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Welcome Welcome to wharton money ball. Welcome to a full hour of sports analytics
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Here on the wharton podcast network. This is kade massey hosting this july week With the whole crew and it has been
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a while since we've had the whole crew in here Even shane jensen is back in country in office Ready to go eric bradlow
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is here from points afar Audie weiner In the office as well audie's working. He's doing like doing the teacher thing at
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this moment Doing doing doing the lord's work on campus in philadelphia. I am not I am distant as well
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But we're all here together glad to be with the crew. We're going to run an hour This summer
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show as we typically do we're recording on tuesday In fact, we're recording as france and
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spain are playing the world cup semifinal in dallas, I believe is that right and Eric,
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bradlow tells us that spain has scored on a penalty kick early in the match to take a 1-0 lead We'll keep that
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posted as we go along because we are interested We will have a guest in the first half hour as we typically do these
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days and then we'll roll into what we somewhat Crazily call open lines in the second
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half of the show and see what is on everyone else's mind But in the first half we're going to take as a guide
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A good friend long time friend of the show one of the Absolute leaders in sports
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analytics that we know of anywhere Eric eager is here to join us. Eric is also in philadelphia helping oddy with
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that good work on campus working with the students taking a break from his Day job
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with the carolina panthers where he is the vice president of football analytics Eric, I may
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be rolling into his third season. Let's see if I have that right He of course was with pff.
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He really kind of helped build out the research program there at pff um And before
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that somewhere along the line, he picked up a math phd Kids got a few things going on and we always it was a
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tenured math professor. We can't forget that tenured math professor Not just a math phd.
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He's done a few things eric. Good to see you. Thanks for joining Okay. Thank you so much.
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Uh shane oddy eric. It's uh, it's a pleasure. I um, I can't remember what I was telling this to Maybe it was at lunch.
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Uh, you know, this was one of the shows that um, you know When I when I got onto the show for the first
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time it was like one of the like the fun You know, you do so many radio hits you do so many of these
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like content things uh for sports and this was a show that I had admired, you know for years and years and years and
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it was Fun to finally be a guest and now Uh, it was fun to hear my boss, uh, brant tillis be a guest
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a few months ago. I thought he did a great job. So Um, it's uh, yeah, it's it's really
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fun to be back on and even though I can't really talk football Uh, there's there's
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more than enough things that are going on. That'll be fun to talk about Well, I told kade that you would be wearing your
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math professor hat And joining us as an analyst and someone who just thinks about sports
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and that's what we do each week That's that's fine. That'll be enjoyable. Of course It's coming up on football season
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and so the the desire to ask you questions even on college football I was in the gym this morning and I was getting
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a replay of like Oklahoma south carolina and I was just eating it up because i'm
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so desperate for college football But we're gonna set that aside For the next half hour
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and just find out what else you've been thinking about eric What's cut your eye and
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why don't we start i'll start and then you go from there Start with the home run competition you and oddy at least maybe
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others you and oddy were at the ballpark last night at the home run competition you
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guys I know we're talking about it, so What cut your eye about that? Yeah, it was it was a lot of
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fun. I mean, I think uh, what's been cool, you know when you when you are You know kind of working for a vendor, right?
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You have to be kind of on call all the time and you know since joining carolina i've had a decent amount of like
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free time as far as um, you know this time of year and also, you know certain certain nights and weekends are sort of
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uh walled off thanks to some of the The graces of my bosses so i've been watching a lot more baseball with my daughter
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madeline and she's a she's a big-time milwaukee brewer fan and I I remember texting
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uh oddy and saying like hey, why are they are they stealing more bases? It's like just being so curious about a
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game that you sort of like grow up with and um, and you know, you know, you obviously read moneyball and all that stuff
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But then like as as I grew in one sport, I let sort of my interests and others wane a little bit And it's
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been fun to kind of reconnect with baseball a little bit and then last night, you
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know um being able to go and see uh You know, I remember there was a one of the batters, um, you know, uh
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oddy turns to me He's like yeah, you know of these batters his like exit velocity
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is not as good as the rest of them I don't predict that he'll do particularly well tonight And and sure enough that happened
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and it was it was just kind of fun like the amount of information that some of these Uh that some of these events
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give us and and um Can I ask you a follow-up question on that? Did why did you do you have some
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empirical data that suggests that exit velocity is strongly predictive Of the number of home runs
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like maybe you could also imagine i'll make us up Someone has only a finite amount
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of power to put into swings Maybe hitting 12 home runs each of 370 feet at a 95 exit velocity is better than hitting
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six of them At a 115 where you're swinging through the fences. All right, that's a great question and i'm
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gonna uh, I'll answer that and turn it back to eric as well. So the player in question actually was ben
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rice Um who has by far the lowest exit velocity among the players last night But
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he I think is second to schwarber and in numbers of home runs at this point in the season So what makes a home
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run hitter is not just exit velocity It's picking the right pitches, but ben writes clearly
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picked the wrong pitcher. He picked his dad and he couldn't throw it over Um, so and and he didn't
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seem to want to wait it out until the ball was right over him But it made a difference.
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I mean the the fact was is that the titanic home runs being hit Uh at the game last night that um, you know,
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jr Um caminero was hitting that uh, the red socks guy whose name i'm blanking on.
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Uh, remind me shane. Um was Unbelievable home runs. Oh, uh, you mean, um Wilson Yeah, sorry
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I mean I can tell you that When you don't get all of it or at the right angle having those extra five miles
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per hour Makes a difference being a home run and a fly out. There was quite a few balls that went
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off the wall well, and one thing that was really really interesting that you pointed out
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was the first two hitters got to hit with a wind that Was significantly or not. I don't know significantly, but like There and
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then the middle hitters To the end of the the group didn't get nearly as much wind with them and then The difference last
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night between the left-handed batters and the right-handed batters was interesting like the right
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-handed batters Seemed to have had a much better time of it. Um, and you know even schwarber like You
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know in his first set of you know First set of um pitches was not as impressive maybe as a second set of pitches
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And yeah, it was it was it was fun. Just looking at like the heterogeneity of the
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situations that even all the batters within the same uh competition had to face so I
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did a little bit of a pre pre uh Home run derby homework. Well, I actually did an analysis and um,
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i'll put the question to you So what I did was for every home run derby participant in the last 25 years I gave
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them a a score on what type of player their career has been or will has ended up A couple of them are on
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the edge like like last year cal raleigh isn't really kind of beginning and and uh,
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I rated The players by the group so the winners the runner-ups and everybody else
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I compared their average kind of quality rating on a scale of one to five um What do you think?
