Heard Magic and Wilbon Ragging on Metrics.

[AHF]

Korver is a good example of understanding the stats. Korver has two main values on offense: (1) he spreads the floor and creates space for other players and (2) when he can get off a shot he is among the most impactful players in the league. His limitation is that he can't create a shot by himself so while you would absolutely rather have him shoot 10 times over Kobe shooting 10 times, Kobe can get his shot much more frequently than Korver can so there is a value per shot for Korver that is off the chart but a limitation on volume. What shouldn't be overlooked is the value with floor spacing as well. That was big the for the Hawks last season and you see the reverse with players like Tony Allen, Josh Smith, etc. who make things more difficult by inviting players to cheat off them.

[benhillboy]

Well Magic was dead on with his analysis bout the NBA Finals. Everything he said was right on point, right down to Lebron having to "score" more, instead of just trying to get everyone involved. Magic, on most nights, knows what the hell he is talking about. Wilborn is simply a homer. He's the opinion that you should shun, not Magic's.

True, I would never disregard Magic's opinion, he just isn't eloquent enough to be an analyst I should say. I apologize to The Point God. And Korver is the man. The space he created for Al to shoot and Jeff and Devin to penetrate was a main pillar of our attack. Edited June 21, 2013 by benhillboy

[capstone21]

Korver is a good example of understanding the stats. Korver has two main values on offense: (1) he spreads the floor and creates space for other players and (2) when he can get off a shot he is among the most impactful players in the league. His limitation is that he can't create a shot by himself so while you would absolutely rather have him shoot 10 times over Kobe shooting 10 times, Kobe can get his shot much more frequently than Korver can so there is a value per shot for Korver that is off the chart but a limitation on volume. What shouldn't be overlooked is the value with floor spacing as well. That was big the for the Hawks last season and you see the reverse with players like Tony Allen, Josh Smith, etc. who make things more difficult by inviting players to cheat off them.

Excatly ... he is spreading the floor. Korver is constantly moving around and you can't take your man off of him. He is not someone you can double off of so his value is more then coming in and hitting the 3 ... he allows others to play without being doubled by his man. On defense...yes he isn't the greatest but he still works hard...he isn't a lazy defender and I like that about him.

[Admin]

Excatly ... he is spreading the floor. Korver is constantly moving around and you can't take your man off of him. He is not someone you can double off of so his value is more then coming in and hitting the 3 ... he allows others to play without being doubled by his man. On defense...yes he isn't the greatest but he still works hard...he isn't a lazy defender and I like that about him.

The only problems with Korver are that he isn't a good defender or rebounder although he gives plenty of effort and plays defense as intelligently as he can and the other problem is that he can be completely shut down on offense as we saw in the Pacers series. He's terrific as an off the bench guy but you can't put him in a situation where he's going up against a legit defensive player or a guy who can score on him at will on the other end. With that said I really hope he comes back next year as our backup SF and is paid like a backup SF, but I'm skeptical that he won't end up back in Chicago.

[supermariowest]

To summarize what other posters have said, the only people who rag on metrics are people who (1) do not understand the metrics themselves or (2) do not understand the utility of the metrics.One of my favorite lines from Moneyball: Anti-intellectual resentment is common in all of American life and it has many diverse expressions.

[Admin]

To summarize what other posters have said, the only people who rag on metrics are people who (1) do not understand the metrics themselves or (2) do not understand the utility of the metrics.One of my favorite lines from Moneyball: Anti-intellectual resentment is common in all of American life and it has many diverse expressions.

I wonder if anyone will ever start quoting the anti-Moneyball movie "Trouble With The Curve". Analytics certainly have their place in sports but if I'm taking advice from anyone on how to build a team, it's not gonna be from Billy Beane as the A's have never been as successful as the Rays and they're in similarly small markets with small payrolls and have had vastly different levels of success.

[AHF]

Neither of them have the World Series Titles that come with being a small market fan of the great Florida Marlins!

[Admin]

Neither of them have the World Series Titles that come with being a small market fan of the great Florida Marlins!

