Team leaves town, team comes to town
We don’t do a lot of Seahawks or Sonics discussion here. I enjoy other sports but I don’t know nearly enough about how they’re played to do serious analysis. I’ve been arguing about baseball for ten years now and I know more about the Mariners than I think is frankly healthy. I’d feel dumb writing about, say, college basketball or whatever.
But amid the continuing saga of the Sonics’ attempts to get out of town*, I thought it was worth noting that Seattle will be getting an MLS soccer team. Of unknown quality, with an unknown manager… so why not put your season ticket deposit down now?
In many ways, soccer’s a lot like baseball (hear me out): casual viewing of a three-hour game will have a couple of pretty spectacular plays, but long periods of what appear to be tedium. But when you’re into baseball – watching the defensive positioning, how pitchers set up hitters, how the strategies all come together – it reveals much more.
As a result, both of them are tagged as “boring” by many people, compared to the breakneck once-every-minute collision of football play, or the near constant ball-in-motion shuffle of basketball, and that’s unfortunate.
But then, I watch professional bicycling telecasts, so I’m clearly not to be trusted.
Anyway — welcome, Team to be Named. I wish them great success.
* That’s a whole other rant
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I hear that a book makes an excellent Holiday gift.
well, you may be right. But just because *goals* are infrequent doesn’t mean that *any* success is infrequent.
It’s tying the latter to the former that might prove difficult.
If a pass that cuts open a defense is botched by the forward, that absolutely counts as a success for the midfielder (at least to me). If a wing puts a gorgeous pass to the top of the box, but the shot is saved acrobatically, that’s not a failure for the winger (or possibly even the shooter). You know? There are other successes besides goals…or at least there better be.
Let’s say that a player scores on a low, hard shot from 10 yards outside the area – looked like a fantastic shot, right? But then, at the post-game interview, the player said that the ball was intended as a pass, but he mishit the ball, got lucky, and it went into the goal instead. How does that quantify?
If you class it as a goal, then you get a false impression of a player’s goal-scoring ability; if you class it as a pass, was it a failed pass because it didn’t get to another player, or was it a successful pass, albeit to the back of the net?
So you’re saying that because luck (variance, whatever you want to call it) exists in soccer that there is no way statistics can be useful? In 1900, I could have said that batting average is obviously useless because sometimes a hitter can get a hit when he’s actually trying to lay down a sacrifice bunt. The only reason we know that batting average is useful is that we’ve kept track of it, and seen that it describes a hitter’s ability to get a base hit pretty well. (Similarly, one could argue that baseball statistics are worthless because sometimes umpires make incorrect calls, thereby giving us a “false impression” of that player’s abilities.)
Frankly, the idea that it’s somehow obvious that statistics would not be worthwhile in soccer (or any other sport for that matter) is ridiculous. The only way you can find out is to think hard, collect data, analyze the data, and repeat. Maybe it would be useful, maybe it wouldn’t be, but that’s not something you can know definitively a priori.
If you haven’t been that elated by a home run, you just haven’t been there for the right one.
“Here comes Sojo…he scores! Everybody scores!”
Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a home run.
And I’ll take this over any “nil-nil” footie game in history. (4.5MB .mp3 here)
Maybe Voros McCracken will be “the Bill James of soccer” instead of “the next Bill James.” Okay, not exactly, but he became a soccer guy and shows up a lot in this message board discussion of soccer analytics, maybe the best I’ve seen:
http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63798
So you’re saying that because luck (variance, whatever you want to call it) exists in soccer that there is no way statistics can be useful?
Pretty much not at all what I’m saying, but thanks for the dismissive reductionism. What I was saying, and what most everyone else has been saying, is that the action that takes place on a soccer field is largely unquantifiable in a baseball-analytics sense, because a lot of it is random, non-linear action. In baseball, pitch leads to swing, swing leads to result (hit, miss, whatever), result leads to next thing, and all of these things can be measured and teams can be built to maximize return based on those things. You can say, for example, that given a specific set of circumstances, a certain player will get a certain result X% of the time, and that will most likely hold up.
In soccer, though, so much of the action and the quantifiable events depend not on the actor, but on the recipient, that it can’t be measured in that way. For example, it may in fact not shed any light on how to construct a successful team if you know that Player A completes 45% of his passes. The reason for this is that the 55% of passes he does not complete are probably not down to his lack of skill, or to his teammates’ lack of skill, but to being in the right place in the right time, every time, which almost never happens. Does that mean that Player A is a bad passer? No, but the statistics say he is.
That’s not luck, that’s more being able to predict the flow of a constantly shifting and evolving game, which is incredibly hard to quantify via statistics. Not impossible, but difficult, and probably with fairly limited value.
95: That actually is a little better comparison, as the two have some similarities. You’re right though, hockey does tend to be a higher scoring game, largely ‘cuz it’s played on a smaller surface plus the game is moving a hell of lot faster (i.e. like, 30MPH down the ice).
If the Sonics leave, does that mean that the Seattle Storm is also leaving?
That Sue Bird is a hottie!
In soccer, though, so much of the action and the quantifiable events depend not on the actor, but on the recipient, that it can’t be measured in that way.
Show me the evidence that supports this claim. In the absence of data on baseball, I might say that hitting would be really difficult to quantify because it depends not only on the hitter, but also on the pitchers and the fielders. (And the weather, and the field dimensions, and the field conditions, etc., etc., etc.)