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I observed how career career runner-ups compared to the losers career post like career quality
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Over the entire their entire career So one number and i'm a little bit sketchy on
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guys like raleigh who have a very I tried my best Clear audio you want us to make a prediction of the average one
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to five rating of the winner the second place person and then everyone else Okay, I
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will guess an inverted you Okay Anyone else? No, no hypothesis. No. No. Yeah, great one shane.
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Yeah uniform. These are all like Already so he knows the answer no and this is the answer
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is not The winners are better than the runner-ups who are better than everybody else
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get out. Yeah, really And if you go look at the winners, I was looking for winners.
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You look at them and you're like, oh my god Those guys were great. Um Winning the home run derby.
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This is why this guy will walker. Was it whoever won last night? Um, it turns out it's not just it's
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not losing doesn't mean anything tons and tons of losers But the winners there's only maybe
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so to oscar hernandez who won last year I don't know what that guy's gonna be in by the time his career is over.
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There's only one guy Historian last 25 years who's clearly was not really a star who
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won Does anyone make a guess? I mean he played for the yankees for a while He was todd frazier.
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I'm like who the hell todd frazier, but if you look at everybody else, it's it's
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you know, they're big names and uh And and that's gets Big names, too. I I guess i'm more just sort of
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surprised that somehow the winner of this Seemingly it's it's I it's it seems to me
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like a fairly random competition Yeah, but it's not right additional i'm being a home run
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big home run hitter And I feel like all the big home run hitters. Yeah, I mean you're selecting for big home
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run hitters, but Beyond that it seems random. I don't know what to make of it I'm looking here at the list and I
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agree with you. Yeah, we could argue that justin mourneau. I mean, okay Yeah, but he wouldn't have
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ryan howard vlad guerrero prince fielder big poppy. Are you looking at a similar list of
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the second? Runners up. No, I have that list too. So that's why you have to norm it
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I have that so I have that list also I can show you that if you look at the runners up and then They
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just aren't as impressive as the winners. It's not that big a drop by the way, but All the winners I think what's
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notable is all the winners are stars and not all the runner-ups are I mean not even okay guys What about the new
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format? We talk a lot about tournament design This is a small tournament design and people made
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a fuss about it ahead of time 20 pitches No, no, no time limit. It's just 20 pitches and then this neat
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thing where if they hit a home run on the last pitch They get it make it take it keep on going What were
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your assessments ex ante and ex post of the tournament design eric? I I felt like it, you know, there
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was I felt like it was very clean Um the way that it was and then obviously the the cool thing that you have
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that mimics baseball Is sort of the infinite game if you stay alive, um, which is
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which is what the the winner took advantage of at the end uh, which I thought was a was a cool was a cool
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add to it, but yeah, those events are tough because You know, there's probably no one
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Optimal answer and you're you're basically you're going for entertainment probably more so than you're going
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for fairness in many cases So I found it entertaining. I thought that the the show moved on
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pretty well Um, and then obviously at the end it added the it added the anything
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is possible-ness to it That you really wanted sporting events. So I thought it was I thought it
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was a good addition good a good I always hated the timer. So i'm glad they got rid of that
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because I feel like I mean it's already a a bit of a synthetic environment, but uh It makes it even less like baseball
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I feel like if it's like you're on kind of this like continuous clock and I mean I I feel like it really Led
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the players to kind of exhaust themselves a lot more In the old service system. I don't know also I think also part
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of the skill that oddy talked about is picking the right pitches for you to swing
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at And so no one forced you to swing at that pitch. There's no clock running You could have let
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that ball go and you chose not to okay. That's an important refinement. It's 20 swings not 20 pitches 20 swings
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Okay, okay I like the refinement. I love the fact that the top round was was best four out of eight So
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you didn't have to get eliminated because you've happened to have faced the unbelievable monstrosity that
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somebody You know had uh, I like that. Um The you know, the real question to me we talked about this last year.
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Um, are they juicing the balls? Which is only I mean, it's obviously only entertainment, right?
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So it doesn't really matter. I hope so. Yeah You argue is if they can juice the balls for the Home run derby they
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can juice the balls at will for wherever and that's something that that is a little
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uncomfortable. Um, and Are you uncomfortable with the notion that they have the ability to juice the
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balls? Okay Oddie wants the ball to be the same ball as it was in 1950. Come on.
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Well, I do I what do you mean oddie? Don't leave me out of that It's an uncomfortable reality, I guess yeah, and I will
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say every player last night. I mean I didn't check Exactly, but but I think at least at least to first
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order every player hit a ball Last night further than they've had all season and maybe
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their career No But it's but but they're being thrown to it like a totally different
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speed that like it's right and by the way But velocity adds to distance and they're
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being lobbed at at 50 miles an hour Yeah But they it's easier. It's easier easier to hit exactly the way
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they want to hit it, right? But but you have a you have your career to hit, you know, and and a
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95 mile an hour fastball goes further than a 50 mile Okay, interesting. Yeah. All right.
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All right guys Question let me ask you one of the questions as a measurement guy
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What do you think? Let's start with eric eager. Let's imagine they reran the home run derby
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a large number of times What's the probability that the guy who won in your estimation
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would win again? Great question eric Yeah, it's sort of like these questions you get in the world cup
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It's like with a pre-flop probability of the team winning and then what happens after
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a goal? Like how do you update you update game state and then do you update the your
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your your posteriors on the players? um, yep, okay, so there's eight of them, um, I thought that Walker the guy that
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won had one of the the smoothest swings I think like relative to the rest of the field like I think that that would
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play more so i'm going to update from you know, my hold on eric Hold on eric. You're a quant you work in a sport
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with great skepticism about the eye test Have you just updated your posterior because of your
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expert ability? I didn't buy good baseball The areas are that you work with the tools you have
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I don't I don't have great Like I don't have like these these models for these these these baseball players plus I do think
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some players have a sweet swing man. Some players just have a sweet swing Yeah, so when I when I looked at when
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I watched him swing I felt like he was using well and there was the other part of he did he did he have
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the fortune of Playing in the first or in the second round where he didn't have to play out the whole string Which we
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talked about oddy on the way back. Um That I think that helped. I mean i'll probably say like 17 and
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a half percent That was the the only thing I was interested in was how far off 12 and a half you were going
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to move um Well, I mean, let me can I respond because I watched the same context.
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Um, I will say that The I mean walker was consistent all three rounds um, and so Schwarber was pretty consistent as well the
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others were more random, I mean we didn't see four of them around two, but I would argue that it's probably a little higher
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20. Um, 25 percent And you might give schwarber the other. Oh, I would give schwarber.
