[Author's note: Apparently Brian Philips from Slate.com drew a similar, more thought-out, better-written, more bon mot-y, idea on Thursday, probably generated from the same story that got me to thinking about this post. Full disclosure, wrote this rough draft on Wednesday and was saving it for Friday, since there aren't any EPL games this weekend. It's fairly, well, entirely anecdotal anyways. I hope readers know the last thing I do here at this little ol' slice of Internets is plagiarize or co-opt other people's ideas. It is entirely possible two separate human brains could read something and start pulling at the same thread, afterward. Believe it or not, this was commonplace pre-Internet. Either way, think we've established that baseline of trust through these many years, no?]
Don't take any offense if you follow, care, root and or support one of the following professional North America sports franchises: the Florida Marlins, the New Jersey Nets, the Memphis Grizzlies, any club with teal or neon colors, etc..
You're not "real" teams in my book.
Sincerest apologies.
Now, I'm sure you're about to fire back that logic is unsound, or it's a total arbitrary point incapable to be proven by any scientific metric. True, there isn't a formula or equation to track or credit "real-ness" or a professional sports outfit. So long as you have matching uniforms, a logo, a stadium and a hot dog-firing cannon, technically you're a pro team. In the grand cosmic scheme of things, my silly opinion of "real" teams is about as insignificant as it gets.
Yet in contrast, a "real" team, is the Pittsburgh Steelers, the very team which just ousted my favored New York Jets this weekend in the AFC Championship Game. Despite an overall indifference, to slight disdain of the Steel City gridders, as a sports fan you have to tip your cap to the organization. The Steelers don't tolerate losing. It means something special to don that black-and-yellow jersey. Does it turn you into Superman? Nah, some sort of man of steel, perhaps.
The same thing goes for a team I out-and-out despise -- the New York Yankees. Advanced scouting metrics do not account for the presumed mystic and aura a club like the Yankees has, but it rears its ugly head time after time. Watch time-after-time as opponents wilt in the late innings in important games in the Bronx.
Put it this way, the psychology of the opponent in vastly different in a big spot playing against these two teams, at Hines Field or Yankee Stadium, than some other set of circumstances.
Or take the the sport I write about the most frequently here, soccer. Look at that wild game from Tuesday where Manchester United turned around a 2-0 deficit away to Blackpool, winning 3-2 with a flurry of goals in the final 20-odd minutes. Sure any other club could pull that off from time-to-time, but the commitment level at a club of Manchester United -- which is defined by greatness and winning -- does seem to play a factor. You almost expect Sir Alex Ferguson's boys to find a result in that scenario.
Without question any other Premier League side -- say Blackburn -- could notch a goal in the 72nd minute, but do you think the Blackpool players would have the same "oh shit" moment as they did after the first United goal crossed the line?
For every equation, every spreadsheet, every new formula used to decode sports, they're still played by flesh-and-blood humans with emotions.
I write all this after gaining some questions after reading the thought-provoking piece Jeff Passan wrote about sabremetrician Voros McCracken. In essence, this deep, free, radical thinker came up with a new analytical process to evaluate pitchers. Long story short, he didn't get paid for the idea and is now borderline destitute.
What struck me, is that McCracken is drawing most of his income from an unnamed European soccer club. He wouldn't say what exactly he is working on.
This strikes me uniquely because at my sporting core the two things I'll end up watching and ruminating over the most are baseball and soccer. As a person with a curious eye toward stats and the way they are applied to American sport -- an advance copy of "Scorecasting" arrived Wednesday the moment I was getting out of the shower --I'm in conflict.
It's something I've said in the past is like comparing science and art.
Baseball is science and soccer is art.
At the core, advanced analytics are crucial to baseball front offices since the MLPA is so strong, with certain salary demands at all times. Contracts in baseball follow a market, a market driven by stats, or the evil machinations of Scott Boras, take your pick. Look at the very concept of salary arbitration. A player says he's worth this, the team comes up with their number and an arbitrator decides, mainly using comparative numbers prepared by the player's agent and the team to decide a fair sum.
100 RBIs is equal to X amount of dollars, while 88 is worth Y.
Advanced metrics help front offices deduce ways to get around this static actuary-like tables, finding hidden value or undervalue, while cutting out the tried-and-true "eye test" in the process. You're taking objectively and feel out of the equation, too.
Pro soccer's management is so slapdash, can you imagine something as, well, nerdy and litigious as salary arbitration? Going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to fight to overturn your positive test for cocaine, sure, but salary arbitration? Doesn't it seem like salary figures by most big soccer clubs seem to float entirely out of thin air.