I wouldn't exactly call the Miami area small market and their owner has shelled out big bucks several times on his teams and then he's had several years where he's gone complete cheapo. But the market in Miami can support a much higher payroll than Tampa or Oakland can. They've done as good of a job of finding talent as Tampa has though I will give them that.

[Admin]

Have you ever read "The Extra 2%" by Jonah Keri? It is about the new owners of the Devil Rays. It is real similar to Moneyball, the Rays are more focused on using tools from corporate finance and applying them to the Rays. Their measurements of playing talent are using sabermetrics (i.e. Moneyball) but they are also pricing each asset. Moneyball and Billy Beane only had half of the equation that The Extra 2% talks about and that is attaching a value to the asset instead of searching for "undervalued". I still have no idea what Moneyball meant when there were talking about "undervalued" players as they did not do any valuation. Moneyball just attempted to look at players in a different framework...that is not necessarily a good thing.

Moneyball was great to draw casual fans attention to sabermetrics, but it also gave a jaded perspective on analytics. There are not two camps for analysis as the book makes it seem like. That, and Billy Beane is vastly overrated as he really won "big" with Sandy Alderson's players for the A's.

Nope I've never read that but it sounds like it would be a good one to read. The Rays have certainly gone above and beyond what the A's did as you can't simply look for guys who are good at getting walks and not striking out and think you can build a team around that.

[TheNorthCydeRises]

No, this is the exact ignorance that Wilbon and Magic are guilty of. "A fella uses stat analysis? Clearly he's never seen a game. Take that Hollinger character for instance, while he's sitting there at Phillips Arena for more games than any if not most members on Hawksquawk combined, I don't think he lifts his head up once from looking at Excel on his laptop to even peek at a cheerleader."

That is a ridiculous example that any "stathead" could tear apart in a second by just looking over at other things such as %assisted, usage% or just something as mundane as field goal attempts to determine the volume and responsibility of the offense entrusted to each player. This is like saying that mathematicians just came up with Pi but there's no significance to it or logic behind how they reached it and are definitely no real world applications that inspired. It's just a number a guy came up with in his basement.

........Mathmaticians can also tell the difference between an apple and orange despite the fact that nothing biological grows in the deepest darkest basements of either their mom's or MIT's basement.......

You are also more likely to see selective stat bias from any "meathead" that uses the eye test than a "stathead" because the hilarity is that the latter actually go about looking at a combination of stats and that even metrics such as PER or WS are cumulative of multiple different factors. Guys such as Magic and Wilbon will tell you that because Kobe has done a more faitful impersonation of Jordan's moves, grins, fist pumps and manuerisms for 20 years that he's in a closer tier to him than Lebron based on the eye test. They also sat there flabberghasted that such scrubs as Green, Neal, Battier and Miller had any impact on the Finals.

Speaking of Hollinger . . he absolutely LOVED Josh Childress, and what he brought to the table as a player. He loved him so much, that when we lost him, he picked us to finish DEAD LAST in the East.

Under his PER statistic, Chill had high value.

But for the people like us who watched Chill on a nightly basis, knew that he got points by sometimes "cherry picking" on fast breaks, or simply putting back offensive rebounds. He couldn't create his own shot off the dribble, unless he took the ball all the way to the hole. He couldn't shoot over people, because of his low trajectory on his shot ( ala Jeff Teague ). And his defense was less to be desired.

That's how "metrics" can fool people about a player, if they really don't watch how he plays.

If you ask me who I'm going to trust about basketball players . . Hollinger or Magic . . . I'm taking Magic every single time.

[supermariowest]

I wonder if anyone will ever start quoting the anti-Moneyball movie "Trouble With The Curve". Analytics certainly have their place in sports but if I'm taking advice from anyone on how to build a team, it's not gonna be from Billy Beane as the A's have never been as successful as the Rays and they're in similarly small markets with small payrolls and have had vastly different levels of success.

