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Welcome to Wharton Moneyball, our sports show where we talk about statistics and everything that's
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happened this week. We have in the remote locations uh Shane Jensen and soon we'll be joined by Kade Massie um
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professor Audi Winer of the Department of Statistics and Data Science as is Shane and Kade of course is in a
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different department oid operation information decisions. we never get the full thing listed out. And uh we're
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joined by Dean Oliver, which is always exciting. He's a regular guest on our
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show. Dean is a sports analyst at ESPN right now, and he's gone through lots of
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iterations and different work for different teams and has uh written several fantastic books on basketball
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and is definitely our go-to guy for all things basketball. Um which is now our transition because uh baseball season is
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over. We're sad about that. I don't know, Dean, did you catch any baseball
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or are you still Are you all in on basketball? >> I am pretty much all in on basketball. I
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I knew what was going on in baseball, but I I could watch the highlights. I couldn't really take the time to watch
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the games. >> Yeah. Well, you're in you're in Hawaii, so you were sort of out out of the time
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zone, but you know. >> No. So, first of all, I'm not in Hawaii anymore.
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>> You're not in Hawaii anymore. >> Second of all, Hawaii is like one of the
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greatest places to watch sports because they end at a reasonable time. You could
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actually watch the whole thing. They're not ending it at at three in the morning. Like, wasn't there one? Yeah,
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there was a game there. >> There was there was an 18 in game. I didn't actually stay up for that. I
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would have, of course, it involved a team that I was rooting for, but I did stay up till, you know, the nearly
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one:00 ending of the of the of the series, which was a fantastic game. Well, we don't have to talk about it
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with you. You didn't watch it. That's not your thing. We're talking about
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basketball. So, we're excited for you to tell us about all kinds of uh things
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basketball. Do you have a a quick summary summary of what we should be thinking about in the opening, you know,
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couple weeks of the season? >> Uh, I think uh Victor Wmanyama is a very very frightening player at this point.
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He is so big and he is quick. Uh, and I I think he can beat himself, but it's
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not clear exactly what you do to to take him away. So now, so VMY is this is his
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third season now in this in >> Yeah, it's his third season and and I think one of the things his last season
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was injury shortened and I think that's one thing you always worry about with
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the big guys. >> So just tell me a little bit about, you know, how long does it take for a a
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first round draft pick, basically a number one pick, to turn into something extremely good? Is that something you
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expect in the right away, second year, third year? Um, and how is he tracking roughly versus that?
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>> It takes a little bit longer when they're young like women like most of
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the the recent ones have been. Uh, of course, because uh they may be talented and everything, but when they're coming
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in and you're only 19 and you you're going on this growth curve where you're
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playing high school kids and you could just dominate them. You go to college and even if you're playing some of the
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best competition, they are several inches shorter, several inches maybe a foot, not they're not as
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wide as long. And so the adjustment, you're definitely going to have an adjustment period of at least two years.
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And I think that's what we're seeing with Guanyama right now is we're seeing
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we're seeing him offensive growth still in process. his defensive impact. It's It's hard to find
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a comparison for him because he is just so big, so mobile, so able to just intimidate everything.
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His block rate, I think I looked at he's basically blocking 10% of all all two-point shots. Um,
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>> good. >> And and Keem one, I think, was like at seven or eight peak. And they're not.
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Yeah. What what he's doing is crazy. Especially when you couple it with all the other things that he's doing,
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>> which are what exactly? >> Uh so he can handle the ball. He can bring the ball up court. There was there
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was a highlight play where he blocked someone at the rim, got the defensive rebound, and then brought it back up
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court and then and made a shot and just all in I think it was like three strides
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after we got the the defensive board, too. He's just he's just you don't know
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exactly what to do. He's got some of the elements of of Giannis in the incredibly
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long stride and ball handling. Not quite as shifty as as Giannis is yet, but Giannis wasn't that way initially. So,
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he's he doesn't have his three-point shot fully dialed in yet, but you kind of
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wonder how are you going to defend that, especially when you can go by you on the
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dribble at the same time. I think these are he's got John Wooden said that quickness was more important than
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height. I don't know if I ever believed that, but people always put those two
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one and two in terms of kind of basic physical skills and he's got both of them. It's just scary to think about.
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>> Yeah, I mean it kind of sounds like he's got like he's kind of a nightmare
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matchup right now. could be that teams haven't I don't know if you've seen yet
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in in kind of the matchups he's faced whether there is you know like is some
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like whether there's going to be strategies that come out for dealing with his kind of physical dominance and
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his physical skill set whether you can look back in history for any kind of strategy or whether he's kind of a one
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and one and they're just going to have to you know uh learn on the fly I don't
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know if you you mentioned some historical precedent already for him do you think there is some kind of you know
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somewhere in base basketball history we come look back and sort of see like how how do you kind of strategize against
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somebody with this kind of physical skill? >> You know, I think teams are going to end
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up using trial and error more than they are going to use history. I I think people try to think back to the things
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that are kind of close, but he is he's unique. He is he is um as much as people
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called and say Chris Tataps Porzing is the unicorn at some point and and KP is he's tall and he can shoot I mean he's
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got a great defensive presence you add another couple inches to him and you add uh quicker feet and better ball handling
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then you've got Wimmanyama so what are you going to learn from the comparison
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to KP? Um, probably not anywhere near as much as you need to. >> So, I mean, what do you think this means
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for the Spurs? Are they going to just dominate? What's it going to How does that set out?
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>> You know, it's I I think coming into this season, most projections were that
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they were going to be about 500. >> 500. Okay. >> And they started off undefeated. They
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now have a loss. They look pretty bad actually in their loss to Phoenix recently.
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what we saw was just so dominant. I'm betting the that the over on the the win total is now quite a bit higher than
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your 500. >> Well, that's actually an interesting question because usually I mean we don't
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have Kade here right now. He would start talking about overreaction and that what
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can you say after six games that you should be shrunk pretty heavily towards your preseason forecast.
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>> Yep. something I think in what you're observing in Webmanyama seems to be so
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radically different almost as if we the prece just got it wrong and we just need
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to toss it and and replace it is >> plus because of his injury you kind of
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had I guess more additional kind of prior uncertainty in what you know in that kind of preseason
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>> there there's a few factors that end up relevant here is yeah you kind of forget
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what they were um last year and they they were not particularly good he got perk the end of the season. Stefan
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Castle won rookie of the year, but you know, he wasn't great. He was he was a
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rookie himself. >> Um, he is definitely better now. They drafted Dylan Harper, who started off
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the year quite good. Uh, he just got hurt though now too, so they could running into the injury book. And
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Harper's going to be out for a while. Uh, so, but they they have a number of
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of good pieces. Um, and as long as I think WebMan, one of the things you notice is you look at the individual
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numbers for a lot of the players, the Spurs, how much better they get when he is on the floor. Uh, it's it's like this
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whole division of credit. How much credit do you give Wyama for making it easier for the other guys to actually
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defend uh versus >> So is he is he just attracting attention this so-called gravity or is he making
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>> it's funny what >> you call him gravity what I would say is the most relevant aspect of him is his
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anti-gravity in some his def he has defensive anti-gravity no one wants to get close to this guy
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>> because he's so long and so big if we have gra we have this gravity metric on
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the offensive side or how much people stay with Steph for instance when he's
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out at 30 ft. On the defensive side, you want to almost characterize anti-gravity because
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no one wants to go near this guy. And uh what that does is it makes it a lot easier to put pressure on a ball
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handler, for instance, because you don't have help responsive. You don't have to
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help as much. You don't have to help in the middle because you've got this guy
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who covers so much space. um you can guard your man a lot better, >> right? So you don't have that strange uh
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strange sort of game theoretic problem where someone's driving down the middle.
