A gentleman named Jordan Murphy made the sports talk show rounds last week wearing the mantle of "Aurora movie theater shooting survivor" who is now "trying out for the NFL." It's NFL combine season, which is the fifth most popular American sport behind NFL playoffs, NFL regular season, NFL draft and NFL pre-season.
This articulate and dignified young Colorado University graduate is a "survivor"of the 2012 shooting (in which a crazed gunman opened fire randomly during a midnight screening of a Batman movie, killing 12 human beings and wounding 70 others) in the sense that he was in the theater at the time. He was not shot or otherwise injured.
He had just completed his freshman year in college at the time of the attack. This tidbit about his life would have been available for discussion during basically his entire college football career, in which he played fullback and special teams. He never carried the ball for the Buffaloes. He was not a star. The position he plays is an anachronism in pro football.
Between a Pipe Dream and a Delusion
In other words, Jordan Murphy's combine attendance and NFL quest falls somewhere between a pipe dream and a delusion, depending on his mindset. He has less chance of being drafted than the best player in the Lingerie Football League.
Jordan seems like an earnest young man, but his story is not news. He isn't a shooting victim. The shooting had nothing to do with his football career. The story could have been told anytime in the previous three-and-a-half years. His presence at the combine is form without function.
Wheat and Chaff of Sports Talk Radio
So why was he all over sports talk radio last week? Because the number one bias of news media is not a left or right bias. The number one bias is a news bias. (Don't believe it? Explain two years of non-stop presidential race coverage.) With 24-hour sports talk on at least five national networks, there can't possibly be enough wheat to dismiss the chaff. So anything involving the NFL, a sweet-if-tortured narrative and a good interview subject is worth dedicating a segment to, especially during the dead sports period prior to March Madness, with baseball and football in hiatus and the NBA and NHL still slogging through their terminally meaningless pre-post-season exhibition calendars.
Certainly many of the interviewers are insufficiently self-aware to realize that Jordan Murphy's story doesn't hold together. After all, they're covering the combine, for god sakes. There are, however, still plenty of sports talk hosts, producers and executives who know better, but still gladly put Jordan Murphy on the air and coo over his pluck and strength of character. It's dreck -- but they can't help themselves.
They're biased -- biased in favor of news.
27 February 2016
25 February 2016
Why the Projection Systems Can't Get Bryce Harper Right
"History will little note, nor long remember, what we say here." --President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg battlefield, considered the worst prediction in human history.
The futility of predicting the future in baseball has been amply documented and only weakly lamented. Bless their hearts, the various Sabermetric websites continue to offer the old college try, annually tweaking their systems to finer and finer levels of mediocrity. Fangraphs, Bill James, Baseball Prospectus, Tom Tango and The Hardball Times all provide projections whose mathematical formulas do a 5% better job than you would making educated guesses.
As I've mentioned before, understanding a few simple rules will give you all the tools you need to pull even with, or even out-guess, the projections. The reason is that these systems are prisoners of their calculations, whereas you know something or two about the players.
Take Bryce Harper, who flummoxes PECOTA, ZIPS, Steamer, Marcel, Bill James and all the rest. Harper was a young phenom who flashed wads of unrefined brilliance in his first three seasons but also got himself injured with regularity because of his over-exuberance. Then last year, having learned how to stay on the field and harness his innate power, he blasted 42 homers and got aboard safely at a 46% clip, en route to the MVP.
What the projections systems see is a good player who scuffled along for three seasons batting .270 with 20 home runs before out-performing himself in 2015. Consequently, they are regressing him to the mean. Here is PECOTA's projection of Harper:
That's generally the way to treat players, but this is Bryce Freakin' Harper. When it crunches the numbers and spits out its projection, PECOTA doesn't know Bryce Harper from Valerie Harper. It's never seen this prodigy play. It thinks he's just a guy whose pants were on fire last season.
You know better. You know that's the Harper we've been waiting for, and that putting it all together at 22 makes him a superstar not in spite of three previous seasons of .270 and 20 home runs but because of what we saw during them.
