Sharks vs. Red Wings – Scoring Chances Game 5: A very detailed summary of scoring chances in Detroit/San Jose Game 5, from Derek Zona and The Copper & Blue.
Tampa’s playoff scoring: At Behind The Net, analysis of Tampa Bay’s scoring in the playoffs and the role luck has played.
Absorption Probabilities: Keith Goldner of Drive-By Football continues his NFL Markov series by calculating absorption probabilities for drive-ending game states.
Head scratching moments – just how noisy is the NFL draft?: Code and Football simulates the scouting process and investigates how efficient the draft is.
Weakest Links: BBall Prospectus’ Kevin Pelton lists the 5 worst team positional situations in the league.
Player Personnel Executives: New data from Basketball-Reference — historical GMs/personnel execs listed for each team in NBA history.
Time to revamp All-Defensive team voting: SI’s Point Forward blog weighs in on the problems with NBA All-Defense voting.
How the Mavs Shocked the World: At Mathletics, some +/- notes on the Mavs’ victory from Wayne Winston.
Dwight Howard, fourth quarters, and the truth: Magic Basketball’s Matt Scribbins on the factors that caused Dwight Howard’s usage to plummet in the 4th quarter.
The meaninglessness of playoff toughness: At Truehoop, Henry Abbott uses the Dallas Mavericks’ example to pokes holes in the myth of “playoff toughness”.
The Dissolution of the NBA Playoffs’ Ruling Class: Neil Paine of BBR writes about the Lakers/Celtics/Magic’s domination of the 2008-10 playoffs, and the potential for their full collapse in 2011.
BABIP and BIP% Added to Batting Graphs: At The Baseball Gauge Blog, Dan Hirsch introduces new aspects of his site’s graphs.
Tigers and Twins and Short Fly Balls: Neither the Tigers nor Twins are hitting long fly balls, and Baseball Analytics’ David Pinto has the heat maps to prove it.
The Top Ten Hitting Performances Since 1950 in Tigers History (10-6): Mike Rogers of Bless You Boys ranks the top WPA games by Detroit batters since 1950.
Does the Ump Care How Long the Game Is?: The Baseball Analysts’ Dave Allen wonders whether umpires expand the strikezone during long games.
Falling BABIP: Major League BABIP has dropped significantly so far this season, writes David Pinto at Baseball Musings.
May Hitting So Far Has Been Even Worse Than April Hitting: Cyril Morong of Cybermetrics examines the hitting stats for April and May (to date) in both leagues.
Billy Heywood – The Big Screen’s First SABR Manager?: Sturgeon General of Rational Pastime argues that the central character in 1994′s “Little Big League” was managing with sabermetric principles.
Is Frenchy for Real?: Fangraphs’ Eric Seidman looks at the sustainability of Jeff Francoeur’s scorching start.
Justin Verlander’s No Hitter: From Baseball Analytics, a heat map (and the underlying data) of Verlander’s no-hitter.
Bill James On Colbert: Via Baseball Nation, a video of Bill’s appearance on The Colbert Report.
Three Baseball Book Reviews: PQ of A Building Roam reviews BPro 2011, Jonah Keri’s Extra 2%, and THT’s 2011 Annual.
Pitches Saved Since 1988: At BtB, Jacob Peterson presents the post-1987 leaders in Pitches Saved (how many fewer pitches a player threw than the league-avg pitcher would have in his IP). Greg Maddux is the undisputed king of this metric.
Scherzer’s WARP Drive: According to BP’s John Perrotto, Max Scherzer judges his performance using advanced metrics.
The Greatest Team in Baseball History: From Bill James Online, Part I & Part II of Bill’s series on the greatest teams of all-time.
Introducing a weighted goalscoring metric: At Soccermetrics, Howard Hamilton introduces a new metric for goal-scorers.
The Case for Dennis Rodman, Part 4/4(b): The Finale (Or, “Rodman v. Jordan 2”): Ben Morris of Skeptical Sports Analysis compares Rodman to Michael Jordan.
Miami Heat Dominate in Not-So-Close Games: At the WSJ Daily Fix, Carl Bialik writes about the Heat’s bizarre tendency to win blowouts and lose squeakers.
Nicklas Backstrom’s Regression: Backstrom’s decline is more about bad luck and circumstance than a decline in skill, writes HPro’s Kent Wilson.
More Shame For Washington Capitals: Timo Seppa of HPro finds Washington’s sweep to be one of the 5 worst upset sweep losses in the last 15 years.
Second-Round Home-Ice Advantage: From BtN, home-ice advantage for each game-state of a series in the 2nd round.
The Impact of Rest in the Playoffs: BtN on how much benefit each # of days off provides when heading into a new series.