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You have one person there blocking him. That's not enough for an ordinary human
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being to block and then so that someone else comes help leaving someone in the corner wide open pop it in and then they
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get the shot with you're saying he doesn't need help. You can keep everybody guarded and that's just a huge
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offensive just crush >> that. I I love the fact that you Yeah. you say game theory aspect of it too
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because yes it does it changes the the dynamic of that game theory so >> or I mean another perspective I wasn't
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really thinking game theory I was kind of thinking you know it kind of fundamentally points to like a m a
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massive endeavor of offensive strategy is to create space in the offensive zone and he inherently is a is is a space
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restricting you know is probably the most powerful space restricting force you could have as a in the def uh you
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know from the defensive side so it's kind of you know he's He's really anti,
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you know, kind of optimally antitheical to one of the main goals of offensive possession,
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>> right? So, so I guess that means that so most of the space comes on the outside,
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right? That's where volume grows or space grows, you know, much much rapidly
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rather than inside. But what he does is he takes away that that inside shot, forcing everyone back and make it much
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more difficult to shoot from three. Is that what what's actually happening? He
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he's allowing all his perimeter teammates to take up the space out on the perimeter because they don't need to
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come in and help him. He's just he goes puts his arms out and he's got pretty
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much the entire covered. >> So, is there any particular offense that would be more successful against a team
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with Wimyama with the Spurs or is it they're all kind of >> elite Golden State where they're just
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launching threes from like, you know, the distance and still being successful? I don't I don't know. This is kind of
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what I was trying to get at with the previous matchup question, whether there is sort of like some combination that at
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least matches up as well as you can against something somebody like women. >> I don't think we know um particularly
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well yet. I think one of the ways you can create a little bit of space on the perimeter is when you have defensive
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guards and stuff that are putting pressure is is you can basically set screen and roll and then you get to
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about the mid-range before Webyama's impact is actually all that big and you
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take some of those shots. Now, I didn't watch the Phoenix game in entirety the
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other night. I actually caught it after they were well ahead. Um, but Devin Booker is one of those guys and Phoenix
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has him. He he definitely is willing to put the ball on the floor and take the mid-range and not only willing to, he
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can make them. And so sometimes you almost have to go counter rule of thumb analytics wise to beat these
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people who are just so good at at doing what analytics says. >> So let me ask a question specific uh to
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like an analyst. So what does an analyst analyst do like during the week to help
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prepare their team to face a particular upcoming opponent? Is do they try to invent things to I mean how does that
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work? And I'm speaking almost because we have all these people who have these
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jobs now. I'm curious what do they do? >> Uh when you're working for a team in in
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the regular season it's it's very tough. Um because first of all you can sit
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there and say we're preparing preparing for when like this coming Saturday or
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something between Tuesday and Saturday you may have two other games >> and so you can't really put in a whole
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lot and especially early in the season like now it's you're trying to perfect who you
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are rather than trying to adapt too much to him. Now that being said, what you what teens will probably do if you do
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have a day off or two days off before you face him is you you will watch more and then you will put in like, "All
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right, guys, these are this is what we're thinking of doing." And it will be
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a combination of what an analyst uh and coaches are kind of thinking of doing. The statistical analyst,
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they're trying to look for data for what has particularly worked. Um, and so they
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may have a history. You may go back and look at all the games where when Myama's
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defensive numbers were not very good and the opponent actually burned them. You would probably, the coaches would
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probably be looking back at that Phoenix game and what did Phoenix do? And then you're going to try to mesh those
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numbers that what you have over the first three years, two plus years of WBY's career with what they've seen in
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the tape. and then you come up with suggestions and you you may still fail but uh you try a number of things over
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the course of the year and and hopefully you find something. >> So So before we change topics because I
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want to talk about the rookie class >> quick overunder on Spurs wins over the
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season. What do you got? >> 50 >> 50. So that's substantially better than
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than 41 or whatever the preseason. You don't expect them to dominate. I have no insight, so I can't disagree.
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All right. While we're on basketball overunders, our our sixers, what do you
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think of them? >> Yeah. I wanted to ask you, Dean, if if we should be getting excited. I don't
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know. I mean, I bet you if Eric was here, he would not be excited. Yeah, >> I am excited on the one hand in that I
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think uh like it's actually good to see Philly win without Embiid paying playing
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playing a significant role. >> When you've got um Tyrese Max and Frank
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playing so much better than we've seen him play and he was he was good before.
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Um the fact that someone else behind Embiid can carry the team I think is uh it's kind of what they need. Um, and I
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always worried about Embiid um being kind of the leader on that on that team. Uh, I think Maxi can probably be the
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more democratic leader. I mean, make everybody happy. Uh, whereas it can be tough when you just have someone like
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Embiid who can score. So, um, I think this is a nice change. I am a little worried that maybe Maxi is playing a was
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a bit over his head, but I do think it's there's a real improvement, just not
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quite as good as what we've seen. >> Well, Edcom is also like obviously you
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get a nice cheap rookie like him, that's a good sum. And they got Jared McCain
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comes back. >> It's actually very interesting because when is doing exactly what we projected,
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right? We projected him to be this good in his third year. So, we don't doubt
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his success. >> Yes. >> But, uh, I think with Maxi, we never we don't expect it. So, I think it's I
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think regression of the mean is probably in the cards. Um, which means that that's your f my fancy way of saying
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Sixers fans don't get too excited. [laughter] Yeah. All right. All right. So, let's
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talk about the rookie class. We have, of course, the lead rookie, uh, Cooper Flag, and others. Tell tell us what you
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think about what how they they're faring out. So, uh, one of the things that we did at
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ESPN is we, uh, we put together kind of a preview of the year. And, uh, Dallas didn't project particularly well. And
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part of it was that Kyrie is not coming back until January or so like that. Anthony Davis is is good, but he's not
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he's not going to carry you. And then, yeah, you have a bunch of guys who are
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what my old GM used to say, just guys. It's not that they're bad. They're just
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they're guys. They help you a little bit. They're they're better than
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replacement level. Um and then we kind of did a simulation. How good would they be if Cooper Flag was as good as the
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hype? Um basically one of the best rookies that we've seen in the last 10 to 20 years. Then they then they're
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pretty good. Uh they end up being like a a top four to top six seed in the West,
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which is not easy to do. Now that being said, Cooper Flag has not been that guy so far. He has not been He has been um
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kind of a typical rookie struggling with a lot of things. Uh one of the things that we've seen with him is that uh he
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actually a very key breakdown a key split and how well he plays versus when he's playing
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well versus poorly is whether they actually have a point guard on the floor. If they have D'Angelo Russell on
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the floor, they have Brandon Williams on the floor. Cooper Flag is actually kind of close to
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what we were simulating what what he could be as a rookie, but he's played more than half his possessions, I
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believe, without those guys. And he has been awful. >> Genuinely awful. Wow.
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>> He's uh without those guys, he's shooting 31%. um more turnovers and less time than um
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when he's playing with those guys. So, it's uh yeah, he's he needs someone to
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kind of carry the offense. People talked in the preseason. There were there was one highlight play where he brought the
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ball all the way up the floor, backed down a really good defender and and made it look easy. And I think that kind of
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stuck with people. Oh, he can be our 6'10 point guard and he's not really
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been able. >> Well, you know, the thing is we just talked about this with me. Rookies
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generally are not they do they ever live up to their hype? I mean, think about it
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is that I mean historically, do the great players of today did they have good rookie seasons? I mean, maybe
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that's not the right that's really not the that's the post hawk. I'm cheating,
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right? You look at the great Yeah. Right. But how I mean, go look forward looking and backwards looking. So, start
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with back with forward-looking. Um, how many of the of our great of our, you know, really excited first picks turn
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into something? Maybe I'm jaded because of Philly. They never do, right? But,
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um, but how often do they hit their their max and then go backwards and say, "Look at the great players of today.