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I would give um I would definitely give um Uh, who else um junior caminero a good chunk.
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He was eliminated Um contraris looked pretty impressive contraris looked really good in the first first
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round He was crazy good in the first round But looked much more, uh, much less convincing in the second and that's where you
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get the the correlation, right? So the fact that walker went through three great And the others were schwarb schwarber had
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a way a very tough first half his first 10 swings Were pretty weak in the first round and he basically just just squeaked
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through In round one So, yeah The first two hitters were so prolific oddy that you
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and I were look look to each other after they went 13 13 And I want to say the third one went 12 And
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then we we said to ourselves what's the likelihood that 13's enough to make it to
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the second round? And then 13 ended up leading the first round not only just making it through All
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right, guys, let's let's leave that should as an outsider Should I think about the home
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run derby as I mean audience just told us that it's a little more diagnostic than
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I might Have thought but mostly it strikes me as Genius entertainment way to get more
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eyeballs on baseball. Maybe boost popularity a little bit. They keep on tweaking the Format, which is
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fantastic. We want to see experimentation, but it's kind of the baseball's version of the draft I
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mean the nfl has created eric eager has to shut up now for a second But the nfl has created this event in april
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that just you know Unbelievably increases attention to the league and that's actually meaningful that means
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something for future teams This is pretty meaningless and yet it seems to have done a
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similar thing But just also to be clear remember It's a self-selected process to get
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into the home run derby And then it's talking about winners of this self-selected process
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So the fact is if I put a bunch of first and second year players Let me oddy you could clarify your statement some
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of the like if someone won the let's imagine you had a first year player That won got into the home run derby somehow
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and won the home run derby You're not going to predict they're having a career like
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vlad guerrero. You're not saying it has Predictability. Well, I mean i'm i'm i'm don't know
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it But I actually am saying that that's a possibility I'm, not not saying it Is that what you say it's more would you
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say it's more just a a rat like you're basically just stamping of approval on a player Yeah, that's where People gonna pay attention
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to him in a way that they'd never paid attention to him at all I mean, I have to say I I emailed high
00:18:54
and bloom. He's at the cardinals. I said, where'd you find this guy? you know and because I never heard of
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him and I'm gonna watch his career going forward. Um, you know, but the thing is about
00:19:03
About the home run derby it's entertainment but it sells the game because it's not Not
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in the game and one of the things that's so beautiful about Baseball and two things
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i'll point out that you notice live. First of all, they hit it an Unbelievable long way and that is just gorgeous If
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you if you grew up around baseball watching guys hit a ball nearly 500 people Disappearing
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into the nether reaches of the fan. It's just gorgeous The other thing is they put all these amateurs kids out there trying
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to catch the balls They're hopeless at it And it gives you a measure We need the analytics on that.
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Yeah. Well also the philly fans were ruthless with them Like any time one of those kids
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in the pink shirt dropped the ball Yeah, let me ask let me ask audie. Let me ask a question both to you.
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Let me ask more to kate Because it comes back to motivation and stuff Is there any possibility?
00:20:00
That winning the home run derby early in your career Could be bad for your career
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Because you start to believe you're a hitter that you're not and or to audie's point
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No one was paying attention to this guy walker before they are now And now all of a sudden he gets tougher pitches.
00:20:18
Maybe they spend more time studying his video I'm, just arguing is there a possibility that
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this could have hurt your career I mean, you know i'm going to be skeptical of that but but I also want to articulate
00:20:30
the alternative possibility Which is this changes your conception of yourself? It changes what you think is possible But
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mostly these are things that I don't want to take too seriously Let us stop there
00:20:41
for a second because eager is going to have to leave And he hasn't had a chance yet to direct our attention.
00:20:47
I want to just say eric eager Where would you take us? We can't talk about pro football or college
00:20:52
football presumably even friggin high school football, but of the other Topics available to you.
00:20:57
Where would you take us? You could make us talk about anything you want Where are you gonna go?
00:21:01
I i've been interested in obviously the world cup because it's you know In my my
00:21:07
former like in my former field of of like mathematical biology There was this there's always
00:21:11
there's a this theorem that says like in competitive environments The only way that you get
00:21:16
coexistence is through stochasticity, right? And like that's basically like all of sports
00:21:21
and I feel like Eric Eric, you have to say that in english before we go on So so in competitive environments where there's
00:21:29
like a clear ranking and and that's not even true in most sports But but in when there's a clear ranking between species, let's
00:21:36
say the only way that you have coexistence is through is through stochastic like randomness, right?
00:21:43
and I feel like otherwise just the top that the the higher fitness species would just
00:21:49
dominate and take over Will just dominate because they're better at everything and so, you know,
00:21:54
you need you need you need either heterogeneous rankings so like one team's great at defense
00:21:59
one team's great at offense or you need Randomness, right? You need you need you know days where
00:22:04
the better team loses and and and so on and or the better species loses because of environmental factors that were unpredictable and I
00:22:13
think that um This world cup while having the top four clubs Be make the the semifinals Obviously is unprecedented And and in many
00:22:25
ways feels chalky having watched a decent amount of these matches I I have not felt
00:22:31
that that has been the intermatch five absolutely and so that has been kind of I
00:22:38
was at the congo versus england game where congo scored in the first 10 minutes of
00:22:41
the game of the match And you know we got until you know minutes 75 before england scored i'm telling you in it in
00:22:48
that stadium in atlanta Almost all the fans were either neutral or england fans and the
00:22:53
tense how tense it was for those 65 minutes where it was thought of that england
00:22:57
could bow out to to the the To the conganese was like was was was exhilarating And so I I want you know, obviously
00:23:05
to throw it out to you guys What has been your impression of the world cup both from like a competitive Competitive balance but
00:23:12
also a gameplay standpoint Um, I I have found it as somebody who is just kind of a soccer fan Not not like a
00:23:19
full-fledged one Uh and somebody who yeah, obviously because i'm on a team. I don't like gamble or anything Uh like
00:23:24
that, so I don't really have any skin in the game other than you know, wanting the u.s to do well um I
00:23:30
have found it as a neutral observer to be incredibly Uh entertaining and I I found
00:23:35
that the the gameplay has been has been fun to watch. What have you guys thought?
