OK, so this will be my first “quick thought” blog.
I played tackle football for 5 years in my youth and was fortunate to be put at running back for most all of them. During my play, I came across a simple truth…and this truth was confirmed later during a brief career in intramural flag football at ISU:
Perhaps the best pleasure in the game of football, (challenged only by cleaning someone’s clock on a blindside Wagner-esque block) is to stand proudly in your opponents end zone, HOLDING the ball.
WHY DO PLAYERS INSIST ON DROPPING THE BALL JUST AS (or worse: JUST BEFORE) THEY UNCONTENDEDLY CROSS THE GOAL LINE?!?!
This happened again this week in the Alabama-Florida game and that makes 3 that I have seen this season. I’d say there is a close call on this exact play in roughly 5% of college football games. Sometimes the refs catch it and rule it a fumble and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes (as in today’s incidence) players are lucky enough to have truly broken the plane just a fraction of an instant before the carelessly drop the ball. But by dropping the ball just as you cross it, not only do you risk being the biggest goat and losing the game for all of your teammates, but you forfeit the greatest pleasure in the game.
-Confused in Tennessee
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Friday, September 15, 2006
National League MVP
It's that time again, kids...time to debate who is the real MVP? The Ryan Howard bandwagon has taken off like a giant, turbo, ESPN-fueled rocket while Albert Pujols is solidly putting together possibly the best season of his career (despite fighting an injury). Both are quite deserving and it makes for an interesting debate. As the season comes to a close, most analysts consider this to be a two-man race, but two good articles on ESPN and Fox Sports both have narrowed it down to a roster of five men who have put up big numbers:
Howard--Phillies
Pujols--Cardinals
Carlos Beltran--Mets
Lance Berkman--Astros
Miguel Cabrera--Marlins
Of course, my St. Louis bias conflicts with who I consider "most valuable" as I've watched The Great Pujols drag this team towards another division title all year. I also just really like the guy. To counteract my favoritism, I'll turn to my old friend Microsoft Excel (which I'm sure you've learned I enjoy playing with) and statistically determine who is top of the class.
It was difficult to determine exactly how to create a comparison that would result in clear evidence of who had a better season than who, so I simply began by comparing their places among the NL League Leaders in particular catagories that most would consider influential to a team's success. As an arbitrary numeric system, I rewarded the players for placing in the top ten in the individual catagories; the point allocation was linear, giving 10 for a first place through 1 for tenth place and no points awarded for placing outside of the top ten. Shown is the rankings and point total:
*All stats are accurate as of 9/14/06.
As you can see, Albert has the slight edge over Howard while both are significantly higher in total than the other three contenders. The major flaws with this comparison, though, is that it was near impossible to assign values to important catagories such as stolen bases, strikeouts, and defensive attributes. Neither ESPN.com or Fox Sports allows easy manipulation of fielding stats because it breaks each player down individually per position played and doesn't only include those players who qualify.
Since I am comparing a specific group of players to determine who had the best season among those five I think the better way to look at it is head to head rankings. For example: even though neither Howard or Pujols are in the top ten in the league in fewest strikeouts (and thus received zero points above), I certainly think the fact Pujols has only 43 K's (138th most in the NL) while Howard has 163 K's (2nd most in the NL!) should be considered. Five points were awarded for a first place rank and one point for a fifth place. I figured the following were the ten most useful statistics to use when determining an *all-around* value:
Howard--Phillies
Pujols--Cardinals
Carlos Beltran--Mets
Lance Berkman--Astros
Miguel Cabrera--Marlins
Of course, my St. Louis bias conflicts with who I consider "most valuable" as I've watched The Great Pujols drag this team towards another division title all year. I also just really like the guy. To counteract my favoritism, I'll turn to my old friend Microsoft Excel (which I'm sure you've learned I enjoy playing with) and statistically determine who is top of the class.
It was difficult to determine exactly how to create a comparison that would result in clear evidence of who had a better season than who, so I simply began by comparing their places among the NL League Leaders in particular catagories that most would consider influential to a team's success. As an arbitrary numeric system, I rewarded the players for placing in the top ten in the individual catagories; the point allocation was linear, giving 10 for a first place through 1 for tenth place and no points awarded for placing outside of the top ten. Shown is the rankings and point total:
*All stats are accurate as of 9/14/06.As you can see, Albert has the slight edge over Howard while both are significantly higher in total than the other three contenders. The major flaws with this comparison, though, is that it was near impossible to assign values to important catagories such as stolen bases, strikeouts, and defensive attributes. Neither ESPN.com or Fox Sports allows easy manipulation of fielding stats because it breaks each player down individually per position played and doesn't only include those players who qualify.
Since I am comparing a specific group of players to determine who had the best season among those five I think the better way to look at it is head to head rankings. For example: even though neither Howard or Pujols are in the top ten in the league in fewest strikeouts (and thus received zero points above), I certainly think the fact Pujols has only 43 K's (138th most in the NL) while Howard has 163 K's (2nd most in the NL!) should be considered. Five points were awarded for a first place rank and one point for a fifth place. I figured the following were the ten most useful statistics to use when determining an *all-around* value:
*Rankings for SO's and Errors are 1 for least and 5 for most.
Albert reigns once again, but this time Beltran's stock rises because his base stealing ability and high class defense are counted towards his total. I think this better reflects who is having the best all-around season and displays the players' versatility (or, rather, exposes Howard's dominant dimension of being a power hitter). You can see that the most consistent performer across the board is Pujols. I truly hope the voters consider defense when making their decision and don't lean towards Howard because of last year's outcome. Who knows, they still have a few weeks left and it will be a photo finish.
Verdict: Albert Pujols
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Cheap Wins for ISU
Pat Forde did the same analysis of college football teams that I did with baseball teams in regards to million dollars spent per wins. Check it out-- they make note of Iowa State's effectiveness. (Notice that we earn nearly three times the profit from football that Texas Tech does.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)