Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Red Eyes, Luggage Carts, Can't Lose

Just something quick: the Big East released its 2013 conference schedule yesterday. It's an interesting exercise in realignment madness. I computed the distance between each school using this tool. This first table provided the total miles each team travels to get to its road games, along with its longest trip.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Evaluating MLB Signings, Part 2: Madness

Last time out, we asked how good the Napoli and Victorino signings were for the Boston Red Sox. Using J.C. Bradbury's method, we established that we need to do the following:
1. Figure out how much a win is worth,
2. Figure out how much an individual player contributed to his team's wins, and
3. Convert that number of wins into a dollar value.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Evaluating MLB Signings, Part 1: Methods

After their 2012 season went down in flames, the Boston Red Sox were active during the recent winter meetings, signing 31-year-old first baseman/catcher Mike Napoli to a 3-year, $39 million contract, and 32-year-old outfielder Shane Victorino to a 3-year, $37.5 million contract. The moves were modest when compared to past offseasons, but the question remains: will the Sox get value from their new acquisitions?

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Site News: FoS at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference

Quick update: I recently submitted an abstract to the Evolution of Sport section of the annual Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The conference, held in Boston March 1-2, is two days long and features a plethora of notable sports journalists, sabermetricians, and front office personnel.

And maybe yours truly.

I found out today that my abstract has been accepted into the second round. The next step is a video submission fleshing out my idea, which will be judged by the panel. If they approve, I get 15 minutes on stage at the conference.

I don't know how much of my proposal I can share, so I'll keep it under wraps for now. If it gets accepted, you can see it at the conference, or once they upload the video to their website; if it doesn't get accepted, I'll write it up and post it here.

Until then, I'm working on analyzing the recent Red Sox signings of Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino. Did the Red Sox overpay? How do these contracts compare to those of Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, which the Red Sox took great pains to pawn off on the Dodgers?

Wish me luck!

Monday, December 3, 2012

A Richly-Deserved Beating: CFB ATS Update

At the beginning of the college football season, I asked whether you could use a team's recent against-the-spread (ATS) history to predict how they would do against the spread this season. I came to the conclusion that
[T]he perpetually underperforming teams (like Tulane) and perpetually overperforming teams (like Boise State) are a function of luck* rather than some underlying market inefficiency.

Well, the season's over (except for the bowl games). Was I right?