A Markov Model of Football III: Keith Goldner of Drive-By Football continues his series devoted to building an NFL Markov model.
Ultimate 10-year draft grades (Part 2): More draft grades from CHFF.
Anatomy of a Loss: Variance in Orlando’s Shooting: ElGee of Back Picks looks at the Magic’s high-risk, high-reward shooting style.
Derrick Rose was Not the MVP on Wednesday Night: Dave Berri on Derrick Rose’ Game 2 performance and how the media portrayed it.
Underestimated Mavs: How everyone missed on the Mavs, by BBPro’s Kevin Pelton.
A cold new twist in the delusion of the hot hand: According to Henry Abbott of TrueHoop, our brains evolved to find patterns where none exist and confirm our own preconceived beliefs, not to find the truth.
Best Coaches of the Last Five Years: John Gasaway of BBall Prospectus lists the 5 best coaches from each conference over the past 5 years.
Yankees pitch metrics, early 2011 edition: From Don’t Bring In The Lefty, Yankee pitch data so far.
Happy 80th Birthday To The Greatest All-Around Player In Baseball History: Cybermetrics’ Cyril Morong celebrates Willie Mays.
No-hit Dominance & Futility since 1962: BtB’s Bill Petti has a graph showing the no-hitters thrown and suffered by each franchise since 1962.
‘Stabilizing’ Statistics: Interpreting Early Season Results: Steve Slowinski looks at early-season standouts in the stats that have already stabilized.
What’s Wrong with Edinson Volquez?: Fangraphs’ Carson Cistulli digs into Volquez’s numbers for answers.
Cooperstown Confidential – The Hands of Stone team: The worst fielders at their position since WWII, via THT’s Bruce Markusen.
When labour market research goes to the ballpark: From Bayes Ball, research that says married players tend to earn more than single ones, holding all else equal.
Run Expectancy Matrix – 2011 is 1969-1992: The game is being played like it was before the mid-90s, according to Tango’s data at The Book.
Hitting Streaks Don’t Obey Your Rules: Trent McCotter found that almost 3 times as many 30-plus-game hitting streaks have occurred in real life as we would have expected if we assume the game-to-game probabilities of getting a hit are independent.
In the Majors, Young Players Are Still Teething at the Plate: This year’s crop of debuts are historically bad at the plate, writes Sean Forman at the NY Times.
Do MLB Pitchers Really Suffer Post-Playoff Hangovers?: Wahoo Blues’ Lewie Pollis looks into whether rotations who go deep into the playoffs decline the next season.
2010 Sporting News-SABR Award Winners Announced: Congrats to the winners!
Instead of Taking Over a Bad Team, Relegate Them: What if MLB had a relegation system? That’s what Alex Remington of Fangraphs is asking.
Play-Index expanded: Tangotiger points out a new data feature at Baseball-Reference.
What’s Wrong with Derek Jeter?: Searching for answers with Fangraphs’ Dave Allen.
Economics of Baseball – Jose Reyes: A review of Reyes’ career by BtB’s Peter Hjort, plus a look at how much he is worth.
A Statistician Rereads Bill James: At BP, statistics professor Andrew Gelman offers his thoughts on Bill James.
Year of the Stolen Base?: Increased steals are a natural reaction to decrease run-scoring, writes Ben Lindbergh of BP.
NHL Penalty Shot Data: From Hockeycentral.co.uk, a complete listing of penalty shots going back to 1984-85.
Draft Economics: Brian Goff of The Sports Economist analyzes the challenges facing NFL GMs on draft day.
Zach Randolph Continues Career Year for Memphis: At the WSJ Daily Fix, Carl Bialik looks at Zach Randolph’s great play of late, but wonders whether he can maintain it next year and beyond.
Why players, teams are undifferentiated on “passing skill”: StatDNA’s Jaeson Rosenfeld did more research on why pass completion % isn’t necessarily a very meaningful stat.
Why the Goal Value of Corners Is (Almost) Nil: Evidence From the EPL: At Soccer By The Numbers, Chris Anderson finds more evidence that an increase in corners doesn’t equal more scoring.
MLS Defensive Production Week 7: Flipping around her chart from yesterday, Sarah Rudd of On Football graphs the defensive production of each MLS team.
Getting Defensive: New Jersey Devils: BtN’s Benjamin Wendorf reviews the Devils’ D-man usage throughout the 2011 season.
Smart Notes 5/4/2011: Chris Brown’s Smart Football notes on the Auburn offense, Rashard Mendenhall, the UFL, and the Coase Theorem.
Decade in the making: the ultimate NFL draft grades: Using PFR data, CHFF’s Jonathan Comey graded each franchise’s draft efforts from 2001-2010.
