Opinion: NBA Should Stop Counting Full Court Shots against a Player’s Field Goal Percentage
For my first Paraball Notes opinion, I argue why the NBA should stop counting full court shots against players' field goal percentages, analogous to how the MLB does not count sacrifice bunts or sacrifice flies against batters' batting averages.
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MLB’s Best Defenses, Most Athletic Defenses, and Most Intelligent Defenses
Modern defensive metrics vary significantly in their approach to evaluating fielders. In essence, Fangraphs’ dWAR, which I’ll refer to as fdWAR, is a measure of athleticism, whereas Baseball Reference’s dWAR (let’s call this bdWAR) is a measure of game impact, including a team’s positioning.
In this post I’ll take a look at how the 30 MLB teams ranked in each of bdWAR (overall defensive performance), fdWAR (athleticism), and the difference between bdWAR and fdWAR (positioning value) for the 2023 season.
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Measuring Aaron Judge’s True Offensive Value
What are some of the hidden ways in which a superstar hitter helps his team?
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How Can Hovland Improve His Game?
Norwegian golfer Viktor Hovland had his breakout season last year, clinching victories at the Memorial Tournament, the BMW Championship, and the Tour Championship, while also playing a pivotal role in the European team's triumph at the Ryder Cup.
Where should he improve his game to make a run at the prestigious title of the PGA Tour’s top golfer?
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Do Baseball Players Perform Better in Their Walk Years?
I recently came across an article featured on The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), originally posted in the 2006 Baseball Research Journal, about performance in a player’s walk year, which refers to the final year of a player's contract before they become eligible for free agency. As stated by the article, “conventional wisdom would say they do perform better in the year before they become free agents, at least according to the stereotype of the greedy player, who will put out extra effort only when he will be rewarded financially. Traditional economic theory agrees. Like all rational economic actors, baseball players should produce more of a product when the going price rises.”
The author, however, found that baseball players do not give extra effort that results in an outperformance of their career numbers in their walk years.
Does the same conclusion hold true today?
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The Super Bowl Overtime Cointoss: Should the 49ers Have Deferred?
Super Bowl LVIII certainly did not disappoint. The big game set the record for average Super Bowl viewership at 123.7m and included a thrilling overtime period. After winning the coin toss in overtime, the 49ers elected to take the ball. They kicked a field goal and watched Mahomes do his thing - another game winning touchdown drive. What was the right decision for the 49ers - electing to kick or receive?
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How Good Was Derek Jeter Defensively?
Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter came only one vote shy of a unanimous Hall of Fame selection in 2020. At the end of his 20-year career, Jeter found himself 6th on the all-time hits list and 20th on the all-time oWAR (Offensive Wins Above Replacement) leaderboard, leaving little doubt that the one voter who snubbed him did so either because of a grudge or due to his perception of Jeter’s defense.
In this post, I’ll take a look at how the advanced defensive metrics graded Jeter throughout his career. Furthermore, I will improve upon the metrics by adding a level of complexity: how the strikeout rate of Jeter’s pitching staffs impacted the number of defensive chances he had.
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Can Hamilton End Ferrari’s Drought?
Seven-time World Driver Champion Lewis Hamilton announced his move from Mercedes to Ferrari for the 2025 season. With that, Hamilton has a unique opportunity to both break the tie with Michael Schumacher for the most titles and end Ferrari’s 15 year title drought.
What is the probability for Hamilton and Ferrari to achieve success together?
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Comparing Draft Pick Value in the NFL, NBA, and MLB
As the MLB off-season nears an end and the NFL season approaches its climax, I’ve read some really informative analyses calculating and discussing the relative value of draft picks in each sport.
In this post I’ll combine those analyses to compare draft value across the three largest US sports.
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Super Bowl Preview: The Chiefs’ Path to Putting Up Points
Super Bowl LVIII is nine days away, featuring the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and the NFC number one seed San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs enter the game coming off a dominant Wild Card Round win over Miami, a close call in the Divisional Round against Buffalo, and a convincing performance in the AFC Championship Game against top seeded Baltimore. The 49ers roll into the big game after narrowly escaping the Packers in the Divisional Round and then just edging out the Lions in the NFC Championship Game.
