Comparing Draft Pick Value in the NFL, NBA, and MLB
As the MLB off-season nears an end and the NFL season approaches its climax, I’ve read some really informative analyses calculating and discussing the relative value of draft picks in each sport.
In this post I’ll combine those analyses to compare draft value across the three largest US sports.
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Super Bowl Preview: The Chiefs’ Path to Putting Up Points
Super Bowl LVIII is nine days away, featuring the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and the NFC number one seed San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs enter the game coming off a dominant Wild Card Round win over Miami, a close call in the Divisional Round against Buffalo, and a convincing performance in the AFC Championship Game against top seeded Baltimore. The 49ers roll into the big game after narrowly escaping the Packers in the Divisional Round and then just edging out the Lions in the NFC Championship Game.
In this analysis I’ll take a closer look at the recent performances of the Chiefs and 49ers to see which combinations of play type and location should be preferred and targeted by Patrick Mahomes and company.
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Quantifying Momentum in the NFL
Sunday’s NFC championship game between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers was a roller coaster ride. The Lions seized a 17 point lead by halftime, only to see the 49ers storm back and win the game 34-31. In the second half, the Lions turned the ball over on downs twice after going for 4th and 2 at the SF 28 yard line and 4th and 3 at the SF 30 yard line. Each of those failed plays appeared to energize the Santa Clara crowd and help propel the home team to the Super Bowl.
Watching the game had me thinking: can we quantify momentum in the NFL?
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How Has Sinner’s Game Improved So Quickly?
22-year-old Jannik Sinner won his first Grand Slam title on Sunday, defeating Daniil Medvedev in a thrilling 5-setter, coming back from down two sets to love. Sinner handily beat 24-time Grand Slam champion and world number one Novak Djokovic in four sets in the semi-finals. Last year, Sinner only made it to the fourth round in the Australia Open. What has Sinner done to improve?
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The Trend in $/WAR for Free Agents
Ben Clemens provided a detailed breakdown of the amount teams paid per WAR (Wins Above Replacement) in free agency between 2018 and 2022. In this analysis, I will expand upon his findings by incorporating data from the 2023 and 2024 free agency periods to examine the broader trend.
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Introducing Pitching Stat LBAbip
BAbip, batting average on balls in play, serves as a valuable statistic for gauging pitchers' luck in the frequency of balls in play (excluding homeruns) that lead to base hits. Conventionally, a pitcher’s BAbip is compared to the league average BAbip when assessing how lucky or unlucky a pitcher has been. In this analysis, I’ll introduce a more sophisticated point of comparison: location-based batting average on balls in play (LBAbip). I will use LBAbip to identify pitchers who are likely to regress to the mean in 2024.
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Free Agent Signings: Should You Sign Quickly or Hold Out for More?
Whether a free agent is looking for a shorter term deal with high average annual value (AAV) or a longer term deal with a larger overall guarantee, should he be looking to sign a deal in November or December, early in the offseason, or should he wait until January or February, as spring training approaches?
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Mariano Rivera: Is He the Greatest Pitcher of All Time?
Mariano Rivera, the only unanimous inductee to the Baseball Hall of Fame, is widely recognized as the greatest relief pitcher of all-time and solidly in the conversation for greatest pitcher overall. But how different from the rest was he really?
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How to Stop The Celtics?
The Boston Celtics are off to an incredible start. They are 18-0 at home, with the best record in the NBA. According to the Simple Rating System, which takes into account both point differential and strength of schedule, the Celtics are the best basketball team since the 2016-17 Warriors, who had each of Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green in their primes.
In fact, the Celtics don’t have any glaring weaknesses. In this analysis, I will look at the team on an individual player level, to find weaknesses that defenses can exploit to beat the Celtics.
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Using Predictive wOBA To Predict 2024 Batting Performance
In a previous post, I proved via correlation that Predictive wOBA (including all batted balls, walks, strikeouts, and hit-by-pitches), is better at predicting Next Season wOBA than both wOBA and xwWOBA. I also showed how a mean-regression technique, resulting in Modified Predictive wOBA, strengthened the model’s predictive power even further.
In this post, I’ll use Modified Predictive wOBA to project performances in the coming baseball season and compare them to Steamer’s 2024 projections.
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What’s The Better Value To a Team: Long-Term Contracts to Elite Hitters or Elite Pitchers?