Holding serve isn’t nearly enough: TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott on the historical significance of a 2-0 series lead.
Why did the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers lose Game 1? Defense: ESPN’s John Hollinger looks at the defensive side of the ball in assessing the Bulls’ and Lakers’ game 1 losses.
What part of LeBron James quit?: TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott, with an assist from HoopData’s Jeff Fogle, presents hard data on LeBron’s infamous final games in Cleveland.
Grizzlies owner admits they’ve been lucky: From Ball Don’t Lie, a rare case of someone in sports acknowledging luck’s role in an outcome.
Some things literally never change: THT’s Brandon Isleib found players who have been on their franchise’s stolen base leaderboard forever.
Expanded Strike Zones: Which players have endured the most called strikes outside the zone this season? Jonathan Scippa has the answer at Baseball Analytics.
What’s Wrong With Ryan Dempster?: Nothing a little luck correction can’t fix, says Fangraphs’ Bradley Woodrum.
Is Ichiro Really a Free Swinger?: Ichiro is a “selective free swinger,” writes David Pinto at Baseball Analytics.
Career Profile – Bronson Arroyo: At Minor League Ball, John Sickels reviews Arroyo’s career.
Oh What a Difference a Year Makes (or Not): BtB’s Bill Petti plotted April 2011 wOBA against April 2010 wOBA.
Clouds help hitters, blue sky for pitchers: A new study found that sunnier conditions made hitter perform worse, while clouds helped batters.
Who has the best outfield throwing arm?: Yesterday we saw one attempt to answer the question; now Christina Kahrl tries her hand at ESPN’s SweetSpot blog.
Quick f/x – Max Scherzer: Don’t Bring In The Lefty’s Lucas Apostoleris breaks down the PITCHf/x data on Scherzer’s pitching repertoire.
Bill James Applies His Science to Serial Killers: A writeup by Wired Magazine’s Brian Raftery on Bill James’ new true-crime book ‘Popular Crime’.
The Best Ace So Far? A Look at mERA: At The Good Phight, David Cohen presents mERA — “mulligan ERA”, or ERA that tosses out a pitcher’s worst outing of the season.
Game Score-ing Liriano’s No-hitter: At The Book Blog, Tango applies his different Game Score variants to Liriano’s no-no.
What is Francoeur Doing Differently This Season?: From Jeff Zimmerman of Royals Review, a look at the batted ball data for Frenchy’s 2011 campaign vs his career norms.
Liriano No-No Shouldn’t Cloud Reality: Justin Bopp of BtB points out that even with the no-hitter, Francisco Liriano is having his worst year.
BOB – Frank McCourt gets nasty: The latest Business of Baseball report from Brian Borawski, with the Dodger situation once again playing a prominent role.
Cascade Failure: A philosophical post, from colintj of South Side Sox, about the intersection of biomechanics, psychology, and probability theory.
Heat Map for Liriano’s No Hitter: Exactly what it sounds like, from Baseball Analytics.
All-time all-young team: At SweetSpot, David Schoenfield lists the best seasons at each position, age 22-or-under.
Recent History’s Most And Least HBP-Happy Pitchers: Jeff Sullivan of Baseball Nation found the pitchers since 2002 that were most and least likely to plunk batters.
Losing It Semi-Quickly In Mid-to-Late 30′s Since 1973: Steve Lombardi of B-R found players who were good in the their mid-30s… until suddenly they weren’t.
Most All-Stars in a Playoff Series: Neil Paine of BBR researches the topic, which was also investigated by Alok Pattani of TrueHoop on Sunday. Miami-Boston is historically brimming with stars.
April Addendums: BJO’s Dave Fleming lists his 21 most intriguing players from the first month of the season.
MLS Offensive Production Week 7: On Football’s Sarah Rudd has a neat graph of shots/game vs conversion rate for MLS teams.
JQAS Volume 7 Issue 2: Check out Volume 7, Issue 2 of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports.
First Round Home-Ice Advantage: Gabriel Desjardins of Behind The Net studied Round 1 home-ice advantage in each possible W-L state.
Conn Smythe Watch: Roloson Tops Playoff MVP Watch: From HPro, Tom Awad’s latest GVT-based Conn Smythe rankings.
First Round Playoff Penalty Rates: BtN’s Gabriel Desjardins finds that referees didn’t swallow their whistles as much as you might think in Round 1.
Trading Future Early NFL Draft Picks Is a Bad Idea: Jason Lisk of The Big Lead went through draft history and found that trades of future 1st or 2nd rounders are typically big mistakes.
Why the Lakers are More Likely to Lose than You Think: ElGee of Back Picks notes how important Pau Gasol is to the Lakers’ chances, and why those chances may be overstated.
