Concepts some posters could benefit from learning

[fair catch fryar]

in hindsight, I probably could have chosen better words. apologize if I insulted anyone.

I'm not trying to say that I'm smarter than anyone; however I am saying that the conventional wisdom often spouted by the media and even players/coaches is often wrong, and since we hear that all the time, we take it as gospel truth.

the reality is much of conventional wisdom is wrong, but many people don't realize it, b/c hey when you hear something your whole life you take it as truth. that is what I was trying to point out in my OP.

if I insulted anyone, apologies, but sometimes saying some outrageous is the best way to get people thinking

Even though, you claim not to be insulting anyone, the mere statement, "the reality is much of conventional wisdom is wrong" sounds like you still think your smarter than everyone else. Since when are you the judge of conventional wisdom?

 

[makewayhomer]

Even though, you claim not to be insulting anyone, the mere statement, "the reality is much of conventional wisdom is wrong" sounds like you still think your smarter than everyone else. Since when are you the judge of conventional wisdom?

I've learned from people much smarter than me that this is this case.

every baseball fan here should read this book



and every football fan here should read this book

 

[QuiGon]

the most basic example? the idea of "clutch", which is generally highly overrated by most people. is David Ortiz a clutch hitter? most people in Boston would laugh at the question - of course he is, maybe the best clutch hitter of all time!! if this is you, then please please please read this article

That article is chock full of logical errors. For example, it is ridiculous to define "clutch" in such a manner that a 15th inning game winning RBI against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS is equivalent to an 8th inning hit in mid-June when you're leading by a run against the Royals.

David Ortiz' reputation for "clutch" was cemented during the 2004 ALCS when he took the team on his back and carried them to a pennant.

in football, what does this mean? Well, read the Adam Vinatieri Mr. Clutch thread. my basic opinion is that AV makes the frozen ball kick vs the Titans or the blizzard kick vs the Raiders AT MOST 50% of the time. The odds of him hitting both? 25%. of course, he ended up making both. this doesn't make him clutch, it makes him a beneficiary of positive variance - instead of the likely 75% outcome (him missing 1) he got the 25% outcome. like a roulette wheel landing on red twice in a row.

Here's your logical flaw: Making an important FG is not a random spin of a roulette wheel. There are men who perform better under pressure and there are men who perform worse. Just look at Vanderjagt in 2005. One of the best FG percentages of all time, but when the game was on the line against the Steelers, he missed by a mile (I'm serious... I don't think I have ever seen a FG miss by so much that wasn't blocked). That ain't a "statistical variance" - that's a man who does not perform well under immense pressure.

another example: most people remember Tom Brady winning MVP of the SB in 2001. what most people don't remember is his actual performance in that game: 16 of 27 passes for 145 yards with a touchdown.

The Super Bowl MVP Award has become a pathetic joke. Ty Law and Otis Smith deserved co-MVP's from SB36. But Brady deserved it over Branch in SB39. And there's no way in hell Manning deserved it last year.

 

[Lansdowne]

"Randy Moss: He's a cog, not a superstar"

I think we're seeing the contrary this season!

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

I think his playoff QB rating is pretty similar to his regular season rating, I'll have to look

Don't bother. I looked it up and I was, well how do you say it, wrong.

2001 regular 86.5 playoffs 77.3
2003 regular 85.9 playoffs 84.5
2004 regular 92.6 playoffs 109.5

Selective memory.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

Even though, you claim not to be insulting anyone, the mere statement, "the reality is much of conventional wisdom is wrong" sounds like you still think your smarter than everyone else. Since when are you the judge of conventional wisdom?

I take exception to that. He correctly points out that the CW is wrong and states a case as to why. Great thread except for folks threatened by others smarter than they. I'm not.

 

[makewayhomer]

"Randy Moss: He's a cog, not a superstar"

I think we're seeing the contrary this season!

heh, well nobody is perfect! they admitted they were wrong on that one

 

[makewayhomer]

Don't bother. I looked it up and I was, well how do you say it, wrong.

