Bob Ryan’s misplaced rant against advanced statistics

The timing of Bob Ryan’s recent rant against WAR in Sunday’s Boston Globe seemed a bit suspicious. While thousands of quants from the recent MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference climbed out of bed and fire up their tablets and computers,…

Week 26 EPL Power Rankings

Rating Club Offense Defense 1.14   Manchester Utd 0.91 -0.23 0.95   Manchester City 0.43 -0.52 0.85   Chelsea 0.59 -0.25 0.80   Arsenal 0.51 -0.29 0.61   Liverpool 0.44 -0.17 0.44   Tottenham 0.22 -0.23 0.20   Everton 0.04…

Pleased the Browns failed in Arizona

I’m pleased the Browns failed in Arizona. Not in a I hope Jimmy Haslam and Joe Banner fail in their efforts to steer the Browns onto a winning path, but in a “there is more than one way to skin…

A Post-All Star Look at the Tribe

Cleveland’s front office talks quite a bit about contention. Ask most Indians fans what contention means to them and they’ll likely talk about playing baseball into October. Ask the Indians front office and you’ll likely get a discussion of the…

Stupid Moneyball Arguments

Earl Weaver once posited a theory regarding baseball success: the best teams will lose 60 games, the worst teams will win 60 games – it’s what you do with the other 42 games that matter. Never before in the history…

Lambert right man for Villa

Lambert right man for Villa

To borrow a phrase from the club, Aston Villa stand ready to embark on a vibrant new era and Paul Lambert is the right man for the job. For some, Lambert may feel like second or third choice. After a…

Aston Villa: The Post-Mortem

The numbers paint a pretty dismal picture: 38 points from 38 games – lowest point total in 42 years One point worse than the total accumulated by relegated Birmingham City last season Four wins in 18 home games – worst…

Talking baseball with Tableau

Spent some thinking about the Indians chances this season and decided to put together a data visualization to try and explain how the AL Central might finish this year. The viz uses data from Fangraphs – primarily the 2011 WAR…

Manny Acta next Tribe manager. Who?

Well Tribe fans, this one is a head scratcher. The Cleveland Indians introduced Manny Acta as manager yesterday afternoon, and, while very little is known about him by the fans, you have to wonder what Mark Shapiro and Larry Dolan…