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Were they rookie rookie sensation?" Usually not. >> So, there are two players that always
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come to mind when we talk about rookies for me. One is one is Chris Paul because
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I remember doing an analysis of him when he was in college. And one of the ways I
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looked at it is I wanted to see how much he dropped off really when he played against good competition uh when he was
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in college to make some sort of projection of okay now you're going to be playing really good competition and
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he really didn't drop off. Um and so he ended up having a very good rookie season. Uh he was obviously not an NBA
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all firstteamer or anything but he was very good. Um, but probably the best rookie that I know of, the best rookie
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performance was by a guy we all know was a second round pick, but is the best player in
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basketball. Go >> was outstanding as a rookie, but people just didn't pay attention to him because
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he was still slow. He had all those things that people remembered like like what you were talking about their
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priors and stuff. People's prior on him was he's a second round pick and so
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people didn't kind of recognize that he was doing all the things he he was his numbers legitimately were all NBA as
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a rookie. And so it's it's not necessarily a number one pick. Obviously LeBron lived up to it. LeBron lived had
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a had a great rookie year. He was very good. It wasn't all NBA level, but it
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was it was good. Uh you have the failures. You have guys who fail for different reasons like Zion Williamson
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who fails because of injuries. >> Right. Right. Kade, good to have you. >> Glad to be here. Glad to be here. More
00:20:58
technology challenges. I'm trying not to get fired. Y'all Y'all should just fire
00:21:03
me. 11 years in. still having technology challenges. Dean, you said this thing about your analysis of Chris Paul
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splitting his college performance as a function of the quality of the opponent. And I'm curious how often we do that in
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basketball. Is that a common way to look at players? And is it is it is it is it
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revealing? Do we often see people who don't degrade as you go? I would think
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that'd be a great analysis and yet I haven't heard of it. >> Um, most of the time you don't get a lot
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of significance with it. you know. Uh so back then of course players played usually more than one year which kind of
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limits your statistical significance. >> So Chris Paul played two um which gave
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you more of a chance and the fact that like whoa okay this is it's not usual to
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see this. >> Uh so you do try I I do look for this I do look for this uh whether there's
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there's some there are some players who go off a cliff. they basically if they
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start playing the really good teams they play much worse. Um but there's a s
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there's a number of those that you just don't have enough statistical significance to buy it um when you're
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talking about prospects who are coming in who are joining the NBA after one year. So it gets tough to use that. It's
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an indicator if you put it with other things, but it's not as strong as as you
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would like. >> All right. Well, let's hear about the Lakers. They they have this uh all-star
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trio for real. Are we looking at something interesting over there? >> Yeah, I think we are. Uh I think one of
00:22:38
the things that was in the last book, Basketball Beyond Paper, is there was it was almost a footnote about Austin
00:22:44
Reeds. Um and that was when he was a rookie, I believe. Um there are players who there are not very many players who
00:22:53
are what I was calling four level scorers. Basically, they can finish at the rim, they can finish in the paint
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away from the rim, they can make mid-range shots, and they can make threes. And Ros Austin Ree was was one
00:23:06
of those. Uh, >> Dean, real quickly, can you clarify the distinction between finishing in the
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paint and mid-range shots? >> So, mid-range, uh, what I'm calling mid-range here is everything outside the
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paint, but inside of the three-point shot. And then there's within the paint,
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there's two different shots. There's at the rim and then there's like floaters
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like 15 foot just inside the foul line. >> Yeah. And so we've like Austin Reeves is
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has not necessarily fully duplicated what he did as a rookie, but he's been very close. and these players who
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actually can shoot from all these distances well and actually create. That's the other thing that's about this
00:23:49
this trio in the in LA is that they all not only can shoot but they can create for other people and that ability those
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that combination of abilities makes it very difficult for a team to for a defense to really deal with that.
00:24:07
So ultimately you're thinking the Lakers are very good. >> You know, um some of my skepticism
00:24:14
actually relies is is align with LeBron now. >> LeBron Well, Braun is like 100 years
00:24:20
old, right? I mean, >> and that's big part of the reason is is what we saw with LeBron last year is we
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definitely saw a decline. We've seen him coming down and his mountain was so
00:24:29
high. He his peak was so incredibly high. uh he's come down quite a lot and I'm wondering whether he's
00:24:37
going to mentally be able to deal with his body not doing all it could before. >> Well, you know, it's interesting. So,
00:24:45
so, so, so Eric isn't here, but this is what he would say. He would say that
00:24:49
that K that um that LeBron can't be LeBron of yester year all the time, but he can put it on when he really needs
00:24:56
to. That would be my question for you. Can he even still do that? I don't think so. No. [laughter] I mean,
00:25:05
Audi, great job channeling Eric. That's really That's really good. >> I know. I think I've got all of our
00:25:09
specialties down. >> Yeah, we can we can chat GPT each other pretty decently, I think, at this point.
00:25:15
One other question while we're in the West. Um, I got to ask about Durant and
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Houston. >> Ah, one of my favorite teams. Yeah, I I really like watching those guys. Um, I
00:25:26
really like him in part because Alparan Shenun was kind of under the radar and um, great passer. Another guy who like
00:25:35
Joic has this ability to see the floor. He's not in Yokic, not anyone's really
00:25:39
in Joic's category, but uh, I think uh, Durant said something about loving to
00:25:47
play with Shenun because Shenun sees all the options so quickly. And I I did an analysis. This is a few days old at this
00:25:55
point, but basically Durant is dominant with Shangun on the floor and not very good with Shangun off the floor. Uh I I
00:26:06
expect that to regress a little bit to the norm, but I it it was significant enough that I expect it to persist. Uh
00:26:13
just not to that same magnitude. Um and and Shenun, just kind of look at it. Shenun knows how to make the right
00:26:20
reads. He take puts so much pressure on every defender to keep track of their guy. So, uh, it was fun last night.
00:26:28
Like, Shingun was called on to to go to basically decide what play they were going to run and go one-on-one with
00:26:36
Durant off the ball last night to win the game basically. >> Wow. So, let's let's K, you want to
00:26:44
>> I want to follow up. This is probably where you want to go, Audi. I'm curious.
00:26:46
So because I know Dean has been interested in the last year, especially his whole life, but especially in the
00:26:50
last year on this kind of partiallying credit um on the NBA court and this is a question that's of deep interest to us
00:26:58
across sports of course and I think even beyond sports because so many uh so much
00:27:04
of production in groups is interdependent and so it's hard to figure out who's dragging the group down
00:27:09
or who's elevating the group. So to what extent have you made progress on this?
00:27:12
And you can even take Shangon as an an example in Houston. How is it you're figuring out how much credit to give him
00:27:18
given that it often happens through other players. It shows up through other players.