In this analysis I’ll take a closer look at the recent performances of the Chiefs and 49ers to see which combinations of play type and location should be preferred and targeted by Patrick Mahomes and company.
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Quantifying Momentum in the NFL
Sunday’s NFC championship game between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers was a roller coaster ride. The Lions seized a 17 point lead by halftime, only to see the 49ers storm back and win the game 34-31. In the second half, the Lions turned the ball over on downs twice after going for 4th and 2 at the SF 28 yard line and 4th and 3 at the SF 30 yard line. Each of those failed plays appeared to energize the Santa Clara crowd and help propel the home team to the Super Bowl.
Watching the game had me thinking: can we quantify momentum in the NFL?
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How Has Sinner’s Game Improved So Quickly?
22-year-old Jannik Sinner won his first Grand Slam title on Sunday, defeating Daniil Medvedev in a thrilling 5-setter, coming back from down two sets to love. Sinner handily beat 24-time Grand Slam champion and world number one Novak Djokovic in four sets in the semi-finals. Last year, Sinner only made it to the fourth round in the Australia Open. What has Sinner done to improve?
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The Trend in $/WAR for Free Agents
Ben Clemens provided a detailed breakdown of the amount teams paid per WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in free agency between 2018 and 2022. In this analysis, I will expand upon his findings by incorporating data from the 2023 and 2024 free agency periods to examine the broader trend.
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Introducing Pitching Stat LBAbip
BAbip, batting average on balls in play, serves as a valuable statistic for gauging pitchers' luck in the frequency of balls in play (excluding homeruns) that lead to base hits. Conventionally, a pitcher’s BAbip is compared to the league average BAbip when assessing how lucky or unlucky a pitcher has been. In this analysis, I’ll introduce a more sophisticated point of comparison: location-based batting average on balls in play (LBAbip). I will use LBAbip to identify pitchers who are likely to regress to the mean in 2024.
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Free Agent Signings: Should You Sign Quickly or Hold Out for More?
Whether a free agent is looking for a shorter term deal with high average annual value (AAV) or a longer term deal with a larger overall guarantee, should he be looking to sign a deal in November or December, early in the offseason, or should he wait until January or February, as spring training approaches?
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Mariano Rivera: Is He the Greatest Pitcher of All Time?
Mariano Rivera, the only unanimous inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, is widely recognized as the greatest relief pitcher of all-time and solidly in the conversation for greatest pitcher overall. But how different from the rest was he really?
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How to Stop The Celtics?
The Boston Celtics are off to an incredible start. They are 18-0 at home, with the best record in the NBA. According to the Simple Rating System, which takes into account both point differential and strength of schedule, the Celtics are the best basketball team since the 2016-17 Warriors, who had each of Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green in their primes.
In fact, the Celtics don’t have any glaring weaknesses. In this analysis, I will look at the team on an individual player level, to find weaknesses that defenses can exploit to beat the Celtics.
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Using Predictive wOBA To Predict 2024 Batting Performance
In a previous post, I proved via correlation that Predictive wOBA (including all batted balls, walks, strikeouts, and hit-by-pitches), is better at predicting Next Season wOBA than both wOBA and xwWOBA. I also showed how a mean-regression technique, resulting in Modified Predictive wOBA, strengthened the model’s predictive power even further.
In this post, I’ll use Modified Predictive wOBA to project performances in the coming baseball season and compare them to Steamer’s 2024 projections.
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What’s The Better Value To a Team: Long-Term Contracts to Elite Hitters or Elite Pitchers?
2024’s free agency started with a bang as the Los Angeles Dodgers signed two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year deal, followed by signing Ohtani’s Japanese countryman Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year deal.
As the remaining free agents reach deals over the coming weeks, I will take a look a what the relative value of signing an elite hitter to a long-term contract is versus the relative value of signing an elite starting pitcher to a long-term contract.
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How Many Wins Was the “Tush Push” Worth in 2023?
At the start of the season, I discussed how the “tush push” had enabled the Eagles to go for 4th and short situations 2.4x as frequently as the average NFL team. In this post, I’ll analyze how each team performed in short yardage situations and approximate how many wins the tush push was worth to the Eagles in 2023.
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