00:23:40
It it does seem I I'll just kind of echo um, it's almost like the world cup seems to have this incredible ability to
00:23:48
like regress to chalk like it'll like It'll tease and upset Like crazy and you'll get
00:23:55
all excited. You're like no this this would really be one and then it'll It's still just the
00:24:01
same four teams at the end that we knew was gonna be at the end so I I just yeah, I I I guess
00:24:07
I I feel like it's it's it's always amazing to me um Given the inherent stochasticity
00:24:15
or randomness I see in the in in the gameplay itself And the chances back and forth that it does end up being kind
00:24:22
of so chalky um And uh, but but you know, maybe maybe maybe worse maybe that's maybe i'm reading too much into the chalkiness
00:24:31
this time around too A couple things that stuck out to me eric were first of all like argentina to date Has not been
00:24:40
good Like they should have been beaten. I think they I forget it was egypt. They were down to nothing I think they
00:24:46
scored three goals in the last 13 minutes Um, and I think as I remember there was either a penalty or one called back
00:24:53
because of a foul away from the ball It went it went both it went both ways. Um, Egypt has one call back and argentina
00:25:01
didn't have one call back, right? And there was one in um as I remember when I guess it was norway was
00:25:08
playing was it england? Where there was a foul like three thousand feet behind the ball or something like that
00:25:14
that got another one called back So all i'm coming i'm not saying the teams that
00:25:18
are there don't deserve to be there All i'm saying is that we could be talking about an entirely different narrative in other words
00:25:24
If they play these games, i'll just go back to the same question. I asked about the home run derby If
00:25:30
they play this tournament all over again What fraction of times are these the four teams
00:25:36
that make it to the semi-finals? And i'm not that and and again, we're not going to talk about college football But
00:25:42
every beginning of every college football season kate asks us the same damn question which is
00:25:48
Pick the top four teams you want Assign the probability that these teams are going to
00:25:55
be like in the last four when it was only four teams in the tournament Kind of thing and i'd say oh, I don't
00:26:00
know 40 50 percent He'd run his stem the massey peabody said maybe like three percent
00:26:05
or something like that We always overestimate the amount of chalk and i'm not convinced after
00:26:10
watching these games That if we played this tournament a thousand times that there'd be more
00:26:15
than Oh, I don't know at most 10 percent of the time that these four teams would be the final four Yeah, but but
00:26:23
but but it would be I'm, just going to point out that eric is taking a different position than eric eager and shane started
00:26:29
with which was there's something It seems like there's something about the inevitability despite the Stochasticity
00:26:36
it seems inevitable that the better team emerges and shane's like maybe i'm misremembering it eric's
00:26:41
like I don't believe that at all One quick anecdote to throw into this on the norway england bit just because I need to
00:26:47
lament it a bit more Was that two for one that norway had with holland and their other player when they were up one
00:26:56
nil And it was late in the first half and the guy didn't pass the ball to holland And ended up not making a
00:27:03
play at all and it's like that would have been 2-0 And it would have been a different deal altogether It's like that's
00:27:07
another one to fold fold into eric's if you played this again thing But i'm i'm at a bit of a loss for what
00:27:12
the model is And we have a mathematician here to help us. What's the model of a game that feels
00:27:18
that random and yet? There's this inexorability about the better teams emerging or do we have it wrong audie was
00:27:24
going to try to get in Yeah I want to get eric to have the last word But i'm just going to get in
00:27:29
is that this is the first time that there's been one two, three Four in the seedings making it to the finals So that
00:27:34
suggests if you look at the rankings of the top four historically, there's typically One or
00:27:40
two of the top teams there and then two others that are quite distant So I think when we say the inevitability, it's almost
00:27:46
inevitably the winner um, and I think that that's ultimately what we're observing and in fact
00:27:53
We talked about on the show that that I thought that the the probability of a new winner Was way too high in the
00:28:00
betting markets I think it was like 30 and of course, it's not going to be a new winner all four are yeah, and
00:28:06
just to try to Put the record i'd personally cost audie weiner money because he was
00:28:10
no it's it's it's not you It's your it's it's my star student. Um, my one of my best of all
00:28:17
time. Zach bradlow He's the one who said he gave me the reason why it should be 30 And I got spooked out of it
00:28:24
and I ended up i'm not betting i'm responsible I think if you want to go all the way back to the causality eric
00:28:30
is the reason but yeah Yes, that's what I was saying. Eric. I'm the reason i'm That does work that
00:28:35
way shane was going to jump in shane Well, I just want to point out that I think eric when you were talking about
00:28:40
oh these same four repeated over That's too restrictive a definition of chalk Really I I
00:28:45
like kind of more Audi like if we really want to say about going chalk, it's No, no new winners basically because I mean,
00:28:53
yeah, I I mean this time england happened to be in the final four Maybe in like half the repetitions brazil's in the final
00:28:58
four instead. I'm good It's always the same. I was intentionally using restrictive definition.
00:29:05
I like your definition better. I agree with that. Yeah Yeah I think That you know make
00:29:12
it up as as eric eager was saying, you know, maybe the congo beats england could
00:29:16
very well be But let's see them beat three other teams pain and then france or their path Guys, I have a question.
00:29:23
I have a question for y'all. We've all paid more Maybe I don't know. Maybe audi hasn't audi has some hater tendencies
00:29:29
on this sport. We all have watched more soccer Over the last six weeks than we have on the
00:29:35
previous four years Um, what is one thing that you appreciate about the sport now That
00:29:42
you've learned or learned to appreciate over the last six weeks something new about the sport
00:29:46
eric eager first Yeah, I to me there's two things. Sorry. I the the one is how non-monotone
00:29:54
the win probabilities like if you just look at either the you know, the markets or
00:29:59
the the if you look at the um, like the the models The the the extra time and the and the penalty kicks especially
00:30:07
in this knockout round Uh, like the the the fact that there's like and and one of my friends alerted me to this So
00:30:14
it's not it's not necessarily original but I noticed I I cannot not notice it now
00:30:18
Um where it's you know, once you're getting in a minute 80 You know the the the probability of the favorite winning it, you
00:30:26
know Grows quite a bit because there's no time for an answer and then all of a sudden this new third of a game
00:30:30
opens up where There's an opportunity for the underdog to match if if there were to
00:30:35
be a goal scored by the favorite And so like that, you know in in you know in in games that are a little
00:30:41
bit more sudden death, you know in overtime uh, like like american football or at least
00:30:45
like or In some ways, you know the historical version of it you would have win probabilities that were a little bit more monotone
00:30:52
as the game was finishing um, so that that's one that I I I really you know, and then the other part that I
00:30:58
just don't think eric Let me just real quickly Eric real quickly because you're making a
00:31:03
very interesting point, but you're using technical language that some of our listeners won't with be
00:31:07
with Monotonicity means it's always either increasing or staying the same and never starts decreasing and
00:31:14
eric is pointing out that these probabilities Go up and come down over the late at
00:31:19
different points in the game, especially with extra time and that's odd for sports And that's
00:31:23
an interesting observation Yeah, just because you you have the you have these different sticking points
00:31:28
in the game that are that are interesting and and so it was just it was fun to watch that and to kind of
00:31:33
and think about it and then I just didn't grow up watching this or watching or playing the sport.