00:27:24
>> Uh yeah, I mean fundamentally this this question of how much credit do you give
00:27:30
and this is one of the demonstrations I actually do when I'm doing division of
00:27:33
credit is basically the pass and the catch. That is a fundamentally team exercise, right? Like that those two
00:27:43
people their success is based upon whether you toss it well and you catch it well. You complete both of those
00:27:49
things. And so each of those things has a a difficulty. But say if you throw it a little bit offtarget, it makes the
00:27:57
catch harder. So people in implicitly want to uh give a little bit more credit to the person who caught it if it if
00:28:04
it's a bit offt target. But if um if they miss it, they get less blame, right? If it's a if it's offtarget, they
00:28:12
may have still had a chance. And those are those that's giving you an idea for
00:28:17
what are the parameters that you can use to kind of divide that credit. How hard
00:28:22
were the initial events? And so if we extend it more, when you have a player who's moving, the catcher is moving,
00:28:30
that makes the thrower's job a little bit harder, right? because they have to
00:28:34
time it, they have to lead the the player and stuff like that. So all of these there are the these factors that
00:28:41
make each thing harder. So to the degree that I can, which is far less than what
00:28:45
I've just talked about, you put that into into basketball and you identify the passes and how difficult were some
00:28:52
of the passes that had to be made, how difficult were the corresponding shots, it's a lot easier to make a shot at the
00:28:59
rim than to make a three-point shot, >> right? And it's it's correspondingly it's
00:29:05
difficult to make the pass to someone at the rim because the defense is usually taking care of that first.
00:29:10
>> Right. So just to point out uh Dean came to Moneyball Academy over the summer and
00:29:14
we did a live demo with passing basketball. Um which illuminates those differences. My question is I I imagine
00:29:22
you can relatively easily do that by watching. Um you can if you're good at it, you can score a pass and a and a
00:29:29
catch. Is it is the technology and the analysis of the data good enough to do that automatically yet or is that
00:29:36
something that is still being worked on? >> Uh I believe the technology is act is
00:29:40
pretty good to do a lot of this now. Uh the matter of time to for me to kind of dive in and and get everything all the
00:29:48
details. I've done some of it before but not at the full scope. So you take approximations from what you have at the
00:29:56
time for now. >> But yeah, the the data >> uh for passes for instance, it tells you
00:30:01
whether you kicked it out to someone who made it three, but you passed it at their ankles and they had to really get
00:30:08
down and get it before. So your pass wasn't as good um in order to get uh but
00:30:14
they still made the shot. >> Wait, so the the tracking data has that annotated or you have to build that
00:30:19
yourself with XYZ coordinates? >> Oh, no. the tracking the tracking data has has the passes has the height of the
00:30:27
passes when it reaches players all of that kind of thing. Yes, it is there. >> I see. So, it it's not it's actually
00:30:32
annotated um data. It's not just XYZ time. You deal with it. It's much it's
00:30:38
already been processed. >> Uh all of the stuff that I've had to work with [laughter] is like that. I
00:30:42
don't want to deal with the XYZ time. >> Yes, I know that. That is that is a a
00:30:46
grueling endeavor and it eats up analysts. I mean, I I imagine that's what analysts are doing on a day-to-day
00:30:52
basis, dealing with this monstrosity of a data set. >> So, for the most part, uh, one company,
00:30:58
um, what's now called Genius IQ, I believe, does a lot of that processing. The NBA itself internally is doing a lot
00:31:05
of its own processing with that as well. So you have two kind of parties that are
00:31:10
doing some of the same things, some things that are a little bit different. But yeah, they are doing a lot of that
00:31:15
annotation, which is >> we at Wharton and I imagine universities are all over are anxiously hoping that
00:31:21
the NBA mimics the the NFL in their big datable competition in which it releases
00:31:28
a lot of this great data to the public um and inspires us to want to work on it. So hopefully that'll happen. Um,
00:31:34
[clears throat] I know that's I know the MLB is has tons of data, but they don't release the the
00:31:40
good stuff to the public. Um, much of it already is good. In fairness, MLB is way
00:31:45
out in front of all the other leagues in terms of releasing um, high quality um,
00:31:49
you know, advanced data. All right, so one maybe one final question we can take before we wrap up our first segment. Um,
00:31:56
analytics has changed, you know, basketball a lot. We all talk about that. um what's the frontier in these
00:32:02
let's just pick one one quick domain like player acquisition what's the role
00:32:05
of analytics in that >> and player acquisition the good thing about working in management is you have
00:32:11
a lot of time to to deal with player acquisition how much you have to pay how good are they going how good are they
00:32:17
now how good are they going to be in the future and to some degree uh you can look at some of this question for are
00:32:24
they going to fit with our guys are our guys going to make them better uh or are
00:32:29
guys potentially going to make them worse. That that definitely happens. And so you definitely have time to go into
00:32:36
all of this when you are evaluating prospects from college or trade prospects, all of that. And the the
00:32:43
metrics for a lot of these things definitely exist in in in my world like um you look at these components. So
00:32:52
things like rebounding, shooting, passing, um getting to the foul line, putting the ball on the floor and being
00:32:58
able to make a decision whether to pass or shoot, those kind of things. We have metrics for a lot of this stuff. And
00:33:06
ideally, I haven't done this. Uh ideally, you make some sort of simulator where you put all your players together,
00:33:14
you determine whether they can complement each other. But we aren't quite there yet. Uh maybe maybe some
00:33:21
team is but >> yeah I was going to ask is anybody of the of the 30 NBA teams do we have
00:33:26
anybody doing that advanced work? >> You know I I wouldn't doubt that there's
00:33:31
some farreaching soul in one of these teams doing something like that but has their
00:33:39
stuff actually made a difference in decision making? I'm doubting it at this. [laughter]
00:33:44
>> That's a tough problem. I will say that we had a team of students here in our
00:33:48
sports analytics lab led by Ryan Bril who's now working for the Utah Jazz >> and they uh they tried to build um the
00:33:56
way they kind of handled it was they create different clusters of offenses and defenses and then they imagined you
00:34:02
adding a player based on that player type into a particular cluster and so essentially they had different
00:34:07
regression coefficients um with determined exactly by the combination. So that's that was a a highlevel
00:34:15
approach to uh to sol sketching out a solution to that very complex problem. >> Is it good enough to be trustworthy in
00:34:24
making decisions and >> that's that's yeah that's the pro that's
00:34:28
really the key issue and I want and how to get past all the you know the the upper level management who can they
00:34:34
>> we need to make Audi a GM and to test this thing out. >> Yeah. Yeah. Right.
00:34:38
>> You gonna go take over for Danny Age there in Utah there. Not taking if if I do any sport, it
00:34:43
isn't basketball though, unfortunately. >> Only need to watch him. We'll only need
00:34:47
to watch him for 20 years before we can draw a conclusion. >> 20 years. Anyway, le Dean, thank you
00:34:54
once again for joining us on Wharton Moneyball. It's been a pleasure to have
00:34:58
you. Uh Dean is of course analyst for ESPN. He's also the author, I didn't
00:35:01
mention this, of uh basketball on paper and the new version, Basketball Beyond Paper, the really analytics bible to the
00:35:08
analysis of uh of basketball. So, thank you, Dean, and we'll look forward to you
00:35:12
joining us again in the future. >> Thank you, guys. Good seeing you. >> Welcome back. Welcome back to Wharton
00:35:18
Moneyball. Welcome back to the second half of this week's show. Kade Massie back on host duties with a supposedly
00:35:27
functional laptop joined by Audi Winer. Thank you, Odd, for running the show first half. And Shane Jensen, the the
00:35:37
the the workhorse here. He's he's done he's done so much research this week
00:35:41
carrying the carrying the load. Appreciate it. Eric Bradlo in absentia. Eric out doing Eric Bradloow things.