2001 regular 86.5 playoffs 77.3
2003 regular 85.9 playoffs 84.5
2004 regular 92.6 playoffs 109.5

Selective memory.

hmm ok, but what about 2005 and 2006? I honestly dont know

 

[fair catch fryar]

I've learned from people much smarter than me that this is this case.

every baseball fan here should read this book



and every football fan here should read this book

For the record, this is a good thread and I respect you points and opinions, but you do come across as talking down to people. That being said, I will be looking for that particular book you mentioned.

 

[makewayhomer]

For the record, this is a good thread and I respect you points and opinions, but you do come across as talking down to people.

I apologize for that - I can assure you I'm a good and nice guy!

I was in kind of an ornery mood last night after reading one too many things that got under my skin.

that being said, sometimes you need to speak forcefully to prove your point with people who choose not to listen

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

hmm ok, but what about 2005 and 2006? I honestly dont know

2005 reg 92.3 post 92.2
2006 reg 87.9 post 76.5 Brady's worst post season thanks to the last INT vs the Colts

Source Tom Brady on Wiki

 

[makewayhomer]

2001 regular 86.5 playoffs 77.3
2003 regular 85.9 playoffs 84.5
2004 regular 92.6 playoffs 109.5
2005 reg 92.3 post 92.2
2006 reg 87.9 post 76.5

so you have 5 playoffs years.

in 2 he performed exactly as he did in the regular season

in 1 he performed better

in 2 he performed worse

there are sample size issues here, and you would expect him to get worse b/c the opponents are better in the playoffs...but I'm not sure what we learn here

 

[patological]

"Concepts some posters could benefit from learning" ???

Couldn't get beyond the thread title though I'm sure there's a ton of interesting content after 170+ posts.here. But is our children learning?

 

[Patriotic Fervor]

"Concepts some posters could benefit from learning" ???

Couldn't get beyond the thread title though I'm sure there's a ton of interesting content after 170+ posts.here. But is our children learning?

We are hopeful that they is!

 

[RayClay]

Binomial distribution. Exactly 7 successes in 8 tries. Say the probability of success was s, where s is 1/(square root of 10), a figure a little bit above .300. Probability = 8*s^7(1-s), which is somewhere around .15%. Changing the question to "... at least 7 successes" wouldn't affect the outcome much.

However, that's not the right sample to analyze. My only personal memory of Yastrzemski in a clutch situation is a weak pop-up to end a one-game playoff in 1978. At a minimum, you'd need to look at his post-season games as well as his heat-of-the-pennant-race games, and look at his overall batting average in those. I think you'd probably find it to be a LOT below .875, and indeed well below .400 ...

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/playerpost.php?p=yastrca01&ps=ws has his World Series percentage: .352.

Overall postseason: .369. Even better. http://www.baseball-reference.com/y/yastrca01.shtml

And raise that very slightly for the Bucky Dent game, his game-ending popout notwithstanding: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=197810020BOS

Better than his regular-season batting, actually. But not "unstoppably clutch" either, of course. No batter is.

His mean batting average is .285. .352 and .369 are well above the mean. That isolated, bur essential (changed RedSox history) is way above the mean.

What are the odds these clutch performances are random given all that data?

Unstoppably clutch is meaningless, nobody hits .1000 over time.

His weekend, aggregate world series and playoff BAs are all well over his mean average.

One (at bat) incidence of anything cannot be statistically significant. No measure so far is less than or even close to his mean batting average.

Another way to measure would be by comparison, say to Ted Williams.