00:31:38
It's much more physical than I thought it was and Um that that part of it like I was why I forget which I
00:31:45
think was belgium I mean belgium had a guy in the I think I was center back or some some position I'd say this
00:31:52
is how little I know still but one of the guys like literally just like bach bodying other players in the middle of the
00:31:58
pitch for like the whole game and And that guy could play fullback for a team It felt like at the end of the
00:32:04
at the end of the game how physical he was And that's just something that I think it was fun to be introduced to
00:32:09
Yeah, that's great. Somebody else. Let's hear something from everybody on something You
00:32:13
appreciate and oddy yours can be negative if you want it to be negative eric bradlow.
00:32:17
No, actually, I I don't have negativity um I've enjoyed watching quite a bit of soccer.
00:32:22
I would say that it's much more fun to have a rooting interest and um And I know lots of people have talked about
00:32:28
loving to watch soccer just to watch soccer that part I haven't quite figured out yet,
00:32:33
but if you're Have a rooting interest that game is unbeatable Because you're just literally at
00:32:39
the edge of your seat for 90 minutes and you just don't come off it. There's no relaxation because there's no I mean
00:32:46
now they have hydration breaks. But other than that, it's just You know what? I don't get I don't want to be
00:32:52
negative what I don't get but i'm gonna be What I don't get is when you don't care.
00:32:56
I mean really what the hell? Um, it's uh, okay Okay, you know some of the rest of us might chime in
00:33:03
on that one I mine will chime in on that one a little bit shane or eric bradlow I'll just say a couple things
00:33:09
one is I realize Obviously we were more excited after the group stage in the first
00:33:15
game the u.s is very far away I mean they lost badly to belgium who would not is not really competitive against the
00:33:24
top teams Um, even just their skill level and passing It's like it's a totally different
00:33:30
game watching them play forget the outcome of the game Just watch the passing and the
00:33:35
movement and everything else. That was one thing the second thing was I I think It's crucially important to have
00:33:43
someone that Remind me oddy xg plus Remind me that that you guys were talking about
00:33:50
last week on the show. Um, which is again some guys Just help create goals and I understand like That's part
00:34:02
of the reason they've advanced but I mean Mbappe is special Messi is special Harry kane
00:34:10
is special Bellingham special so all i'm commenting on is is that to win Without one
00:34:18
of these i'll call them all-time greats. I'm in my opinion Is very very hard to do because when it comes down to
00:34:26
it You're going to need someone that either scores really efficiently or creates goals for other
00:34:33
people When it's not really there and I think having super super stars really matters, that's
00:34:40
just my opinion and credit to the u .s Oh, go ahead. Okay. Well, I was gonna say this just noting
00:34:46
the difference. We just saw the carolina hurricanes When uh stanley cup with a different philosophy their philosophy
00:34:52
was depth And we're not going to worry about going at the trade deadline to get a big star We're gonna we're gonna win
00:34:56
through having four great lines. It's very counter for hockey Just proved out this year than eric is suggesting for soccer,
00:35:03
but shane, please jump in well, no, and I mean, I guess I was going to make the glib comment that we've at least
00:35:09
advanced such that The u.s has recognized that when they have one of those stars
00:35:13
available, but they're not available for the game in question They just need they they need
00:35:18
to go that extra step and make the call Make the call. Okay. Shane. What else you got?
00:35:23
What else you got on the sport? I I unfortunately I have to go a little negative in that I I was I
00:35:29
continue to be frustrated by The offsides and the the way you saw in offsides is
00:35:35
implemented in soccer and I feel like a lot of kind of really cool goals Are called back kind of against the spirit of
00:35:44
I mean, I understand the spirit of the rule but I I i'm dreaming big of a future where We have like kind of
00:35:51
more like an end zone kind of structure And I want you guys to think or maybe push back on this if you think
00:35:56
it's a stupid idea There would still be a boundary somewhere that could be violated by
00:36:00
a by a there's still a line but it would be more like in hockey where all you have to do is make sure
00:36:05
that You know one thing there's not there's nobody in that zone Okay before the ball
00:36:11
is in that zone, which is easier to kind of enforce and and and kind of You're saying you it's okay to be off
00:36:18
sides as long as you're not in some zone Yeah, like changing exactly and so like
00:36:23
I mean, I understand the intent of offsides Like so you don't have cherry picking and
00:36:27
all these kind of like, you know type of behavior. I I get that but changing it to
00:36:32
a point where it's like You know, you can have a little bit more back and forth because essentially it just works to suppress
00:36:38
goals And a lot of cool, you know Essentially legitimate looking goals are suppressed especially now
00:36:46
with var aided kind of like You know by microns offside kind of calls All right guys i'll give mine we need to wrap
00:36:54
up and cut eric eager loose here But just to close the loop i'll say two real quick ones one the the diving is
00:37:01
just horrendous and possibly disqualifying for the sport if you if you could if you You
00:37:06
can decide you don't like soccer just because the diving I think that's utterly a reasonable
00:37:09
position to take I mean, that's just like it's absurd. We're training new kids every year into the
00:37:14
culture of Lie about what happened in order to advance your team But more what I
00:37:20
do appreciate and I think I appreciated more this time than ever before was And this
00:37:24
is my answer to you adi It feels to me like almost every moment of the entire match.