Take this week's on-going negotiations between Chelsea and Benfica over defender David Luiz. There isn't so established set of guidelines to deduce a fair transfer fee for the 23-year-old Brazilian. Instead Chelsea is likely negotiating with a group of directors in the Benfica backroom haggling for every last penny they can get a hold on. There are probably a lot of ill-fitting suits, cigar smoke and thick, mustaches too.
In this front office, salary negotiation regard, this is one way American sports -- even with their closed system status -- trump soccer hands down. It's like one city has its advanced, clean, tidy monorail system, whilst the other is pushing a donkey-powered wooden cart down cobblestone streets.
Better yet, try searching the Internet for soccer club-by-club salary figures. It's as elusive as roaming the Pacific Northwest in search of Sasquatch. There are a couple sites that keep databases of transfers, but team-by-team weekly salaries? Meanwhile, type in baseball salaries in Google and you'll find page after page, even historic values, too. It's almost hard not to talk about team payrolls when you're talking baseball. A player's contract length and yearly salary are common knowledge. The Internet did a collective plotz last week when the Anaheim Angels acquired Vernon Wells from Toronto, with nearly $90 million left on his deal.
That's just one area, which could change in soccer over time.
The on-field way baseball and soccer are played are so fundamentally different, as well.
You know baseball. It's a start-stop game played by nine individuals masquerading as a team ... at least when you drive down the cold, precise stats. New advanced stats seem to be derived every other week determining a player's value independent of his teammates.
Soccer is non-stop, with the play of 11 men directly impacting the other.
In baseball you can read a box score from 100 years ago featuring John McGraw's New York Giants and have a fair approximation of what transpired at the Polo Grounds that day. Soccer? Not so much, or if you could the minimal recorded stats wouldn't tell the whole soccer. For well over 100 years the only thing anyone seemed to bother to record was the final score, and if they felt like it, the goal-scorers and lineups.
This is probably a simple, narrow approach to it. Statistical analysis of the actual game probably, in the long haul, won't help you unearth massively untapped resources or find hidden edges in soccer. It's just too unpredictable once the whistle blows. Studying tons of date could show you it's not beneficial to play for a cross or make long passes up flanks. There is definitely data to be mined, just not sure how much there is. Time will tell.
Compared with baseball, though, soccer is truly apples and oranges. In baseball once the ball is put into play only a few things can occur. The batter and pitcher act independently. Hell, in soccer everyone players 11 men on the field at once, but there's no codified formation or template for a squad, aside from one goalie.
Maybe, for me, it's that people don't realize that statistics game in baseball boiled down is really used for contracts and trying to find value or an edge in evaluating players compared to 29 other Major League clubs.
In theory you can crunch a ballplayers' offensive numbers and have a fair proximity of his value, or what he's bringing to the plate regardless of his teammates. A slugging percentage is a slugging percentage. Soccer? Goal-rate? Pass-success? Drop Player A on a new team, he's still a good player, but if he doesn't fit in the system or mesh with teammates, he's a waste. Suppose you took average player "X" and plopped him in a midfield next to Barcelona's Xavi and Andres Iniesta, then in a controlled environment paired him with Tottenham's Wilson Palacios and, say, Tom Huddlestone? What rationale way would there be to evaluate him independent of his teamamtes?
Though there's no way to quantify the je ne sais quoi genius of a player like Cristiano Ronaldo in a tidy, four-letter acronym like P.R.A.T., but you could try to find how he effects the rest of his team, the club's winning percentage or goal percentage. Hey, if people are smart enough to find a hidden game lying beneath the surface of soccer, I'll tip my cap. I openly welcome a different way to approach and analyze the game past the same old John Harkesian 1980s coachspeak cliches.
Saying all this, there are certainly ways in the transfer market to look through the numbers and run a club in a semi-profitable, or fiscally sane manner. Or at least get it so you're not selling players for 3,000 pounds of sausages.
When to buy and when to sell, or what ages to buy and sell is simple. Figuring out the maximum to spend trying to bring a player through an academy vs. signing established guys. What type of player with which type of mind works the best.
Value is value, and if there is a way to analytically access a soccer player to deem what he's worth in the transfer market, it's certainly worth it for clubs to start exploring.
Considering how backwater, provincial, petty and narrow-minded most clubs around the globe are -- yes I'm looking at you David Sullivan and David Gold -- one or two progressive minds certainly could help a lesser club make some inroads. Progressive thinking and soccer rarely go hand-in-hand, so a mid-level club that embraced some forward thinking, data-driven principles could make major inroads, or at least offset the deep pockets of richer clubs.