00:35:49
Glad to be here on Tuesday afternoon just off the line with Dean Oliver. Dean one of our longest standing guests. Um
00:35:56
he's an example of one of these people that we now have a thicker relationship
00:36:00
with. Comes around school, does some things, teaches a little bit. Um I've had him out to a conference or two. Um,
00:36:06
it's been one of the fun things about doing the show for 11 years is that we
00:36:10
have not just online relationships from our online interviews. Um, we've got
00:36:14
some other ones as well and Dena is a good example. Good to get caught up a little bit on basketball, huh? I mean,
00:36:19
you know, here we, you know, we wrap up baseball and we now we have a little more capacity, just a little extra
00:36:24
capacity on top of football. Let's turn our eyes elsewhere. We're doing basketball now. We'll do hockey at some
00:36:29
point. Um, I can talk a little hockey this week. We'll Why don't we do this,
00:36:34
fellas? Open lines of course. Lots going on. We still haven't debriefed the baseball season wrapping game seven
00:36:43
ridiculousness. So planning to talk about. We could go for a while. Let's do a couple of rounds
00:36:47
of what caught your eye. We've only got three of us, but let's see how many we
00:36:51
can do. Fellas around the world of sports in this hot hot fall season. What's caught your eye?
00:36:59
>> Oh, come on. Can I start? Can I >> I want to end we have to end the
00:37:02
baseball season with a little attention. >> Oh yeah. >> So many dramatic things that happened in
00:37:06
that series that deserve our attention and caught our eye. But as someone who's
00:37:10
thought about this topic, this particular topic a lot. Definitely what caught my eye was Yamamoto pitching
00:37:15
basically nearly a complete game and coming back the next day and throwing two plus innings.
00:37:19
>> Three wins, three wins in the series. >> That's like that's oldfashioned. That's
00:37:23
147 back in the old day and just I mean this is crazy, right? So that particular
00:37:29
performance and I wonder not only was it actually amazing but are we missing something about what a pitcher is
00:37:35
capable of doing that this and that would be the can we learn anything from this or is this so oneoff that we just
00:37:41
can't learn anything analytically that maybe how we manage pitching staffs going forward and that would be the the
00:37:47
open question for you guys. >> Yeah I mean I've thought about this too.
00:37:50
It's like because I think there's been a lot of articles written about kind of oh
00:37:53
this is the return of the elite p elite pitcher in the playoff. Like if you have
00:37:57
a lead pitcher in the playoffs, the strength of that has never really gone away. It just is I I think it's kind of
00:38:03
syncratic. >> Being able to do something like that. I mean I think the last Madison Bumgardner
00:38:08
I guess and you know decade ago was the same thing. Like if you if you happen to
00:38:13
get a guy who is just so shut down he can give you like 20 innings of like one or two run ball. Yeah. just throw that
00:38:20
guy out there as much and you know and I guess the other unprecedented thing is Yamoto's ability slashwill willingness
00:38:27
to just like do it day after day on zero rest or one day rest or two day rest or
00:38:32
whatever. >> Yeah. I mean listen we did that listen I think that Arizona did that to the to
00:38:38
the Yankees in 2001. They had two superstar pitchers. They just kept using them.
00:38:42
>> Yeah. Randy Johnson I think is the last time before this year that we had a
00:38:46
three win pitch. got a well pitcher got three wins in the World Series, >> right? And they also had Schilling at
00:38:51
the same time. So you had Schilling and Johnston uh uh Johnson and Schilling and
00:38:56
like what are you going to do? And that's how the playoffs kind of turned its way against the Yankees.
00:39:00
>> Yeah, those guys I think picked about 80% of their innings. >> Yes. I'm still smart. By the way, it's
00:39:04
25 years later and I'm still upset about that fifth seventh game loss against
00:39:08
Rivera when Oh god, don't start me off. >> I mean honestly I'm so glad you're still
00:39:12
upset about that. >> Yeah. I mean, it's like we talk regularly about what is your worst
00:39:16
sporting moment in your entire life and that seventh game loss in the ninth inning was my loss. I've still I'm still
00:39:22
unable to sit in the room where I watched it at my friend's house because it gives me you know PSD
00:39:27
>> you know think about the Jay's feelings for the next 25 years about this one
00:39:31
this game. >> Yeah. >> I mean just I mean that was a real >> so many ways. I mean just
00:39:35
>> inches away and that's that's that's play I mean that's like what an amazing
00:39:40
series in general. I do just kind of one more sort of observation on whether this
00:39:44
is kind of an idiosyncratic thing or whatever. I thought it was kind of interesting that somebody did analysis
00:39:49
of the last 20 World Series winners and the this year's Dodgers scored the least
00:39:54
runs out of all the last 20 World Series winners. Last year's Dodgers scored like
00:39:59
the second most runs out of all the all the last year's like 20 basically the
00:40:04
same team, right? So, it's like we'll remember this World Series because of
00:40:08
Yamamoto and this shutdown pitching. You know, I see it's not like that that that
00:40:14
I think is, you know, this World Series is narrative, but I I would be hesitant to extrapolate it to be like, oh, that's
00:40:21
going to be the Dodgers strength next year even necessarily. >> Correct. Well, speaking of like, you
00:40:26
know, the the arc of these things over time, I I my memory is that the Dodgers didn't start this season out
00:40:33
particularly strong. We had high priors on them, but they were underperforming for the first half of the season. It's
00:40:38
just such a long season. It seems obvious, maybe that this has to be something that's well known, but I'm
00:40:45
just curious how much teams work on it that when you peak matters dramatically. I mean, you don't really need to worry
00:40:50
about how well you're performing in April, May, June, unless you're building
00:40:55
toward performing in July, really August, September, October. It's really all about those last three months. Do do
00:41:02
teams do things with that in mind? They must, but what what kinds of things could you do if that was your
00:41:07
orientation? Because the I mean, the Dodgers came in as a as the wild card. Now, they had to get lucky to win these
00:41:13
short wild card series, but it's not the first time we've seen it. It just seems
00:41:17
with such a long season, it seems obvious that it kind of has to be terrifically backloaded if you can do
00:41:22
such a thing strategically. >> Well, the Dodgers were incredibly injuryprone with their starting starting
00:41:28
staff for the most of the season. remember what they how they started with like 13 wins in a row or some ridiculous
00:41:33
number and we thought they were going to run away with 100 wins, 110 wins and they didn't even come close to that. You
00:41:38
know, injury makes a big difference, particularly their starting starting staff and they have terrific starting
00:41:42
staff, you know, and they have key hitters. I mean, I just don't understand how those hitters who came out of
00:41:46
nowhere who were just were like awful for the last month of the season have these ridiculous homers, but that's how
00:41:51
you that's how it make it happen. I mean, it's it it's extreme events make
00:41:55
things happen. Um, but I don't think they manage it that way. I don't >> Yeah, I don't know. I mean I mean again
00:42:00
you know the nar one of the narratives we would have maybe created in about this last year is that certain
00:42:07
organizations like the do like they they either through player acquisition or through development are more focused on
00:42:13
kind of the fundamental kind of like bang bang sort of stuff in baseball which we you know post hawk always
00:42:18
attribute wins and lo like world series victories and defeats to. So, you know, IF not taking like a lead when Muki
00:42:26
would have taken a lead and all this type of stuff. Or last year, you know, is all the kind of fielding errors, you
00:42:31
know, you know, we talked about the fielding rows the Yankees made last year. We talked about the base running
00:42:35
gaffs that the Blue Jays made this year. I feel like another kind of narrative one could make. I'm not sure how big it
00:42:42
really is is that, you know, the Dodgers seem to kind of like either through development or player acquisition get
00:42:47
guys that like do the kind of fundamentals well, don't screw up in the big moments, you know, kind of like
00:42:53
maintain their composure in those big sort of plays. But again, I I I I I made that story up just now. But, you know,
00:43:01
it's it's kind of it is a post hawk story where a couple of those bangplang
00:43:06
plays go a little different and you know, it it's not a very robust story, I
00:43:09
guess, or it's not necessarily I'm not sure how empirical it is of a story beyond the ad
00:43:16
hoc nature of how I'm describing it. >> These things are so close. These series
00:43:19
are so close. I mean, they're just knife edge. And the Dodgers made it through a
00:43:24
couple of them, but nothing more knifeedge than this one. That it has to be chance that separates it. And yet,
00:43:30
we're going to instantly turn it into these narratives. >> Yeah. Exactly.