00:37:30
There's a contest of skill going on like can the player Keep the ball. Can the player keep it away from this
00:37:36
other guy? Can the player connect a pass like almost every moment? There's something that I couldn't do that's playing
00:37:42
out there and it's a contest of one or two guys And I think that's a neat um a neat feature of the sport
00:37:48
Why don't we stop there? We've kept eric eager longer than we expected to eric. We could go on for a long time
00:37:54
with you We hope to see you back again soon um, and um, we wish you the best with everything that's going to come
00:38:01
this season for the carolina panthers Well, thanks for having me guys. It's it's a pleasure and honor and like
00:38:06
like you said go panthers Go panthers eric eager vp of football analytics that the carolina
00:38:12
panthers rolling into what I believe is his third season in that position Which happens to
00:38:18
track he and brent tillis got there at the same time And that happens to track the progress of their one loss record go
00:38:24
track it go look at it That's analytics for you. Welcome to the second half of this week's
00:38:28
show We are just off the line with eric eager vp of football analytics with the carolina panthers long time front of the show
00:38:36
helped create the r and d group at Pff kind of turned it into what it became before leaving there um, he was also
00:38:45
with um sumer We missed that in the introduction. He was with super sports for a couple
00:38:50
years between pff and the carolina um panthers Eric always fun to talk to um, we
00:38:56
just oddy rolled off the show as well. Oddy is mid teaching and is wearing down vocally So in order to preserve his best
00:39:04
for his students He's going to take the second half of the show off eric Bradlow
00:39:08
shane jensen and I will be in here through the balance from about 15 20 minutes here second half of the show We got
00:39:13
a lot of sports going on. It's a good time of year. I'm curious we talked A lot of baseball
00:39:17
home run derby in particular. We talked world cup. What else fellas world cup It just flashed
00:39:23
up on my phone. So there's now it's 60 minutes into the game It's now two to nothing spain and
00:39:28
I just want to point out by the way that prior to this game france had twice the win probability Essentially of any other
00:39:38
team they were almost at 40 percent. It wasn't exactly 40 20 20 20, but it was close enough Um, and they're down
00:39:45
to nothing with 30 minutes to play Yeah, they've been the most impressive club Everybody has
00:39:51
said they the ex-ante odds were highest and then everybody's been more impressed with them
00:39:55
than anybody else So so here we get to see some of eric eager Stochasticity that
00:40:00
we were talking about and more the eric bradlow model of soccer than what we were
00:40:04
talking about Well, let's see. Let's see how it plays out. Um Okay, that's on the world cup front
00:40:10
what else what else fellas So I i'd love to talk wimbledon But i'm going to skip that for a second.
00:40:20
I'd love to talk Scotty scheffler and him missing his first cut in like 86 years,
00:40:26
but i'm not going to talk about that either Um, although if we go a second round, this is more for shane so Turns
00:40:33
out my son zach who eric you already mentioned his uh, you know girlfriend who's serious
00:40:38
with about to move in She's a big and i'm ducks fan and Leo carlson is on the ducks and Someone has to explain
00:40:48
to me how leo carlson Who I just i'm not an expert in hockey as you know, I just looked up his stats for
00:40:55
last season He scored 67 points in 70 games, which is very good Um, he was plus four.
00:41:02
His plus minus was plus four, which I don't know doesn't seem great to me How is this man the highest paid player?
00:41:08
in hockey I mean, it's it's kind of I mean I guess I can explain kind of the concept of like restricted free agency
00:41:16
in hockey um Where a hockey player has basically gotten I think to the end of their first contract But has not gotten enough
00:41:25
service time essentially gotten enough service time or has not been around long enough to be
00:41:31
an unrestricted free agent um so The kind of during that kind of period other teams
00:41:39
can basically essentially extend offers to the players Which the flyers did you know, and then
00:41:47
the the the home team kind of has you know The option to pick uh to essentially match or not and if they don't
00:41:53
match then the player moves and there's draft picks that come across in compensation So the
00:41:58
anaheim so this is a case where you've got like a young Incredibly good center like
00:42:04
I mean a a top player for the future, I think But like not, you know kind of certainly at a superstar level yet
00:42:13
but um that Anaheim was essentially forced to lock up They didn't want to let let
00:42:21
go but was forced to lock up. I think at like kind of a higher offer Than they otherwise would have because of
00:42:28
the philadelphia offer Yeah, so that's what I thought happened. So just to let you know, so he's
00:42:32
getting five years and 90 million First of all, I wasn't even aware that the highest
00:42:36
played players in hockey weren't at a higher level Like I didn't realize like I even
00:42:41
if you had told me 18 million about that I think it's the highest by 3 million, but if you had told me I
00:42:46
would have been shocked that that's the highest number Let's just start with that.
00:42:50
So hold on eric. Hold on. Hold on I mean i'm almost shocked in the other direction that there is somebody making
00:42:54
18 a year now hockey has been Categorically below everything else for a while. I see.
00:42:59
Well, this guy leo carlson is making 18 million a year okay, so real quickly the
00:43:04
by my base rate Explanation without knowing anything but not an explanation hypothesis would have been
00:43:11
an increased salary cap So I don't I don't know what the salary cap did this year, but the best way to get around
00:43:16
the highest This is this does I think set a new high water Though the cap is going up this does set I think
00:43:24
a new high water mark For percentage of cap taken percent of cap. Okay, at least Yeah, I I I you
00:43:31
know, I'm again we're kind of comparing aav and I I don't know exactly how the contracts uh, Structure and stuff like that.
00:43:37
But yes, I I do believe that this might be a new high water mark But it's going to quickly get passed.
00:43:43
So connor bedard is a big winner out of this Yeah, because he's kind of entering
00:43:47
that same kind of phase now um, and and some of the you know, it's sort of like I I think kind of um
00:43:57
Team team stuff obviously like in hockey like anything else want to kind of lock up
00:44:01
their young stars But I think those young stars are kind of getting expensive now Let
00:44:05
me build on what kade said earlier You remember when I was talking about and we were talking with eric eager about the superstar
00:44:09
model in soccer But we're talking about the the hurricanes who who won with depth and
00:44:14
all that So let's I make an assumption. I'm not an expert that there is a hard cap potentially in hockey There's a salary
00:44:21
cap in hockey, right? Yeah So, um, they were they were planning on paying carlson 13 million and now he
00:44:27
got 40 percent above that number That has to impact The team's ability to build the
00:44:33
kind of depth you're talking about So what impact will if the top end goes up? What like you could build a statistical model
00:44:44
that would say number one You know, you better build much more accurate models of superstardom
00:44:52
number two you better have a model then where you can't have that kind of depth because the salary cap is going to restrict
00:44:59
you because This guy's now eating up. I don't know what the salary cap is in hockey But this guy might be eating
00:45:05
up 30 percent of the salary cap. I don't know if it's no no, it's not that much It's more like is it
00:45:09
a hundred million? What's the salary cap in hockey? Is it a hundred million? I think I saw somewhere that I think
00:45:13
he's gonna be eating up like 17 to 18 percent of the load mean roughly 100 million It's a hundred million, but that's one
00:45:19
player who's eating up. How many players are on a hockey team? Is it 20? Yeah, 25 I think 25.
00:45:25
So this guy's eating up four and a half x The salary cap. Yeah, but again, it's it's the new high
00:45:32
watermark, but I think the highest before was like 15 60 and like it's not It's this is not a dramatic jump in that
00:45:40
percentage of the cap taken up by one player I agree It obviously does, you know,
00:45:45
just like we talk about, you know If you're going to have patrick mahomes on your
00:45:48
team making whatever percent of the salary cap You better draft really well because you're not
00:45:53
going to have as much flexibility I I think it does it does have say that same sort of effect.