In the end, no matter how many soccer versions Scott Hatteburgs or Chad Bradford a forward-looking analyst is able to unearth, it's not going to help on the on-field product when Manchester City shows up at your door with money bags in hand.
Maybe, though, that's entirely the point.
Don't take any offense if you follow, care, root and or support one of the following professional North America sports franchises: the Florida Marlins, the New Jersey Nets, the Memphis Grizzlies, any club with teal or neon colors, etc..
You're not "real" teams in my book.
Sincerest apologies.
Now, I'm sure you're about to fire back that logic is unsound, or it's a total arbitrary point incapable to be proven by any scientific metric. True, there isn't a formula or equation to track or credit "real-ness" or a professional sports outfit. So long as you have matching uniforms, a logo, a stadium and a hot dog-firing cannon, technically you're a pro team. In the grand cosmic scheme of things, my silly opinion of "real" teams is about as insignificant as it gets.
Yet in contrast, a "real" team, is the Pittsburgh Steelers, the very team which just ousted my favored New York Jets this weekend in the AFC Championship Game. Despite an overall indifference, to slight disdain of the Steel City gridders, as a sports fan you have to tip your cap to the organization. The Steelers don't tolerate losing. It means something special to don that black-and-yellow jersey. Does it turn you into Superman? Nah, some sort of man of steel, perhaps.
The same thing goes for a team I out-and-out despise -- the New York Yankees. Advanced scouting metrics do not account for the presumed mystic and aura a club like the Yankees has, but it rears its ugly head time after time. Watch time-after-time as opponents wilt in the late innings in important games in the Bronx.
Put it this way, the psychology of the opponent in vastly different in a big spot playing against these two teams, at Hines Field or Yankee Stadium, than some other set of circumstances.
Or take the the sport I write about the most frequently here, soccer. Look at that wild game from Tuesday where Manchester United turned around a 2-0 deficit away to Blackpool, winning 3-2 with a flurry of goals in the final 20-odd minutes. Sure any other club could pull that off from time-to-time, but the commitment level at a club of Manchester United -- which is defined by greatness and winning -- does seem to play a factor. You almost expect Sir Alex Ferguson's boys to find a result in that scenario.
Without question any other Premier League side -- say Blackburn -- could notch a goal in the 72nd minute, but do you think the Blackpool players would have the same "oh shit" moment as they did after the first United goal crossed the line?
For every equation, every spreadsheet, every new formula used to decode sports, they're still played by flesh-and-blood humans with emotions.
I write all this after gaining some questions after reading the thought-provoking piece Jeff Passan wrote about sabremetrician Voros McCracken. In essence, this deep, free, radical thinker came up with a new analytical process to evaluate pitchers. Long story short, he didn't get paid for the idea and is now borderline destitute.
What struck me, is that McCracken is drawing most of his income from an unnamed European soccer club. He wouldn't say what exactly he is working on.
This strikes me uniquely because at my sporting core the two things I'll end up watching and ruminating over the most are baseball and soccer. As a person with a curious eye toward stats and the way they are applied to American sport -- an advance copy of "Scorecasting" arrived Wednesday the moment I was getting out of the shower --I'm in conflict.
It's something I've said in the past is like comparing science and art.
Baseball is science and soccer is art.
At the core, advanced analytics are crucial to baseball front offices since the MLPA is so strong, with certain salary demands at all times. Contracts in baseball follow a market, a market driven by stats, or the evil machinations of Scott Boras, take your pick. Look at the very concept of salary arbitration. A player says he's worth this, the team comes up with their number and an arbitrator decides, mainly using comparative numbers prepared by the player's agent and the team to decide a fair sum.
100 RBIs is equal to X amount of dollars, while 88 is worth Y.
Advanced metrics help front offices deduce ways to get around this static actuary-like tables, finding hidden value or undervalue, while cutting out the tried-and-true "eye test" in the process. You're taking objectively and feel out of the equation, too.
Pro soccer's management is so slapdash, can you imagine something as, well, nerdy and litigious as salary arbitration? Going to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to fight to overturn your positive test for cocaine, sure, but salary arbitration? Doesn't it seem like salary figures by most big soccer clubs seem to float entirely out of thin air.
Take this week's on-going negotiations between Chelsea and Benfica over defender David Luiz. There isn't so established set of guidelines to deduce a fair transfer fee for the 23-year-old Brazilian. Instead Chelsea is likely negotiating with a group of directors in the Benfica backroom haggling for every last penny they can get a hold on. There are probably a lot of ill-fitting suits, cigar smoke and thick, mustaches too.
