Pittsburgh Sports Media Gibberish: Yohe v. Wade, an Epic Battle of Nitwits

[SHOOTANDSCORE]

I can't wait until October.


Previous thread
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/showthread.php?t=1902747

Click to read more...

 

[Winger for Hire]

Majestic title

 

[Tasty Biscuits]

Seconded.

 

[Shady Machine]

Solid discussion in the previous thread. The problem aren't the stats, it's the application of them. pghpev or whatever isn't wrong that people misuse stats to back up their biased opinion. That is human nature. Statistics, in their proper context help to eliminate bias.

The more work done around the stats the better their usefulness and the more hockey decision makers (and stats folks) will understand their context. Over time it should prevent multiple year signings of the Scuds and Adams of the world. Sure you can't quantify "veteran presence" but you can quantify a negative outcome every time that player is on the ice. It will take years to change the culture of the decision makers, but hiring a guy like Sam is a step in the right direction.

 

[mpp9]

Its one more voice in the organization that will be against signing Tanner Glass and players like him.

Advanced stats may portray some players as being better than they are, but they do give you a baseline for if a player is useful at all.

Its not like people running this league are not in need of second opinions.

 

[Asuna]

Its one more voice in the organization that will be against signing Tanner Glass and players like him.

Exactly.

Advanced stats may portray some players as being better than they are

Like Kunitz.

 

[madinsomniac]

Anyone hear the Fan's afternoon show comparing the Pirates trade to the Penguins Iginla trade? I'm pretty sure those guys, or at least Starkey, were defending the Pens usage of iginla to the death back then....

 

[Winger for Hire]

In what way were they comparing it?

 

[Asuna]

In what way were they comparing it?

They're both old.....?

 

[madinsomniac]

In what way were they comparing it?

he was brought in to shore up a playoff run on a team that had some injury concerns...
but the big discussion was there is ample speculation that they will move AR to 1st base when everyone is healthy, a position that he has never played before... 1st/3rd Lw,Rw... the concept is that positions are similar but that doesn't mean everyone can play them

 

[Winger for Hire]

he was brought in to shore up a playoff run on a team that had some injury concerns...
but the big discussion was there is ample speculation that they will move AR to 1st base when everyone is healthy, a position that he has never played before... 1st/3rd Lw,Rw... the concept is that positions are similar but that doesn't mean everyone can play them

Ladies and Gentlemen, Pittsburgh sports media.

No need to analyze how he'll impact the lineup now. Let us look a month down the road and wonder how he'll look playing a position he never has thought about playing! And bonus content... we'll try to crossover the fan bases by grasping at straws comparing it to another deal years ago by the hockey team.

 

[SHOOTANDSCORE]

Thanks guys. I was hoping it wasn't one of those "it sounded good in my head" moments.

Its one more voice in the organization that will be against signing Tanner Glass and players like him.

Advanced stats may portray some players as being better than they are, but they do give you a baseline for if a player is useful at all.

Its not like people running this league are not in need of second opinions.

Amen. Especially for a team that wants to play a possession game.

 

[td_ice]

I heard that segment about the comparison to the Iginla trade and they were joking about it.

Saying that it they would be stupid enough to play Ramirez at 1st, a position he never played, THEN it would be comparable to the Iginla trade.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Its one more voice in the organization that will be against signing Tanner Glass and players like him.

Advanced stats may portray some players as being better than they are, but they do give you a baseline for if a player is useful at all.

Its not like people running this league are not in need of second opinions.

Or it's another voice that will advocate signing Tanner Glasses because of flawed metrics and interpretation, given how humans operate and process data they don't quite understand. Forgive me for taking a more realistic tack here.

Stats are stats. They're not great at modeling future behavior (especially when the metrics are questionable to begin with), and they get messy when multiple variables are thrown into the mix and are best suited for some situations and not others-- which is something most honest-to-god stats geeks own up to as long as they're not trying to sell you something. The recent Grantland article about the genesis of the advanced stat revolution in baseball is really eye-opening: http://grantland.com/features/2015-...iello-jack-armbruster-moneyball-Sabremetrics/

One of the main points is that advanced stats are so successful in baseball, not because they help us model data or predict performance better than the trained eye, but that baseball is a sport that's ideal for statistical observation by its very nature. Sports like football (and hockey) are more limited in their application.

