Mr. Inaz, etc. may have been on to something

by Cy Schourek on Feb 15, 2009 7:40 PM EST

Caveat Reader: I haven't finished this entire article yet on Shane Battier in the NYTimes, but it looks pretty cool. It reminds me a lot of their article on Mike Leach over at Texas Tech when it talks about trends in sports that are just...about...to blow up.

So with that ahead, I stumbled into this article on Shane Battier in the NYT about how he doesn't rack up the traditional stats, but somehow keeps on ending up on winning teams. I titled this the way I did because it kind of seems like a long-form entry in the idea of what JInaz put on his blog.

The article is long, but very, very, interesting.

That's what she said.
It goes into the whole "finding new statistics" thing that we're all (read: Slyde) trying to do on this site.
It makes me wonder if there is some sort of qualification that can be done with leadership and team chemistry.
As a huge proponent of the Gomes signing, I'm optimistic that this can shine some light on that signing in the next 6 pages.
It may amuse you to find out that I actually write really good papers, but I just can't put my thoughts into words when it comes to baseball.

OK, now written with sincerity.

This kind of blows up the whole "stats vs. scouting" dichotomy if statistics can be used to show how the "little things" matter. If Michael Lewis is right, and Shane Battier actually CAN help his team by doing these little things, and these little things can be statistically evaluated, then there is a clear winner.

HOWEVER, this kind of statistical analysis relies on scouting. Someone needs to look at out-of-zone plays (to shift to baseball) and look at how people interact. The place where I can see this helping the most is catchers. Which catchers work well with pitchers, which do not? How can we tell from their interactions what will help the battery in the long-term?

I think, personally, that the next big "discovery" in stats will be defense. As the article says, unlike basketball, in baseball there is no way to be selfish and hurt your team. This could, I suppose, not be true for defense. But so far, all defensive ratings have been dancing around how to best quantify defense. Eventually, someone will kill the bunny and find out how to rate defensive players. And the team with access to this information will have a tremendous advantage.

And, as alluded to in the article, teamwork does have an effect. Maybe not in the clubhouse as much as on the field, but something, right?

Hopefully this is less rambling, more controlled. I'm just trying to drum up conversation without using racist remarks or child porn.

Tweet Comment 8 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

I love a firery player...

they can suck on the field but if they get the rest of the team playing hard I am all for it.

Part of this, I believe, is why Ryan Freel was so adorned in Cincinnati, and Adam Dunn so loathed. Yeah Adam Dunn was far and away the more valuable player, but Freel provided the spark, some sort of undocumentable(you can’t touch this Slyde) attribute that helped the team. Kinda like being on fire in NBA JAM.

Oh, Cy, this may or may not be relevant to your post. I couldn’t quite grasp the rambling.

Soy el niño destructor. I eat kids for breakfast. Roar. - Juan Francisco 'spoken with an Italian accent'

by jacob brumfield on Feb 15, 2009 9:58 PM EST reply actions

Hmm, speaking of Freel

While people like to bring up how we never won with all of Adam Dunn’s great statistics, we also never won with Ryan Freel’s ‘spark’.

(not to try to mock what you’re saying – just point out that we clearly never had a team that was good enough to benefit from either Dunn or Freel’s particular talents)

Everybody's a jerk. You. Me. This jerk.

by andromache on Feb 16, 2009 1:11 AM EST up reply actions

truth hurts

but Farney says to just drink the pain away

Soy el niño destructor. I eat kids for breakfast. Roar. - Juan Francisco 'spoken with an Italian accent'

by jacob brumfield on Feb 16, 2009 1:45 AM EST up reply actions

Sounds like A PLAN!

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.
Quentin Crisp

by Madville on Feb 16, 2009 7:19 AM EST up reply actions

This was written by Michael Lewis,

the author of Moneyball and a fantastic writer about sports and the financial markets (his article about the mortgage backed security crisis was the easily the most interesting I read on the topic). He sometimes pushes his contrarian agenda too far but he always makes you think.

I would love to see what kinds of numbers and analytics pro basketball teams are using. Every once in a while someone like Will Carroll will tell us that the proprietary models used by MLB teams are miles ahead of what’s publicly available, but I have a hard time believing that it makes that much of a difference. Basketball is a different beast. There is so much else going on that either isn’t quantified or depends on other events that a boxscore or even a play by play log doesn’t effectively tell the story. It’s much more difficult to analyze a stream of related activity than a series of independent events.

I didn’t really see this article as a statement about clubhouse chemistry. Not that Shane Battier doesn’t help in that area, but as Lewis points out his major contributions are visible if difficult to measure (boxing out the opponent’s best rebounder or tipping a loose ball to a teammate) and it’s implied that he’s an outcast on the team. I think there is definitely something to be said for the importance of chemistry in basketball. Bill Simmons’ love letters to KG are as good a place to start as any.

Battier is clearly a great student of the game and an easy guy to root for, even if he did play at Duke (I’d never heard the story of why he didn’t choose UK. It is priceless.). I can see him becoming his generation’s Bill Bradley if he’s up for it.

by ken on Feb 15, 2009 11:23 PM EST reply actions