00:43:33
>> I mean, when a when a when a very different narrative was readily available, but for a matter of inches on
00:43:39
multiple occasions, then you ought to you ought to go pretty easy on the narrative, right?
00:43:47
>> Okay. That's odds. That's odds. What caught his eye? Shane Jensen, what cut
00:43:51
your eye? >> Well, okay, let's let's let's start talking. There it is. I want to do a
00:43:54
shout out. Let's u we already covered baseball. I want to do a shout out in uh
00:43:58
football. I want to do a shout out to Eric Eager and whatever he's doing down
00:44:01
with the Carolina Panthers there. >> Yeah, >> they're at five. They have the same
00:44:06
record as the Kansas City Chiefs right now. Five and four. That's pretty It's
00:44:11
halfway point in the season, so it's not like, you know, we're looking at this
00:44:14
after two games or something. >> How about it? Well, I just I texted him before the show to congratulate him on
00:44:19
his five and four and he responded. I said, "Terrific job." He goes, "Yep."
00:44:25
>> That was it. >> Humble as always. You know, they don't he doesn't travel every game. Most front
00:44:30
office folks don't travel to every game. And um but I saw on the schedule when I
00:44:34
when Sunday morning came around, I saw that they were going to be in Green like, "Oh, Eager's going to be up
00:44:38
there." And sure enough, he was there. He was on the sidelines for it. He texted his uh tweet. He tweeted this
00:44:45
picture of his phone with the, you know, the icon of your messages, how many text
00:44:49
messages you had, and it said, it says 54, little red 54 up there, text messages right after the game in it. So,
00:44:55
people were blowing him up to give him love for that for that game up there in Wisconsin.
00:44:59
>> The only the only downside I can see is I'm sorry he had to endure those Packers
00:45:03
throwbacks so close up, [laughter] you know? I mean, I think those might have challenged like dealers throwbacks for
00:45:10
ugliest kind of it makes me happy we're not in the 1940s anymore in terms of
00:45:15
football with a low point. Shane, I just I'm just I'm I'm glad you're with me on
00:45:20
these uniform analytics we're trying to make a little more rigor. Yeah, we're
00:45:23
trying to bring >> Yeah. I mean, honestly, analytics has gotten too into the meat of it. Like,
00:45:28
let's get [laughter] superficial stuff, right? Come on. >> Come on. We got to we got to got to f
00:45:33
focus on some shallow stuff. Yeah. Come on. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Now, now let me Can we talk about the
00:45:39
Carolina Panthers for a moment? Do they actually have a good quarterback? I don't think so. Is that So, how how are
00:45:45
they doing this? >> I mean, I think I think they've had a decent run. I mean, I I mean, a I think,
00:45:51
you know, it's it's a lot of expectation. I mean, Rico Dao, for example, I'm not sure, you know, he was
00:45:58
kind of somebody the Cowboys essentially discarded. And I mean, we can probably fill a whole show talking about Cowboys
00:46:04
personnel moves and the questions behind them, but like my god, >> you know, this guy was like a throwaway
00:46:08
essentially from the Cowboys and, you know, he's running for, you know, 150 yard, whatever he's averaging right now,
00:46:13
over 100 yards a game, I'm pretty sure. So, I think they've found a couple
00:46:17
diamonds in the rough and I think, you know, I I have to actually look a little bit more closely at their schedule to
00:46:24
sort of see who they've played as well. Well, I do know the I mean, I've been
00:46:26
paying attention to the Pats, another interesting strength of schedule kind of team, but uh the Pats completely
00:46:31
destroyed them when they played them a few weeks ago. But >> yeah, that's the only observation I have
00:46:37
beyond yesterday's game or >> but it's just it's an interesting idea
00:46:40
of, you know, we don't we have no idea how much credit Eric should get for any
00:46:45
of this. So, we don't want to act it like it's Eric's saying he's like, you
00:46:48
know, he's like number three down there and he's he's involved, but we don't
00:46:52
know. There's a lot of factors, zillion factor, but what's true is we worry
00:46:57
about analytics not having a seat at the table. And a lot of organizations have analysts, but the analysts don't
00:47:02
influence decision- making. We can be pretty sure that at at least there's a
00:47:07
some level of influence by analytics in the Carolina decision-m just by who's
00:47:11
over there and why and and why they brought them in. And whenever you go at it, as as we know, Eric goes at things,
00:47:18
they're going to know players around the league in real fine detail. They're not
00:47:21
going to they're not people aren't going to they're not going to be diamonds in
00:47:25
the rough that other teams know that they don't have some indication on and they're not going to get real
00:47:29
enthusiastic about guys who aren't worth some enthusiast. They're going to miss a
00:47:33
lot of guys by a lot. And I think you can't be quite that sure of most NFL organizations.
00:47:41
>> Yeah. Yeah, I think it really it would be kind of like where I mean again it's
00:47:44
Eric's been better a couple you're you know I think grading draft somebody
00:47:48
somebody with more sort of savvy and like domain knowledge than I would you know you can do things like I I think
00:47:53
grading the last couple drafts is probably somewhat valuable but of course the real grade of those last couple
00:47:59
drafts will see in actuality in like two or three four years right it's beyond
00:48:05
expectation now >> undoubtedly but we're we I think we sometimes worry too much about the draft
00:48:09
and not enough about the pro personnel scouting, the pro personnel side. And look at
00:48:14
>> Speaking of pro personnel, I know it's it's Shane, but I'll stay with football.
00:48:17
Uh the Jets seem to have unloaded their superstar. >> It's a fire style today.
00:48:23
>> And uh I mean, what what's the what's the relative value of two first round
00:48:27
picks relative to a proven star quarterback? I >> I don't know that did that make sense or
00:48:33
what? I >> mean, I I'm I'm real skeptical. Um those those picks are you have to pay full
00:48:42
ride for a I don't know the deal details of the contract. Okay. So I I haven't
00:48:46
looked at Sauce Gardener contracts, >> but you're generally paying full ride
00:48:50
for someone who's off past their first contract where on the first contract,
00:48:54
this is the deal. They're set in a way that in expectation there's positive
00:48:58
value. And that's more true about first round picks than subsequent picks. So
00:49:03
you're giving away in expectation a lot of value. Whereas for a free agent, an
00:49:08
expectation is you're paying full right. You're not getting value. Now, that's
00:49:12
setting aside the impact they have on the rest of the team if you believe that kind of thing. But lots of teams have
00:49:18
made those trades expecting there to be these kinds of synergies that don't ever
00:49:22
pan out. I think interesting to see this a team, the Colts make this play. You know, they're obviously playing with the
00:49:29
Rams playbook from a few years ago where it's like, we're not going to try to
00:49:32
hoard picks. we're going to go all in right now and it's a risky risky proposition.