I'll bet my Pope Francis Fan Club membership that Harper posts a TAv north of .350 this season and, if he stays upright, hands at least another eight wins to the Nationals. It may not work out that way, but that's what PECOTA would say is a reasonable 50% percentile projection if it had the ability to discern the man behind the statistics.
It doesn't, as none of the projections systems do, which is one of the reasons they aren't of much use.
The futility of predicting the future in baseball has been amply documented and only weakly lamented. Bless their hearts, the various Sabermetric websites continue to offer the old college try, annually tweaking their systems to finer and finer levels of mediocrity. Fangraphs, Bill James, Baseball Prospectus, Tom Tango and The Hardball Times all provide projections whose mathematical formulas do a 5% better job than you would making educated guesses.
As I've mentioned before, understanding a few simple rules will give you all the tools you need to pull even with, or even out-guess, the projections. The reason is that these systems are prisoners of their calculations, whereas you know something or two about the players.
Take Bryce Harper, who flummoxes PECOTA, ZIPS, Steamer, Marcel, Bill James and all the rest. Harper was a young phenom who flashed wads of unrefined brilliance in his first three seasons but also got himself injured with regularity because of his over-exuberance. Then last year, having learned how to stay on the field and harness his innate power, he blasted 42 homers and got aboard safely at a 46% clip, en route to the MVP.
What the projections systems see is a good player who scuffled along for three seasons batting .270 with 20 home runs before out-performing himself in 2015. Consequently, they are regressing him to the mean. Here is PECOTA's projection of Harper:
2015 (Actual)
|
22
|
.386
|
11.2
|
2016 (Projected)
|
23
|
.313
|
5.1
|
2017 (Projected)
|
24
|
.322
|
5.5
|
(That's age, True Average and WAR listed in the three columns above.)
That's generally the way to treat players, but this is Bryce Freakin' Harper. When it crunches the numbers and spits out its projection, PECOTA doesn't know Bryce Harper from Valerie Harper. It's never seen this prodigy play. It thinks he's just a guy whose pants were on fire last season.
You know better. You know that's the Harper we've been waiting for, and that putting it all together at 22 makes him a superstar not in spite of three previous seasons of .270 and 20 home runs but because of what we saw during them.
I'll bet my Pope Francis Fan Club membership that Harper posts a TAv north of .350 this season and, if he stays upright, hands at least another eight wins to the Nationals. It may not work out that way, but that's what PECOTA would say is a reasonable 50% percentile projection if it had the ability to discern the man behind the statistics.
It doesn't, as none of the projections systems do, which is one of the reasons they aren't of much use.
23 February 2016
The Top 100 Athletes of the Century
I was listening to a discussion of ESPN's Sports Century list of the greatest North American athletes of the 20th century. The names generally won't surprise you -- Jordan, Ruth, Ali, Jim Brown, Gretzky, Owens, Thorpe, Mays, Nicklaus, Didriksen.
(Aside -- I've been amazed over the years at the whitewashing [no pun intended] of Muhammad Ali's career; he was an innovative boxer and personality, and I tended to root for him, but I don't think an objective review of his career puts him in the top 30 of the century's athletes. And I have no idea what to do with Babe Didriksen, but I doubt anyone else does, and they just wanted to get a woman into the top 10.)
After Ruth and Mays, Aaron (14), Jackie Robinson (15), Williams (16), Cobb (20), DiMaggio (22), Gehrig (34), Mantle (37), Koufax (42) round out the top 50. Honus Wager and Rogers Hornsby are in the 80s, presumably because no one voting saw them play.
But the point here isn't to quibble about the list, particularly when it doesn't appear anyone defined "athlete;" it's to marvel at how unbelievably long ago the list was created. Consider that the following careers either hadn't started or were in their infancies at the time: Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams, Jeff Gordon, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Sidney Crosby, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. It also wouldn't include the second half of Barry Bonds' career and the marvel that was.