For example, it may in fact not shed any light on how to construct a successful team if you know that Player A completes 45% of his passes. The reason for this is that the 55% of passes he does not complete are probably not down to his lack of skill, or to his teammates’ lack of skill, but to being in the right place in the right time, every time, which almost never happens.
Just because passing isn’t deterministic doesn’t mean keeping track of passes is a priori worthless. Yeah, some passes won’t be completed due to bad luck, some passes won’t be completed due to good defending, and some passes won’t be completed due to bad play from someone else on the team. But you don’t know how large those effects are until you look at the numbers.
Not impossible, but difficult, and probably with fairly limited value.
Again, you don’t know how difficult or of how much value until you actually try. At a glance, you might expect baseball to be a highly non-linear game (and it certainly would be if team OBP’s ranged from .100 to .900 instead of .310 to .370), but it turns out that linear models work quite well.
erik,
RE:#86
Wondered when I’d get called on that. Yes they do have some, in a joint agreement with ESPN. CBS has the SEC, and NBC, (for their sins, I assume) has Notre Dame. Not including ESPN2 and cable available pay packages, I hardly call ABC ‘the’ college football channel
Show me the evidence that supports this claim.
I can give you reams of anecdotal evidence, but I can tell by your tone that nothing I give you will satisfy you. But here’s one quick example – you could have a guy that’s the best passer on your team, and he could have a crap day, or even a bad stretch of games, because all of his normally right-on-the-money passes are not gathered by their intended recipient.
Is that the fault of the passer, or is that the fault of the recipient, who couldn’t get to where he needed to be, or is it to the credit of the defender, who stopped the recipient from getting somewhere? In baseball, if a batter strikes out, it’s purely his fault, and if a batter makes an out on a ball in play, it’s credited to the person who makes the out.
In soccer, though, how would it be possible to ascribe responsibility? Again, an anecdote. A midfielder has the ball. HE surveys the field, and he sees one of the forwards making a run in a specific direction, and in his head, Mr. Midfield Maestro says “OK, forward, you’re going over there, I’ll put the ball there”.
But then, in that same split second, say that Mr. Forward decides to take a different route, due to some perceived or real obstruction. Mr. Midfielder passes the ball as intended, but Mr. Forward wasn’t there – whose fault is that? The forward, for not being able to read the midfielder’s mind, or the midfielder, for not being able to predict the forward’s intentions?
These types of things happen dozens of times a game, which is why I think it’d be nearly impossible to quantify. Again, doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying, but I’m not sure what it would tell you.
But you don’t know how large those effects are until you look at the numbers.
But see, this is exactly what I’m trying (apparently without success) to argue – however large or small those effects may be, I don’t see that they necessarily have predictive value in soccer, the way they would and do in baseball.
It’s the same thing as basketball, though — if you’re a guard and your forward has stone hands, the only way you separate that out is by looking at the forward’s inability to catch anyone’s passes. And if they manage to retain possession on 25% of a particular guard’s passes and that’s good, then you credit the guard.
The issue, though, is that you’re not going to get the kind of differential data that allows detailed situational analysis by person… it’s a thorny problem.
I still think you could get somewhere with even the passing issue, though.
In baseball, if a batter strikes out, it’s purely his fault, and if a batter makes an out on a ball in play, it’s credited to the person who makes the out.
Getting worked over by King Felix for a strikeout is not the same as striking out against Horacio Ramirez. A strikeout is not “purely” the result of any one player’s actions. And on a ball in play, there’s no reason to give all the credit to the fielders–Ichiro is going to have a different BABIP than Richie Sexson in the long run. So even there, you have to split credit between the hitter, the fielders, and the pitcher.
But see, this is exactly what I’m trying (apparently without success) to argue – however large or small those effects may be, I don’t see that they necessarily have predictive value in soccer, the way they would and do in baseball.
They don’t necessarily have predictive value. My argument is simply that they could and you don’t know until you check. Define some sort of passing percentage, and hire some college interns to keep track of it. Then divide the games up into two subsets (odds and evens or something like that) and check to see how passing percentage in one set correlates to passing percentage in the other set. Maybe it’s awful, but it’s not like it’s impossible to find out if you have the resources.
The issue, though, is that you’re not going to get the kind of differential data that allows detailed situational analysis by person…
See, if I were more statistically inclined, I could have written that sentence several posts ago, and saved everyone a lot of headaches. hahaha. That’s what I’m trying to get at, really.
Meant to say yesterday:
Props to Derek; road cycling, soccer and baseball are the holy trinity of sports.
You forgot fencing. Fencing rocks.
(newly minted fencing geek)
Fencing is why the Modern Pentathlon is the greatest Olympic sport.
One-touch epée fencing
Air pistol target shooting
Show jumping
Swimming
Cross-country running
Now that’s an awesome sport.
Big Mariner fan here, but bigger fan of the sport of soccer. To get a simple understanding of soccer, I’d encourage anyone (who hasn’t aleady) to go out and play a simple 20-minute pick-up game … nothing major. After 10 minutes, you’ll be gasping for air. For the following 10 days, you’ll walk funny. Take my word for it. A lot more physically demanding. Anyone who has played can appreciate the sport, not only for its physical demand, but the incrdible level of skill that is involved.
http://www.fanhome.com/forums/north-american-soccer/12533-moneyball-comes-mls-billy-beane-working-san-jose-earthquakes.html
This is probably such an old thread that you will miss it, but Beane is trying his hand at statistical analysis of soccer while working for Lew Wolf’s other team, the San Jose Earthquakes.
Linked the original source material at the link above as well as some initial thoughts.