00:49:38
>> It is. I mean I I guess the one thing kind of that you just didn't mention
00:49:42
Kade that like is part of at least the calculus from the Colts perspective is you know this is it's a win now move but
00:49:48
it's also you know they're unlikely that that first round pick that they just
00:49:53
trade away at least for next year is likely to be right at the it's essentially like the tail right at the
00:49:57
tail end of the first round. Okay. And again, if they, you know, if if if again sauce continues to help them be a good
00:50:05
team, the the trade that the pick they traded for, you know, 2027 will also be at the tail end of the first round. So,
00:50:11
these are not, you know, under most expectations, these are not high first round picks. I don't know how much Yeah.
00:50:17
I mean, >> the other thing you have to look at does it matter. >> I mean, Tus Gardner is a genuine
00:50:22
superstar. He's a first two in three seasons, he's been twice a Pro Bowl
00:50:26
first team quarterback. I mean, this is a this is a differencemaking. >> Williams, their defensive tackle that
00:50:32
they just traded as the same thing. He was an all pro and like pro >> boy a first I mean in expectation a
00:50:37
first round draft pick is fine but in probability of being a superstar I don't see it.
00:50:45
Well, I guess they're paying the extra first rounder because they're basically
00:50:49
getting a first, you know, kind of a realized first round talent as opposed to the expectation of one in Sauce
00:50:55
Godner. A realized one plus and they're paying an extra first rounder for that
00:50:59
realization as opposed to the the expectation of it. >> Well, Gardner's position was what what
00:51:04
was he in the first round? Do do any guys remember? >> He was like mid wasn't first round. Um,
00:51:08
yeah, he was pretty he was he the first quarterback taken? I think he might have
00:51:13
been the first quarter. He might have been, but I don't know if he was top 10
00:51:15
or anything like that. >> I I I hear you. I agree. I agree with that. You know, it goes to these
00:51:20
questions of roster construction and the it all of it always goes back to one issue that's essentially immeasurable in
00:51:26
the NFL and that is are there externalities? Are guys worth more because they make other guys better? And
00:51:33
how can we value that? >> And we have a sense that that's true for some positions in particular, but it's
00:51:38
really hard to put a number on it. I I did, speaking of putting a number on it, I I was reading a little bit about
00:51:43
um about quarterback valuation, and I I gather the way they they value them is how many uh snaps are there before they
00:51:54
there's a successful completion. So, they get credit when the people they're
00:51:58
guarding are not targeted. >> I thought that was clever. You don't see
00:52:02
that all the time. >> That we used to get that wrong, right? >> All the time instead of a cumulative
00:52:06
measure or something like that. >> People aren't throwing out. That's a
00:52:10
nice way to get at is it survival? Is there a survival curve? >> Right. And sauce garden is excellent,
00:52:15
right? So he doesn't have many interceptions, but that's because nobody throws at the person he's covering.
00:52:20
>> It's spectacular. And then what that doesn't capture odd is that if he can do
00:52:24
that when he's manned up one-on-one, that frees up some of the defensive backs to go pay more attention to the
00:52:29
other guys. So that's just that's underestimating the impact, right? Because he's having a positive impact on
00:52:35
the on the on his teammates as well. >> Really good. Really really good. And I
00:52:39
and I think it does say that like I mean just on the kind of cold side it does see it's a further indication they like
00:52:45
really believe that this Indiana Jones thing is legit and that that's just kind
00:52:49
of who they're because they basically tra they're trading away their ability
00:52:52
to get a new quarterback essentially for the next two or three years at least via
00:52:56
via the usual convention. So it's not even just this season they're going in
00:52:59
on this guy because they're not going to with another that's interesting. Remind
00:53:03
me what their division's like. Is part of their deal this year that they don't
00:53:06
have anybody like they they come out of a weak division. I I mean we know Tennessee is
00:53:09
>> well the Jagu I mean the Jaguars are I think at the Jaguars actually have a
00:53:13
pretty decent record whether you again believe that or not you know I mean we're we're I've always I've always been
00:53:21
hesitant to say too much consequential at the south of either of the two conferences right aren't those usually
00:53:26
it's usually like chaos divisions but um but yeah I I mean the Jaguars are just a
00:53:32
game behind them basically or loss behind them they're at five and three um and that's I mean the Texans are one of
00:53:37
the worst teams in football and the Tex I mean sorry not the Texans the Titans >> the Titans and then the Texans
00:53:43
>> Texans are not record but are not a good team >> if I'm just looking at the standings
00:53:47
that Jaguars are a negative point differential which means they if anything they've overperformed
00:53:53
>> yeah are actually quite good and have thoroughly underperformed at least by by
00:53:58
score differential uh they're plus 47 yet they're three and five so I think
00:54:03
you know in some level Indianapolis just doesn't have too much in their division
00:54:06
that they're that worried about Yeah, right. >> We got to lose out on the number one
00:54:09
seed to the Patriots obviously, but I mean that what getting ahead of ourselves here. Shane is back.
00:54:15
>> Yeah, he is back and we're going to ignore it as much as possible. I am
00:54:18
literally averting my eyes from the Patriots. I just can't yet accept that the Patriots are back and I'm not going
00:54:23
>> You're not you're not ready for that Kansas City, New England uh AFC
00:54:27
Championship game. >> No. And thank God [laughter] >> I mean thank god the Bills took the
00:54:32
Chiefs down a notch on Sunday. That's good. But also just on the division race, one thing that I I realized kind
00:54:37
of belatedly as the as the Ravens run off a couple of wins, you know, if you if you're pulling for the Ravens to do
00:54:44
well this year, all you got to do is get them to the playoffs. And all you got to
00:54:47
do for them to get to the playoffs is for them to win their division. Like that's that's one of the nice things
00:54:52
about the NFL structure. It's it's weird in some ways because lame divisions can
00:54:56
produce lame playoff contenders, but in this case, great. But now they got to beat the Steelers. So they've got the
00:55:02
weak bigals and the weaker Browns and the middle middling Steelers that somehow always finish over 500 and Aaron
00:55:09
Rogers, damn him, is having at least a reasonable season. But that's kind of
00:55:13
the thing now is can we get the Ravens over the Steelers? That's like the now
00:55:17
the race for the in the second half of the season is can we >> I mean the Steelers have locked into
00:55:20
nine and eight, so that's really the [laughter] target, >> right? I mean
00:55:26
>> um Yeah. No, I I mean I agree. I I I I think the market buys your story, Kate,
00:55:32
because I mean, I feel like even at their nater, I don't think the Ravens stopped being like the favorite to win
00:55:37
that division. And certainly now that they've rattled, you know, Lamar's back
00:55:41
and everything, they got to be >> and and they made a trade. They gave away a, you
00:55:45
know, fifth round pick or something conditional, maybe a fourth um to get a pass rusher in there. So, they're
00:55:51
they're active. And hell, we I don't know. This is the day is not over. We
00:55:54
haven't hit the trade deadline yet. Is it is this a different world, though?
00:55:57
Right. This is the way baseball is. Football used to not be like this. We didn't
00:56:01
>> Well, and again, we I think it just actually passed like literally a half
00:56:04
hour ago, I think. So, I think we are past the trade deadline. But I I agree, Kate. I wanted to kind of note this if
00:56:09
you didn't, that I feel like I mean, basically what the Jets did, I think, is
00:56:13
unusual. Yeah. >> Like, you don't usually see NFL teams kind of fires sailing. I mean, B this
00:56:20
was a very baseball move where they just kind of like recognized they were out of
00:56:23
it and fires sailed their team. And I I think it's that's kind of unique. Maybe
00:56:27
maybe you don't usually have bad really, you know, obviously, you know, one in
00:56:32
seven teams that still have elite talent worth trading or something. I I don't
00:56:36
know. Maybe maybe they had the unique unique potential to fire a sale more than most teams, but I still think their
00:56:41
behavior today is unusual relative to what most trade deadlines happen at, you know.
