at what we do.
There are still 100 teams participating in World Cup qualifying, 31 one of which will join the hosts for the big show in South Africa in 2010. But who really still has a shot to go? And who really should already be making their hotel reservations? Which of the big guns are in trouble? Which of the minnows still have a chance?
When answering those sorts of questions, there’s three aspects to it: what results have already occurred, how good are the remaining teams relative to one another, and what are the remaining schedules and qualification criteria for the various teams. For a while now I’ve been doing rankings for the International Soccer teams based entirely on their results. They work well but aren’t perfect (it’s impossible to be). Using these rankings, I could then simulate the remaining games a bunch of times and keep track of who qualified each time. [Read more →]
Hi folks (if there’s anyone still there). I’m back after a long layoff. I could explain things further, but suffice it to say, life happens.
But I’m back and will be posting more regularly (I hope).
One thing to note is that the site will probably shift a little bit more in the soccer/other stuff direction for a bit as whatever statistical stuff I’m doing right now tends to be more in that area. I have opinions on Homer Bailey and the Hall of Fame like anyone else, but that’s all they really are and you can get those from anybody.
I tell you, I don’t understand my fellow men sometimes. Such peculiar behavior.
Professional sideline eye candy Erin Andrews seems to be causing a stir yet again. I think what’s happened here is that sideline reporters are supposed to be “attractive” and Erin is considerably above that bar. And so folks like Rick Sutcliffe kind of lose themselves for a bit over her.
Most recently a Chicago columnist named Mike Nadel waxed poetic about Miss Andrews’ performance of her duties at Wrigley Field (without the good sense to actually post a pic, a mistake you’ll see I did not repeat). Then the folks on BTF launched into a discussion as to whether the above outfit being worn by Miss Andrews qualified as “whorish” or merely “slutty” or neither. [Read more →]
A sincere and warm congrats to sabermetric fellow traveler Tommy Tango on his 
Happy Birthday to my big sister! We’ll get together when you get back.