...And I'm sure I've left neglected someone. (Roger Federer would be on the list if Switzerland were in North America.)
Consider that: Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps didn't make the cut.
If we were making a list of the top 100 athletes of the 100 years between 1916 and today, some of those names would cruise to the top. Woods revolutionized a sport and dominated it like no other. Michael Phelps is, by a wide margin, the most decorated Olympian ever. Serena Williams might be the greatest female tennis player of all time. Lance Armstrong won more of his sport's championships than anyone in history. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are Mt. Rushmore quarterbacks. LeBron James is a phenomenon hitherto unwitnessed in sports.
Where does that leave the lowly baseball players? I'm pretty sure none but Bonds could even sniff the list, and that's only if his chemical adventures are disregarded. Maybe Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and their generation can redeem America's Pastime.
For me, the epiphany related to the compilation of this list is how incredibly much has transpired in sports since the turn of the millennium, which hadn't previously felt so long ago. I guess time flies when the Royals win the World Series.
(Aside -- I've been amazed over the years at the whitewashing [no pun intended] of Muhammad Ali's career; he was an innovative boxer and personality, and I tended to root for him, but I don't think an objective review of his career puts him in the top 30 of the century's athletes. And I have no idea what to do with Babe Didriksen, but I doubt anyone else does, and they just wanted to get a woman into the top 10.)
After Ruth and Mays, Aaron (14), Jackie Robinson (15), Williams (16), Cobb (20), DiMaggio (22), Gehrig (34), Mantle (37), Koufax (42) round out the top 50. Honus Wager and Rogers Hornsby are in the 80s, presumably because no one voting saw them play.
But the point here isn't to quibble about the list, particularly when it doesn't appear anyone defined "athlete;" it's to marvel at how unbelievably long ago the list was created. Consider that the following careers either hadn't started or were in their infancies at the time: Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams, Jeff Gordon, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Sidney Crosby, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. It also wouldn't include the second half of Barry Bonds' career and the marvel that was.
...And I'm sure I've left neglected someone. (Roger Federer would be on the list if Switzerland were in North America.)
Consider that: Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps didn't make the cut.
If we were making a list of the top 100 athletes of the 100 years between 1916 and today, some of those names would cruise to the top. Woods revolutionized a sport and dominated it like no other. Michael Phelps is, by a wide margin, the most decorated Olympian ever. Serena Williams might be the greatest female tennis player of all time. Lance Armstrong won more of his sport's championships than anyone in history. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are Mt. Rushmore quarterbacks. LeBron James is a phenomenon hitherto unwitnessed in sports.
Where does that leave the lowly baseball players? I'm pretty sure none but Bonds could even sniff the list, and that's only if his chemical adventures are disregarded. Maybe Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and their generation can redeem America's Pastime.
For me, the epiphany related to the compilation of this list is how incredibly much has transpired in sports since the turn of the millennium, which hadn't previously felt so long ago. I guess time flies when the Royals win the World Series.
21 February 2016
The 2016 MLB Standings -- Not!
For whatever it's worth -- which is to say, for kicks and giggles, here are Baseball Prospectus's projected standings for 2016.
There isn't much worth noting here, particular since these projections are little better than guesses. But it is interesting how little the projection system credits Arizona's hot stove spending spree, despite promising Zack Greinke an amount equal to 2% of the state's 2015 budget.
You might also observe how little respect BP gives to the team with both the best player in baseball and the guy who's had the best career up to now, slating Anaheim for 87 losses. It also mysteriously loves the Rays and Indians, projecting them for more wins than the Mets, and it hates the 100-win Cardinals team (minus Jason Heyward and John Lackey but plus Adam Wainwright), bumping them down to basically break-even.
Finally, you've probably noticed that the World Champion Kansas City Royals are pegged for last place in the AL Central, with an inferior record to the Milwaukee Brewers, despite the return of almost exactly the same roster. Here's something that is worth noting: BP's projection system has underestimated KC's win total by 44 games the last three years.
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