I'd say probably not, but I haven't seen it. I hope to see it eventually.I'd disagree with the notion that the Rays have been more successful than the Athletics. Incidentally, Billy Beane's first season as GM of the Athletics was the same year that the Rays joined the MLB. Since then, the Athletics have made 6 playoff appearances while the Rays have made 3. In the first 10 years of their existence, the Rays only cracked 70 wins once (with exactly 70 wins in 2004). They've had winning seasons each of the past 5 years and have made it to the playoffs in 3 of those 5. From 1999 to 2006 (8 seasons), the A's averaged a little under 94 wins and cracked 100 wins twice. The A's didn't have any winning seasons from 2007 to 2011 (5 seasons), but won more than 74 games in each season.As far as playoff success goes, I suppose a case could be made for the Rays since they advanced to (but ultimately lost) the 2008 World Series. Other than that, it's been mostly playoff futility for both organizations. The terms "playoffs" and "shit show" usually go together, though.I don't think I'd go to Beane either, but the A's have definitely had more regular season success under Beane than the Rays have had over the same period of time. And, before the rest of the league caught up with the saber stuff, the A's were winning games at a very impressive clip.(...Sorry for all the baseball talk.) Edited June 21, 2013 by supermariowest

[Guest]

I will be watching the Grizzlies closely over the next few years to see how they develop with Hollinger on board.

[Admin]

Super, it is a little unfair to talk about the Rays pre-2005 as they were under different ownership than they currently are. Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman bought a controlling stake in the team in 2005 and changed their business practices. Since then, they have blown the A's out of the water in terms of performance.

Yep and they also brought over Andrew Friedman in 2005, who ironically is from Houston and is 5 days younger than me... which makes me really go WTF have I done with my life LOL. Anyway, he's a terrific young GM and really changed the culture of that team.

I will be watching the Grizzlies closely over the next few years to see how they develop with Hollinger on board.

You can count on it being heavily PER based that's for sure!

[supermariowest]

Super, it is a little unfair to talk about the Rays pre-2005 as they were under different ownership than they currently are. Stuart Sternberg and Matthew Silverman bought a controlling stake in the team in 2005 and changed their business practices. Since then, they have blown the A's out of the water in terms of performance.

This is a good point. I wouldn't say that they have blown the A's out of the water, but I think it is fair to say they have outperformed the A's. I'm planning on checking out the book you mentioned.Dolf: I'd still disagree with the notion that the A's have never been as successful as the Rays. The sustained success from 1999 to 2006 is more impressive than anything the Rays have done post-2005. This certainly could change over the next few years. Edited June 21, 2013 by supermariowest

[supermariowest]

Fair enough, it may not be as drastic as I alluded to. But I did find the book to be better than Moneyball in content, style, and substance. I was not convinced after Moneyball that Billy Beane or his practices were the cause of the A's winning. I am more inclined to believe the 2% story.

It did seem that many of the Billy Beane type of players mentioned in Moneyball didn't really pan out. It's been five or six years since I read it, so I'll have to reread it after I read the 2% story.

[MaceCase]

Speaking of Hollinger . . he absolutely LOVED Josh Childress, and what he brought to the table as a player. He loved him so much, that when we lost him, he picked us to finish DEAD LAST in the East.

Under his PER statistic, Chill had high value.

But for the people like us who watched Chill on a nightly basis, knew that he got points by sometimes "cherry picking" on fast breaks, or simply putting back offensive rebounds. He couldn't create his own shot off the dribble, unless he took the ball all the way to the hole. He couldn't shoot over people, because of his low trajectory on his shot ( ala Jeff Teague ). And his defense was less to be desired.

That's how "metrics" can fool people about a player, if they really don't watch how he plays.

If you ask me who I'm going to trust about basketball players . . Hollinger or Magic . . . I'm taking Magic every single time.

He also didn't like Rudy Gay but to the people who watched him they thought he was an elite scorer that could "create his own shot" and "make shots from midrange". The Grizzlies only went on to win a franchise record amount of wins and make the WCF for the first time without Gay and a worse package of assets than the Hawks got for Joe Johnson *awaits spin on how a 32 year old Tayshaun Prince, 3rd PF on the depth chart, deep bench fodder SF and 2nd rounder were actually superior because eyez or how even though they were better without him and never made it as far with him, Gay would of been the difference for them against the Spurs*

Edited June 21, 2013 by MaceCase

[Admin]

This is a good point. I wouldn't say that they have blown the A's out of the water, but I think it is fair to say they have outperformed the A's. I'm planning on checking out the book you mentioned.Dolf: I'd still disagree with the notion that the A's have never been as successful as the Rays. The sustained success from 1999 to 2006 is more impressive than anything the Rays have done post-2005. This certainly could change over the next few years.