2024’s free agency started with a bang as the Los Angeles Dodgers signed two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year deal, followed by signing Ohtani’s Japanese countryman Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year deal.
As the remaining free agents reach deals over the coming weeks, I will take a look a what the relative value of signing an elite hitter to a long-term contract is versus the relative value of signing an elite starting pitcher to a long-term contract.
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How Many Wins Was the “Tush Push” Worth in 2023?
At the start of the season, I discussed how the “tush push” had enabled the Eagles to go for 4th and short situations 2.4x as frequently as the average NFL team. In this post, I’ll analyze how each team performed in short yardage situations and approximate how many wins the tush push was worth to the Eagles in 2023.
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Who Are The Most Prolific EPL and Big 5 Attackers in Recent Times?
Watching Liverpool winger Mohammad Salah this year has been very entertaining. In the first half of his seventh season with Liverpool— all under the guidance of manager Jurgen Klopp— the 31-year-old Salah is tied for the EPL lead in goals scored with 14 and tied for the lead in assists with 8. His consistently productive performance has me wondering: Where does he rank among the most prolific EPL attackers in recent times?
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How Can We Make Predictive wOBA Even More Predictive?
Last week, Tom Tango introduced the concept of Predictive wOBA, and through correlation analysis, he demonstrated that Predictive wOBA exhibits stronger predictive capabilities for Next Season wOBA than both wOBA and xwOBA. Is there a way to further improve Predictive wOBA?
In this post, I’ll examine the predictive power of a slightly different version of Predictive wOBA, incorporating walks, strikeouts, and hit-by-pitches, along with all batted balls.
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When Will We See a 70-yard Field Goal in the NFL?
Over the last 24 years, NFL kickers have notably enhanced their strength and accuracy. Justin Tucker's 66-yard field goal in 2021 established a new NFL record. But when will we see a 70-yard field goal?
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The Updated xwFIP
I received a very good comment from reader Light_Saberist on one of my latests posts, in which I compared the predictive powers of xwFIP and FIP.
In order to determine the xHR of a pitcher, xFIP (not to be confused with xwFIP) uses the league average homerun/flyball rate of 10.5% and multiplies that rate by the number of flyballs the pitcher allows. This logic may mitigate some of the luck factors in allowing homeruns and thus strengthen xwFIP as well. I checked that hypothesis, and it was correct!
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The Evolution of MLB’s Run Scoring Environment
Between 2022 and 2023, the league's average wOBA jumped from 0.310 to 0.318 following the implementation of the pitch clock, the ban of the overshift, and the increase in base size. These adjustments not only enhanced the scoring dynamics but also resulted in a reduction of game duration by 24 minutes per game, bringing game time down to 2 hours and 40 minutes, on average.
Despite total attendance nearly rebounding to pre-pandemic levels, as evident from Figure 1 below, it remains considerably below the figures seen in the mid to late 2000s. This trend is primarily attributed to the current lower run-scoring levels in baseball.
In this post, I’ll take a look at the factors that have historically driven change in the league’s run scoring environment, and discuss future league changes that can increase both run scoring and attendance.
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What is The Most Important Position in Basketball?
The NFL has realized the value of the quarterback: their contracts dwarf those of their teammates and the league has made it a priority to protect them from injury. In basketball, is there a particular position on the court that holds greater value when compared to the other four?
This generation of basketball has seen tremendous talent emerge in the small forward and power forward positions, notably LeBron James and Kevin Durant. The previous generation had one of the most impactful centers of all time in Shaquille O’Neal. So are we able to determine which is the most important position on the basketball court? In this analysis, I will make a go at it.
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Which Batters Can Produce Against the Nastiest Pitches?
Watching the MLB playoffs this year, I started to think about identifying hitters that have the pitch recognition and bat-to-ball skills to make positive contributions against the league’s best pitching.
To investigate this, I’ve looked at pitch location, broken down by Heart, Shadow, Chase and Waste, as defined by Baseball Savant.
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The 5.5-Man Pitching Rotation
The MLB starting pitching rotation has been evolving for more than a century: We’ve seen the 3-man rotation, the 4-man rotation, the 5-man rotation, and now even some 6-man rotations.
However, the optimal rotation is the 5.5-man rotation. In this analysis, I’ll explain why.
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