Both business partners believed that baseball’s nature as a series of discrete matchups made it the sport best suited to their style of analysis, so while they bemoaned the inaccuracy of quarterback ratings, they did so in their spare time. “In football, you’ve got 22 guys [moving] in a five-second span,” Mauriello says. “They’re all doing something, and then it’s over. Good luck.”

Secondly, another ancillary point is that these sorts of decisions are also often used as cover for business decisions or vice versa. The stats or bringing in a stats guy might very well have absolutely no impact on anything because, guess what? Hockey is a business, first and foremost. And businesses are all about the long con, sustaining interest, and spin.

“We had one meeting with a guy and we were waiting on the GM because he was in a press conference talking about the young team that he had, and saying, ‘We just love the talent we have, and we’re so encouraged and think this could be a breakthrough year,’ just very upbeat,” Armbruster recounts. “We got into the meeting and talked for a while and looked at his club and were telling him stuff. Then we went out on this deck overlooking the spring training facility and he just shook his head and said, ‘We have such a **** team.’ … It was just funny to see the dichotomy of what they have to represent sometimes versus what was really going on behind the scenes.”

I think the viability of advanced stats in hockey is still decades away, and while I'm okay with the organization hiring someone to look into number crunching in ways that other teams aren't, I really think most of the hype over this signing is people buying into snakeoil stats salesmen without thinking about what the data is, what it's analyzing, and how viable are the outcomes it draws.

 

[mpp9]

Or it's another voice that will advocate signing Tanner Glasses because of flawed metrics and interpretation, given how humans operate and process data they don't quite understand. Forgive me for taking a more realistic tack here.

I don't think it's the end game for analyzing hockey, but I'll take a player who outshoots and outchances the opposition rather than worry about a player's grit and character.

That's really the basis behind all of it. The eye test shouldn't be the only means to coming to a conclusion about a player.

 

[mpp9]

And if NHL teams start to put tracking chips on player's jerseys/equipment, that could be the type of step forward advanced stats needs. You can then better track an individual player's impact on a shift to shift basis. Instead of basing everything on shot volume (which makes the Tyler Kennedys of the world look like world beaters) you can measure how much time a player spends in each zone and then measure that against zone starts, QoT, QoC, etc. That's about as good of an impression as you're going to get of how a player impacts a team's puck possession.

I think that'd be a legitimate basis to say **** off to the eye test as the sole means to evaluate a player and a team.

 

[plaidchuck]

You'd think they'd have solid advanced stats for goalies by now, considering it's the one stationary position where you usually play the entire game.

I think someone actually did a paper trying to rank the starting goalies in the league based off a combo of their save pct. and the quality and distance of shots they faced. Fleury ranked right in the middle I believe.

 

[Gallatin]

OK this is gold - sorta. DK has once again outed the Tribsports department on twitter. Apparently, there is a place where local sports writers go to post stuff and take shots at each other.

"Been a message board for years where Trib and PG have taken anonymous shots at each other. Look how guns have turned:"

"And I certainly don't mean to connect PG to this. Those folks have been highly supportive. This is @TribSports at work. Behind fake names."

"Trying to conceive how major corporate newspaper could look worse than to unleash trolls on our six-person website. Coming up empty. Anyone?"

http://www.voy.com/158430/

 

[Winger for Hire]

I think I dropped 10 IQ points by going to that link.

 

[Penguinator]

"Wheel$ keep on SPINNING, proud DK keeps on growlin'"

Meh...

 

[Gallatin]

I think I dropped 10 IQ points by going to that link.

I had to quit reading before I got infected.

 

[Penguinator]

I think I dropped 10 IQ points by going to that link.

Good, you're getting closer to your avatar!

p.s. I'm not clicking, they can all go **** themselves for all i care (except for Bombulie)

 

[Winger for Hire]

Good, you're getting closer to your avatar!

p.s. I'm not clicking, they can all go **** themselves for all i care (except for Bombulie)

I'm pretty sure the average red panda is already smarter than I am. Which means I'm getting further away.

 

[Gallatin]

I'm pretty sure the average red panda is already smarter than I am. Which means I'm getting further away.

Red Panda beyond smart. Red Panda have Wisdom.

 

[SwordofStMichael]

got in the car first I heard anything of the Sutter/Bonino trade was Filiponi saying "...and the Pens just got a guy who we know is a shutdown 3rd line center, they can match him up against any first line in the league and he will just shut them down..."

I thought: Wow did we get Ryan Kesler?