 

[makewayhomer]

[
What are the odds these clutch performances are random given all that data?

very high. you have very little data. the postseason sample is WAY smaller than his regular season sample.

by that theory you could pick out his games on Tuesdays, find a better BA on those days, and include that Yaz was a much better hitter on Tuesdays

 

[Oswlek]

so you have 5 playoffs years.

in 2 he performed exactly as he did in the regular season

in 1 he performed better

in 2 he performed worse

there are sample size issues here, and you would expect him to get worse b/c the opponents are better in the playoffs...but I'm not sure what we learn here

I am. Let's check out the main competition's history

Year W | L Att Com Pct Yards Yds/Att Long Td Int QB Rating
Year RSPR PPR
1998 71.2 DNP
1999 90.7 60.9
2000 94.7 82
2001 83.6 DNP
2002 88.5 31.2
2003 99.0 106.4
2004 121.1 112.9
2005 104.1 90.9
2006 101.0 66.8

So in 7 playoff opportunities, Manning has had a lower PR in 6 of them. Looking further, the one time it was higher it was marginally higher and included possibly the worst game of his career and 3 of his "lower" years saw his PPR drop by over 30 points.

Long story short: it is harder to perform in the playoffs because you are facing better teams. To even be the same is an accomplishment.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

I am. Let's check out the main competition's history



So in 7 playoff opportunities, Manning has had a lower PR in 6 of them. Looking further, the one time it was higher it was marginally higher and included possibly the worst game of his career and 3 of his "lower" years saw his PPR drop by over 30 points.

Long story short: it is harder to perform in the playoffs because you are facing better teams. To even be the same is an accomplishment.

Good job extending the data set. You beat me to it. Were we to add SB winning Rthlsbrgr and the SB losing QBs (e.g. McNabb) playoff #s to the data set we'd see marked dropoff as the non-elite QBs faced the more competitive playoff caliber teams.

 

[RayClay]

Are you suggesting Yaz never had a streak of 7/8 or close to it during the regular season?

You can't really judge performance in 8 at bats against his career average of thousands of at bats.

I can flip a coin and get heads 9 out of 10 times. The odds of getting heads never changed, it remained 50% but sometimes I'll get it at a 90% rate over a TINY sample size. I flip that coin a million times and there's no way I'm getting that much variance.

Clutch reveals how you deliver when the chips are down. They needed to win both games, therefore your comparison to any random 8 at bats is meaningless.

The sample is the at bats during the crucial Minnesota series. He doesn't have the option of saying, I would like to have my eight at bats replaced by a sample of at bats in April and have all the base runners move and score accordingly.

I can flip a coin and get heads 9 out of 10 times. The odds of getting heads never changed, it remained 50% but sometimes I'll get it at a 90% rate over a TINY sample size. I flip that coin a million times and there's no way I'm getting that much variance.

Here's a good example of misunderstanding. If you flip a coin 10 times, the odds are you'll flip 5+5. The more trials, the closer you'll get. that's called regression to the mean.

Yes, each flip is a 50-50 chance, but sometimes you'll flip 9/10 heads, 9/10 tails, 5/10 either and so on. The more you flip, the closer you get to the mean (average) of 5 of each per ten flips.

In 1967 Yaz had a mean average of .326 over that entire season. Every at bat, the factor of regression to the mean would say he would get closer to .326. That's like flipping the coin 50/50 for him.

Make a curve with the mean number of hits a .326 hitter would be expected to make. 3.26 hits per 10 at bats = 2.61 hits per 8 (sample size).

0.....2.61...................7

I'm not a mathematician, but one could work out the standard deviation on that. His mean (average) decreased to .285 over the years, Yet his World series and playoff averages remained well above his career mean average.

 

[alamo]

That is true, but the trick is to consider each play in an NFL game as a separate event. For example, Eli Manning played only 16 games in 2005, but in those 16 games he had 586 passing plays (including sacks) and 29 rushing plays (including scrambles) for a total of 615 events. Manny Ramirez in 2005 played in 152 games and had 650 plate appearances. For the most part, a quarterback who plays a full season will have almost the same number of plays as a baseball hitter who plays in most of his team's games.

I've seen that on FO. But remember that baseball Sabremeticians still consider a single season a relatively small sample size. And your first point talked about clutch situations, which reduces the sample size even further. And about kickers, which makes the sample miniscule by comparison. Yet that was the starting point for your statements?