00:45:59
It's just you know, I guess hockey doesn't usually have it Quite attributed as much to
00:46:04
one. It also doesn't have the ability of like a patrick mahomes to say You know what
00:46:08
or tom brady to say, you know what i'll don't worry Just pay me 40 million. I don't need 60 million in hockey.
00:46:15
These guys are grabbing every dollar they can and they should Yeah, well, I just I
00:46:21
want to I want to note that uh, eric is bringing hockey into the conversation Which
00:46:25
is not usually what he does so shane you and I should be really happy that brad.
00:46:29
No, that's amazing Tennis and golf i'm if it gets back to me, I will don't worry.
00:46:34
So shane you're you're up next buddy What do you got? Well, i'll go. Yeah, I mean, I guess i'll i'll do
00:46:40
a Baseball one just because you know, I think it was within this past week That justin verlander announced that he's going to retire
00:46:47
at the end of this season and Essentially, I I kind of see him and max scherzer once those both retires the past varon
00:46:55
In fact, it'll be I I think somebody calculated this out It'll be the first once
00:46:59
max scherzer retires once verlander and scherzer are both retired. It'll be the first time since 1879 That
00:47:07
there's not a 200 game winner in major league baseball And you could ask if there's
00:47:13
ever going to be another 200 game winner again But it'll certainly be do you know
00:47:18
who's third shane? I just looked it up while you were speaking. Do you know who's third?
00:47:21
Like right now cole probably gary cole. Yeah, gary cole 156 Yeah, it's not close
00:47:27
Yeah, no, he's I mean can chris sales. Uh, I think chris sales in that kind of range too but both I mean Getting
00:47:34
another 50 wins out of either of those two guys that they're staging careers. I mean chancey at best we may be
00:47:41
looking at the last of the Scherzer and verlander may be the last of the 200 game winners So this absolutely stunning and one
00:47:49
of the fun things about baseball is that you can go back 150 years and that's just extraordinary But when we grew up the
00:47:55
20 game winner was kind of a benchmark essentially. Am I thinking about that correctly?
00:47:59
What is the benchmark these days for good good starting pitchers and the number like a
00:48:04
good starting pitcher might win how many games a year 18 17, I think we I mean probably That's the probably the top wins
00:48:14
among pitchers not necessarily the Yeah, okay. I think the max still often gets to
00:48:20
17 18 in a season So, you know, we've got christopher sanchez. I think already has 11 or 12 11.
00:48:27
He won. I think at least 11 I saw him win 11. Yeah yeah, but shane what you're pointing out
00:48:32
is a couple things one is we talk about this like wins Are not just an individual statistic So first the phillies have to
00:48:43
be a good team for a long period of time assuming sanchez stays in the phillies You have to have a good team around
00:48:50
you because you could have a you know And then you have to pitch probably to win even 200 you probably have to have
00:48:57
A very very very good 10-year stretch Even in today's days to win 15 plus a year for 10 plus years And they
00:49:07
say, you know, you say well just win 17 a year for 10 years Oh, come on No, we're not Not when not when
00:49:17
17 is closer to the max across all baseball in the year as opposed to something that Even the elite pitchers can consistently replicate
00:49:25
Also, I want to observe I heard in passing I caught some news bit a week or so ago um Paul skeen said he
00:49:33
had started like seven or eight games without a win with the pirates, right? I mean, he's like one of the best
00:49:38
pitchers in baseball goes seven or eight starts without a win Felix hernandez was obviously had
00:49:44
a near hall of fame career, but was never really on good teams Right. Yeah, I think he should be in the
00:49:51
hall of fame, but we'll talk about that another day All right, let's go with one
00:49:55
more and eric eric, come on give me something i'm i'm going but it's going to be in service Of eric as well.
00:50:02
It's what I would have picked but you'll be happy with it eric and that is uh, The british open the open as they
00:50:08
say it's a cognizant. I call it the open is this weekend It is the last of the majors we
00:50:13
end in july now, don't we because the pga got forward? So this is the last of four majors.
00:50:18
It's at royal burkdale which is one on the rotation, um and and the notable thing
00:50:26
is that sheffler is still the Odds on not the odds on favorite. He's the he's the favorite but um Barely
00:50:35
and mackleroy basically is just right there behind him and the question that eric raised before
00:50:42
the show was You know, we think that there's a lot of momentum in golf not that we think we know this We know
00:50:47
the sports betters map it the quants map it they know this Sheffler missed his first
00:50:51
cut last weekend at the scottish open first time. I think 78 starts. Yep Which is it's a long way from
00:50:58
the record, but it's still a very it's like the fifth or sixth longest I think and a very good run, obviously Eric asked
00:51:04
why is he still the favorite if we know that cyclicality matters momentum matters in golf
00:51:09
and he seems to have been drifting down in recent tournaments, yeah, so What do you
00:51:15
expect out of sheffler coming into world royal burkdale this weekend I expect sheffler to play.
00:51:21
Well, I do not expect him to win I mean he hasn't won on the pga tour since his uh, he's won once early
00:51:28
in the season He played he's played extremely well. I told you about his kind of he's
00:51:32
been riddled with horrible second place finishes So it's not like a couple of them were
00:51:37
backdoor But I mean the guy still had a streak of 30 something top 25s in a row I I predict sheffler will be
00:51:44
in the top 25 Um, I will put him in 10th plus or minus five That would be my confidence interval for his performance,
00:51:52
but I do not expect him to win I don't know why anybody would i'm not saying anybody he I just given the momentum
00:52:01
right now There's a number of golfers top golfers playing better than him. So I I do not expect him to
00:52:07
and i'll stand by my interval real quickly Real quickly, let's just note also that scotty
00:52:13
is the defending champ I'm having one last year, but he's at 15 to 2 rory's at 17 to 2 Matt fitzpatrick comes in
00:52:20
number 3 at 16 to 1 tommy fleetwood Still searching searching for his first major 18
00:52:25
to 1 john rom Former dominant john rom he is fifth at 22 to 1 and then just running through the next few names
00:52:33
Chris gotterup who's been a new guy on the on the on the scene the last one again Um, colin morikawa is back to
00:52:41
playing good golf ludevig oberg the texas tech red raider um scandinavian xander shoffley Justin rose
00:52:49
wyndham clark cameron young robert mcintyre tyrell happy any of these guys could win these guys
00:52:55
will be open Yeah, this is a it's a good it's a good little run But I one of the things this reminds me
00:53:02
of we've I think we speculated on the last couple of years How many different this
00:53:06
is a modeling question for y'all just help me understand how you statisticians would think
00:53:10
about it There's multiple arcs That we might imagine is this a reasonable way to think
00:53:17
about here's here's here's the question How many arcs could we give a golfer to capture?