00:56:47
>> Um the and they learned they learned from baseball. This is learning across
00:56:51
sports. This is this is you know you know I don't know if analytics analytics
00:56:55
going to get blamed or credited for this. I don't know. It's just learning.
00:56:58
It's just plain old learning. Um guys, I'll give you one open um caught my eye.
00:57:02
A conversation I had with an NHL team in the last couple weeks that a concept I hadn't thought about before. I think
00:57:10
y'all will be curious about it. How difficult do you think it is for these front offices, say a sport like the NHL,
00:57:17
which is relatively late to the analytics game. Okay. So they're not advanced as as as the MLB and certainly
00:57:24
certainly not MLB probably the least advanced of the four leagues in the major American sports.
00:57:31
>> Office of the NHL, what are the chances they know how to hire good analysts?
00:57:38
And so the the the hypothesis that this person put out there was that you can't
00:57:43
really judge how how good how sharp how analytics forward a team is by how many analysts they have because the
00:57:52
essentially the quality of the analysts vary dramatically because the people hiring them aren't analysts
00:57:59
>> and it's they don't know whether they have someone good or not. And that's an
00:58:03
intriguing idea and I hadn't considered it before. >> Yeah. I mean, I've sort of thought,
00:58:07
again, I mostly thought about this in the context of baseball because, you know, I mean, you know, the not to pick
00:58:13
again on on on the Yankees, but they have like I think one of the second or third largest like analytics department.
00:58:18
They seem to invest a large amount of kind of attention and and and and money and and all that stuff into analytics.
00:58:25
They seem to just do it wrong though or something. You know, I mean, like it's
00:58:29
I'm not on the inside, so I don't know >> based on out they're doing it kind of
00:58:35
wrong. Well, more than that of like that's just one example of something where it's like, you know,
00:58:40
>> you throw a bunch of money at something, it won't necessarily improve it unless you actually have some
00:58:46
vision there. And I, you know, I'm again, that's only the one example I can
00:58:50
think of. >> AI, I remember getting a text from Audi at a conference not so long ago
00:58:55
reporting about firsthand conversations with the members of some team that will go unnamed and he wasn't depending on
00:59:00
seasonlong outcomes. He was talking about the process of the inputs and it wasn't favored.
00:59:06
Well, you know, it's amazing because you you do recognize that there's enormous
00:59:09
variability in the in the actual analysts themselves. Um, you know, I think the Dodgers spend the most. I
00:59:15
mean, they're they just seem to be crazy and and I I think now that, you know,
00:59:18
Ryan's now working for the for the uh Utah Jazz, the Dodgers hired him just and they said, "Here's some money. Just
00:59:25
do whatever you like." >> That is that entire raid like baseball country as their farm system.
00:59:32
>> Yeah. I mean, they just were like and and they're and they just they just
00:59:35
invested in just trying to squeeze out and just throw, you know, the cast the net wide and you're going to get some
00:59:42
great stuff just guaranteed, right? And um and and I do think the process >> but hold on. They chose Ryan. They
00:59:49
didn't do that was a good choice based on our understanding of Ryan relative to
00:59:52
talent in the world. That's they they could have thrown that money at poor peo
00:59:56
poor Joyce as well, >> you know. And I have to say I I mean I so Sam Andre Cohen is now he's uh he's
01:00:03
with the Marlins and the Marlins had a you know really unexpectedly great good season uh last year. Um and they they he
01:00:10
the first thing that that Sam did is he hired someone a PhD out of Florida. Excellent. Told him you're running the
01:00:16
analytics department. In other words, he didn't try to when he was with the Nationals he was out there doing his own
01:00:21
hiring and he confessed to me I'm not an analyst. I'm happy using it, but you I
01:00:26
can't judge this person from that person. And the first thing he did was get someone that he could trust, and
01:00:31
he's excellent. His name is Bryant. Um to to really run the analytics show. Um
01:00:37
I just think and he would call me up and and Sam would say, "I don't want to I
01:00:41
I'm only interested in talking to your number ones. I'm not interested in two,
01:00:45
three, four, and five." And I'd sometimes say, "But our two, three,
01:00:47
four, and fives are excellent." >> Yeah. Yeah. >> This is this is this is a really
01:00:52
interesting idea. And it's a source of variation that I hadn't considered
01:00:56
before. Um, and apparently it explains some variation in the NHL. By the way, this person was hand he said hands down
01:01:02
I trust this person's judgment. Hands down the sharpest most analytics forward
01:01:07
team in the NHL is the Hurricanes. Um, so it's kind of them and then it's like
01:01:11
a everybody else kind of thing. So just for what it's worth. Okay fellas, that
01:01:17
was a quick uh do we want to do quick ones? I know we've spent our time but we
01:01:21
haven't covered very much territory. real quick like 30 seconds to 60 seconds. One more round of what caught
01:01:26
your eye. Shane Jensen. >> Joe Flaco passing for 448 yards. The most ever by a player in his 40s.
01:01:33
Obviously pick a breaking Tom Tom Brady record from a few years ago. 448 yards in a loss.
01:01:38
>> Jojo man, >> am I up? Uh I watched the entirety of the Chiefs Bills and those two
01:01:46
quarterbacks are unbelievable. >> Yeah, they are. They are. And there's a
01:01:50
God in heaven. There's a God in heaven that Casey did not win that game again.
01:01:54
Um, mine [laughter] will be, did y'all know there's a site where you can find
01:01:58
the most expensive college football tickets of a weekend? Of a weekend and it's just a way of looking at, man, our
01:02:03
buddy, our our our frequent listener, you've all wrote strike. You really ought to get assistant producer credit.
01:02:08
He's been giving us so many good ideas over the years. He text me some weekends
01:02:11
like who thinks most expensive this weekend. this weekend. Y'all don't know
01:02:15
these things, but Texas Tech BYU, Texas Tech BYU, a Big 12 game, is the most expensive ticket in the country. It's a
01:02:23
noon game, which means it's an 11 game in Lach. And this is going to be one of
01:02:28
the bigger games in the Big 12. Both >> how much? >> 48 or something like that, which is a
01:02:34
big ticket in Lock, Texas. the but these teams are both going to be by the way college football's first playoff you
01:02:40
know 12 are going to come out right now like in a few hours doesn't mean anything but it's the first official one
01:02:46
of the season both Tech and BYU are going to be in the top 12 but the amazing thing about this is BYU's
01:02:51
undefeated they're going to be probably above Tech in the ratings they are 10point underdogs going into love it to
01:02:57
play Texas Tech just absurd these are like the best two teams in the Big 12 and it's a 10-point spread really odd
01:03:04
but that's a that's a big game a fun game and early game on Saturday to keep
01:03:07
your eyes on. All right, guys. Let's wrap it there then. Good fun. Good fun. Always good to
01:03:13
visit Tuesday afternoon here. The show will go up on Wednesday. Thank you for listening. Thank you to the whole team
01:03:18
here. Marissa Raina, our producer, Dion Simkins, our everything, our Uber, our Uber, everything. And Deep Patel, the
01:03:26
big boss lady. Eric Bradley and Abbencio for Audi Winer for Shane Jensen. This has been Kade Massie for our friend Dean
01:03:32
Oliver guest in the first half of the show. Thank you guys for listening. Come back and join us next time between now
01:03:35
and then. Enjoy your reports.