In this front office, salary negotiation regard, this is one way American sports -- even with their closed system status -- trump soccer hands down. It's like one city has its advanced, clean, tidy monorail system, whilst the other is pushing a donkey-powered wooden cart down cobblestone streets.
Better yet, try searching the Internet for soccer club-by-club salary figures. It's as elusive as roaming the Pacific Northwest in search of Sasquatch. There are a couple sites that keep databases of transfers, but team-by-team weekly salaries? Meanwhile, type in baseball salaries in Google and you'll find page after page, even historic values, too. It's almost hard not to talk about team payrolls when you're talking baseball. A player's contract length and yearly salary are common knowledge. The Internet did a collective plotz last week when the Anaheim Angels acquired Vernon Wells from Toronto, with nearly $90 million left on his deal.
That's just one area, which could change in soccer over time.
The on-field way baseball and soccer are played are so fundamentally different, as well.
You know baseball. It's a start-stop game played by nine individuals masquerading as a team ... at least when you drive down the cold, precise stats. New advanced stats seem to be derived every other week determining a player's value independent of his teammates.
Soccer is non-stop, with the play of 11 men directly impacting the other.
In baseball you can read a box score from 100 years ago featuring John McGraw's New York Giants and have a fair approximation of what transpired at the Polo Grounds that day. Soccer? Not so much, or if you could the minimal recorded stats wouldn't tell the whole soccer. For well over 100 years the only thing anyone seemed to bother to record was the final score, and if they felt like it, the goal-scorers and lineups.
This is probably a simple, narrow approach to it. Statistical analysis of the actual game probably, in the long haul, won't help you unearth massively untapped resources or find hidden edges in soccer. It's just too unpredictable once the whistle blows. Studying tons of date could show you it's not beneficial to play for a cross or make long passes up flanks. There is definitely data to be mined, just not sure how much there is. Time will tell.
Compared with baseball, though, soccer is truly apples and oranges. In baseball once the ball is put into play only a few things can occur. The batter and pitcher act independently. Hell, in soccer everyone players 11 men on the field at once, but there's no codified formation or template for a squad, aside from one goalie.
Maybe, for me, it's that people don't realize that statistics game in baseball boiled down is really used for contracts and trying to find value or an edge in evaluating players compared to 29 other Major League clubs.
In theory you can crunch a ballplayers' offensive numbers and have a fair proximity of his value, or what he's bringing to the plate regardless of his teammates. A slugging percentage is a slugging percentage. Soccer? Goal-rate? Pass-success? Drop Player A on a new team, he's still a good player, but if he doesn't fit in the system or mesh with teammates, he's a waste. Suppose you took average player "X" and plopped him in a midfield next to Barcelona's Xavi and Andres Iniesta, then in a controlled environment paired him with Tottenham's Wilson Palacios and, say, Tom Huddlestone? What rationale way would there be to evaluate him independent of his teamamtes?
Though there's no way to quantify the je ne sais quoi genius of a player like Cristiano Ronaldo in a tidy, four-letter acronym like P.R.A.T., but you could try to find how he effects the rest of his team, the club's winning percentage or goal percentage. Hey, if people are smart enough to find a hidden game lying beneath the surface of soccer, I'll tip my cap. I openly welcome a different way to approach and analyze the game past the same old John Harkesian 1980s coachspeak cliches.
Saying all this, there are certainly ways in the transfer market to look through the numbers and run a club in a semi-profitable, or fiscally sane manner. Or at least get it so you're not selling players for 3,000 pounds of sausages.
When to buy and when to sell, or what ages to buy and sell is simple. Figuring out the maximum to spend trying to bring a player through an academy vs. signing established guys. What type of player with which type of mind works the best.
Value is value, and if there is a way to analytically access a soccer player to deem what he's worth in the transfer market, it's certainly worth it for clubs to start exploring.
Considering how backwater, provincial, petty and narrow-minded most clubs around the globe are -- yes I'm looking at you David Sullivan and David Gold -- one or two progressive minds certainly could help a lesser club make some inroads. Progressive thinking and soccer rarely go hand-in-hand, so a mid-level club that embraced some forward thinking, data-driven principles could make major inroads, or at least offset the deep pockets of richer clubs.
In the end, no matter how many soccer versions Scott Hatteburgs or Chad Bradford a forward-looking analyst is able to unearth, it's not going to help on the on-field product when Manchester City shows up at your door with money bags in hand.
Maybe, though, that's entirely the point.
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