00:53:23
momentum in a in a chronological Performance as a function of chronological time and i'm going
00:53:30
to say like on three different frequencies. Obviously, there's a life curve There's a career
00:53:34
age curve to a golfer we observe this kind of um I don't know There seem there is momentum Like in and out of
00:53:44
the zone kind of thing There's this zone thing but then there's something kind of in
00:53:48
the middle which is like golfers seem to kind of go through these longer term ups
00:53:52
and Downs like more account was down for a couple years. It wasn't that he was down for a
00:53:56
month or a summer He was down for a couple years So how many curves how reasonable is it to model golfers this way
00:54:02
is to say let's throw an age curve in there Let's throw a heater. He's on a heater right now curve and
00:54:07
then let's throw kind of a medium frequency curve That just captures what seems to be
00:54:11
the truth about golfers that their games kind of ebb and flow Over a medium term.
00:54:16
Is that reasonable? And if shuffler entering is shuffler entering an ebb on that middle frequency.
00:54:22
Is he ebbing now in that middle frequency? What what it kind of struck me as you were kind of describing these three different
00:54:28
kind of Frequencies is it was kind of remind me a little bit about baseball hitters,
00:54:32
you know baseball hitters Certainly, they have the overall career arc they have The kind of
00:54:38
like within a season a lot of ups and downs kind of of like, you know, maybe like they're uh, Mechanics change or something
00:54:46
like that. There's kind of ups and downs that frequency. I think they're prevented a little bit Less
00:54:51
because it's a team sport and they'll get selected out They're those kind of like two
00:54:55
or three year period ups and downs are probably more present in golf Compared to a
00:55:02
team sport because they're just not tolerated basically in more of a team, right?
00:55:06
You don't observe them, right? All right. Yeah, I like it Okay, I think that's an excellent way to think about it.
00:55:12
You know, I remember you know Shane's too young as a statistician, but you well not
00:55:16
that you don't remember know who mike west is But I remember when they were doing
00:55:19
these time series types of wavelet decompositions like you observe some High, you know frequency types
00:55:25
of series and it's exactly what you're saying cade Which is you need you know, how
00:55:29
many different curve types or what frequency are you going to analyze the data? You're going to do some sort of spectral
00:55:35
or other form of decomposition of a time series And I think that is what you would find for golf.
00:55:40
I think you would find some long-term age curve or trend I think you'd find some short-term But I think there would
00:55:46
be some medium one which could last a couple of seasons and look let's remember Scotty
00:55:53
shuffler's last four years four years ago roughly he had won zero tournaments Okay, he's won
00:55:59
four majors. I think it is and 20 or 21 tournaments in the last four years If he
00:56:05
did that for the next four years You would have to put him in the top 10 golfers of all time just on his
00:56:11
record I mean 40 wins and eight majors would put you at tom watson greatness and
00:56:17
i'm not saying shuffler won't get there But okay, so maybe over the next four years
00:56:21
he wins one or two majors and only 10 tournaments, okay Well, then he's still as
00:56:25
great as nick faldo and phil mickelson and he'll be 33 years old and then he'll still have 15 years to do stuff So
00:56:33
yeah, I I think it's just we have forgotten that this man was 25 years old and had won nothing Nothing And now all
00:56:41
of a sudden he's a hall of famer. He's a hall of famer right now so I don't know if this is an ebb
00:56:47
and flow maybe it's just like It's not fair to come The only comparison you could
00:56:53
say is is he gonna have like the 12 10 15 year heater that tiger woods had that's a benchmark Yeah, it's an unfair
00:56:59
benchmark. He's had one of the great four-year runs In all of golf history and for
00:57:05
that to continue I mean Well, that I love it. I love god. He's shuffler about it's not gonna happen Right,
00:57:14
it's not but that that the inevitability of it not is interesting It's just interesting like
00:57:19
what's going on that they cycle in and out like what happened with jordan speith.
00:57:23
I mean, what I mean Spieth is a great example because speith I think won three majors and he's stuck on three, but he
00:57:34
had a 15 minutes Yeah We could make an argument that if we erase the last two years what i've been talking about in
00:57:40
our show for 12 years That was roy mcelroy Roy mcelroy had a four-year heater between age 21 and 25 People thought he
00:57:48
was going to win 15 majors and then for 11 or 12 years He won zero and actually didn't and and he won a
00:57:55
bunch of tournaments but not majors now all of a sudden of course He's vindicated because
00:57:59
he's got six majors and two back-to -back masters, but I agree with you speith had this incredible speech a great example And
00:58:07
by the way, I think most golf experts would be a question for rufus p buddy I don't think most people think speith's ever
00:58:14
getting back I know exactly. I I mean it's it's interesting because I feel like golf especially is such a Mix
00:58:21
of athleticism. It's both athletic and mechanics But it's also psychologically So mental right and so it's you
00:58:29
know, it's kind of I think I think it is more fascinating like something like tennis
00:58:32
I think maybe Their trajectories are a little bit more just athleticism based or whatever.
00:58:38
I think or maybe maybe hold on Let's on that note. Let's throw eric one more bone.
00:58:42
I watched the third set tie break that coca golf played against machova again in the
00:58:49
semifinals Where um, she she had a volley on match point She had a volley at the net on match point that she just
00:58:55
completely choked It was as bad a stroke as you'll see a player take in major. She tried to hit a touch drop shot
00:59:02
When she rockets the ball down the line the match is over. It was a bad shot choice forget just
00:59:08
that she didn't execute it It was the wrong shot. You just hate to see sports decided like
00:59:13
that You just hate to see those kinds of moments, but you worry about the athlete
00:59:16
in those situations Like when do they come over that i'm that's going to stay with
00:59:19
her. She has to somehow overcome it It was a really it was a bad moment Um, why don't we wrap there guys?
00:59:25
We've gone the full hour now Um for the whole team for eric eager our guests this week and for audie weiner Who is
00:59:32
working on campus with eric eager this week and has been in absentia this second half
00:59:37
of the show for shane jensen back From point points far abroad for eric bradlow here
00:59:43
despite being far abroad for the whole team Um for um d patel the boss lady for the grodd squad who is running the
00:59:51
show these days and jacob grodnick Who's on the board today many things and many thanks
00:59:55
to you guys for listening Come back and join us next time between now and then Enjoy your sports