3 ms·

I actually think the opposite: Sports is full of stats geeks. The whole essence of sports is statistical: Who gets how many points? Who runs faster? Who throws

by chasing 13y ago

I actually think the opposite: Sports is full of stats geeks. The whole essence of sports is statistical: Who gets how many points? Who runs faster? Who throws faster? Who's taller? Heavier? Who's highest ranked? Stories glue all of this together, but sports = stats.

mjn 13y ago
I think of that as more akin to how political pundits use polls: they cite numbers, but they object to the use of statistics as an analytical tool to tie them together. The Moneyball approach in baseball was hugely controversial, as were (are?) sabermetricians like Silver trying to push predictive statistics like VORP and FIP over the more traditional descriptive statistics. Perhaps more to the point, also to challenge traditional narratives (not that different from the political horse-race narratives) of "momentum" and "choking" and "playoff runs" with statistical analysis. The above-cited Joe Morgan (ESPN commentator 1990-2010) was a famous example of ranting on air constantly about this kind of thing. One of his more notorious comments was that on-base percentage (OBP) is a stupid statistic because he doesn't like people "clogging up the basepaths". Perhaps that genre of ESPN commentator is finally on the way out.
- icelancer 13y ago
  >Perhaps that genre of ESPN commentator is finally on the way out. There is room for both, IMO. The 40+ year old crowd are largely comprised of people who are "done learning things" (a quote my father actually told me when I told him about my baseball research), so you need to have the Joe Morgans of the world. But since all of the winning teams in baseball rely on an analytical approach, it's never been more obvious that nerds dominate the level of the sport where decisions are made. And commentators are shifting as a result of that, since it's just natural. But you do need both, often because the people in the 2nd group tend to have worse social/presentation skills than the individuals in the 1st group. No slight intended (I belong mostly in the 2nd group, for god's sake), but it is not an unfair generalization.

by chasing 13y ago

mjn 13y ago

I think of that as more akin to how political pundits use polls: they cite numbers, but they object to the use of statistics as an analytical tool to tie them together. The Moneyball approach in baseball was hugely controversial, as were (are?) sabermetricians like Silver trying to push predictive statistics like VORP and FIP over the more traditional descriptive statistics. Perhaps more to the point, also to challenge traditional narratives (not that different from the political horse-race narratives) of "momentum" and "choking" and "playoff runs" with statistical analysis. The above-cited Joe Morgan (ESPN commentator 1990-2010) was a famous example of ranting on air constantly about this kind of thing. One of his more notorious comments was that on-base percentage (OBP) is a stupid statistic because he doesn't like people "clogging up the basepaths". Perhaps that genre of ESPN commentator is finally on the way out.

icelancer 13y ago
>Perhaps that genre of ESPN commentator is finally on the way out. There is room for both, IMO. The 40+ year old crowd are largely comprised of people who are "done learning things" (a quote my father actually told me when I told him about my baseball research), so you need to have the Joe Morgans of the world. But since all of the winning teams in baseball rely on an analytical approach, it's never been more obvious that nerds dominate the level of the sport where decisions are made. And commentators are shifting as a result of that, since it's just natural. But you do need both, often because the people in the 2nd group tend to have worse social/presentation skills than the individuals in the 1st group. No slight intended (I belong mostly in the 2nd group, for god's sake), but it is not an unfair generalization.