They've had roughly the same level of "success" that the Hawks have had. Would you call a run of good, but not great, regular seasons and then an annual disappointing playoff run successful though? Because that's what these 2 teams have in common. In my eyes getting to the World Series, even once, trumps getting bounced out of the playoffs every year without reaching the series.

[Admin]

It did seem that many of the Billy Beane type of players mentioned in Moneyball didn't really pan out. It's been five or six years since I read it, so I'll have to reread it after I read the 2% story.

Without going and looking up the stats I'd say that Nick Swisher has probably had the best career of the moneyball players. He's been a pretty good outfielder and has been an on base machine and has hit a lot of timely HR's in his career.

[supermariowest]

They've had roughly the same level of "success" that the Hawks have had. Would you call a run of good, but not great, regular seasons and then an annual disappointing playoff run successful though? Because that's what these 2 teams have in common. In my eyes getting to the World Series, even once, trumps getting bounced out of the playoffs every year without reaching the series.

I'm looking at just the regular season. This must wreak of convenience (and it is convenient), but Beane's approach was more about success over a large number of games. In a 5 or 7 game series, anything can happen (more on this below). I'd say 95+ wins would constitute a great season and the Athletics did that three times in the window I mentioned. In fairness, I should point out that the Rays have also done this a couple of times.I think we're defining (or at least looking at) success differently, and that's OK, but it means that we'd just go back and forth on this forever. I do understand the point you are making, though. And I agree with the Swisher comment.Suppose team A advances to the playoffs and assume the probability of team A beating its opponent in a single game is 55% and that game outcomes are independent. I'm ignoring home/road splits and perhaps a slew of other important variables, but I still think stuff like this can be telling.Probability that team A wins a 5 game series: 0.593Probability that team A wins a 7 game series: 0.608So, in each case, there is about a 40% chance that the inferior team wins the series.

[Admin]

I'm looking at just the regular season. This must wreak of convenience (and it is convenient), but Beane's approach was more about success over a large number of games. In a 5 or 7 game series, anything can happen (more on this below). I'd say 95+ wins would constitute a great season and the Athletics did that three times in the window I mentioned. In fairness, I should point out that the Rays have also done this a couple of times.I think we're defining (or at least looking at) success differently, and that's OK, but it means that we'd just go back and forth on this forever. I do understand the point you are making, though. And I agree with the Swisher comment.Suppose team A advances to the playoffs and assume the probability of team A beating its opponent in a single game is 55% and that game outcomes are independent. I'm ignoring home/road splits and perhaps a slew of other important variables, but I still think stuff like this can be telling.Probability that team A wins a 5 game series: 0.593Probability that team A wins a 7 game series: 0.608So, in each case, there is about a 40% chance that the inferior team wins the series.

Honestly the moneyball principle isn't what got the A's all those wins though. It was terrific drafting and developing of their young pitchers as they had some very, very talented pitchers there for a while. But the offense was always boom or bust and in the playoffs it was mostly bust because as the Yankees have proven you can't win consistently relying on high on base percentage guys and timely HR's as that just doesn't win in the postseason. The A's relied on getting guys on base for their power guys and far too often the Giambi's and their other power hitters would disappoint and they'd blow some amazing pitching performances.

The Rays on the other hand built their team with not quite as good of pitching but still pretty darn good and they combined that with excellent defensive players and a lot of speed. To me that is the better way to build a ball club and I think they've had more success, using my definition of getting farther in the playoffs, than the A's have.

Certainly you make a good point about the inferior / lower seeded team having a good shot at winning a series and unfortunately for the A's most of their playoff ousts came at the hands of the much higher paid and more talented Yankees, but they did always give the Yankees a tough fight.