In sports, people love to categorize players by their playing style. For example, in hockey, people distinguish defensemen as offensive or defensive, or the rare all-around defensemen. In this week’s installment of My Model Monday, I look to create mathematical groupings of NHL defensemen using 2017-2018 NHL data.
Continue reading My Model Monday: Classifying NHL Defensemen
Imagine you’re the analytics director for the Cleveland Cavaliers. After the Cavs added a bunch of new players at the trade deadline, coach Tyronn Lue might come to you for advice on how best to fit them into lineups. Luckily, your team of analysts has already designed a Lineup Evaluator Tool to rate and score any five-player lineup. But that doesn’t quite get you where you want to go. You need to take in the players on the Cleveland roster and spit out a ranking of lineups. You need to get a feel for the best player and the best two-man, three-man, or four-man groupings to fit into your game plans.
You need Model 284’s Lineup Optimizer Tool.
Put in a list of NBA players, and this tool will give you a sortable, scored list of all possible lineups. Also, take a look at which individual players, pairs, threesomes, and foursomes appear the most in the top 20. For a longer explainer, look here.
In this week’s My Model Monday, I compare our 2018 NHL Season Simulation results to the current NHL futures odds to see where our model is differing from betting markets. Continue reading My Model Monday: NHL Playoff Futures
It seems like every four years when the Winter Olympics come around, curling has a moment. This year’s Pyeongchang games are no different. Curling gets a ton of love online, for reasons both ironic (its shuffleboard-on-ice aesthetic and inherent meme-ability) and non-ironic (its simple-enough rules and interesting strategy). Sure it’s a little goofy, but if you’ve found yourself getting into the sport within the past week or so, you’re not alone. Continue reading My Model Monday: Curling Win Probability Model
The title pretty much says it all, but if you don’t like the Olympics, I don’t trust you as a person. I love the Olympics. Always have and always will. There’s something about the whole production of the greatest event in sports that just gets me. I love the pageantry of the opening and closing ceremonies. I love the puff pieces about the athletes informing you how much they’ve had to struggle as they strive for the pinnacle of a sport I just learned the rules of. I love the excitement when they attain the pinnacle of that sport. I love the tears when they don’t. I love getting way too into a sport that I know nothing about, pretending I’m an expert for a few days while really having the loosest of grasps on what’s actually happening, and then completely forgetting it exists for four years. It’s just the best and if you can’t get on board, you have a serious dump in your pants.
Continue reading Freelance Friday: If You Don’t Like The Olympics You’re A Loser And Possibly A Communist
Being left-handed in the game of basketball, along with most other sports, doesn’t come with the same advantage that it does in the baseball world. At least in terms of strategy it doesn’t – but if you ask me, there are few things in this world as aesthetically pleasing as a fundamental left-handed jump shot, and I’m beyond certain CEO Marc would tell you the same thing. Perhaps I’m biased as someone that has a dominant left hand, but something about the quirkiness and funk of a lefty’s game is a thing of beauty, but unfortunately goes underappreciated by the average fan.
Continue reading Freelance Friday: The NBA’s Forgotten Lefties
Ever since the first Olympic games were recorded in 760 B.C., sports have had an important social component in society. Whether its Baseball in Japan, Soccer in England, or Hockey in Canada, it’s almost impossible to live in a major sports market without being somehow affected by the local sports. While these celebrations of competition and the strive for excellence have brought neighbors together for centuries, there is another tradition that bonds us in a way that is much stronger: the tradition of complaining about our teams. It doesn’t matter if your team is a dominant force, or a bottom-feeding afterthought; we will always find something to complain about. But is it all warranted? Surely there are teams whose suffering has afforded their fans the right to complain more than all the others. In this week’s My Model Monday, I attempt to quantify the factors that lead to this allowance of complaining for each NFL team, and rank each fan base on their comparative level of what I like to call “complain-ability.”
Continue reading My Model Monday: NFL Team Complain-Ability
Every Groundhog day I like to think that Punxsutawney Phil is essentially every one of us who has put off a long-term project too long and wakes up on the due date in a cold sweat and scrambles to finish it. Like Groundhogs day snuck up on him again and he has to wing it. This is more or less how I picture that going…. Continue reading Freelance Friday: Punxsutawney Phil