Moneyball and Spurs

[fortworthspur]

of course it could work with football, you just have to figure out what to measure and how to measure it. math works for anything - we just dont know how to do most of it.

 

[StanSpur]

Yes Comolli is mates with Beane and uses a sabremetric approach to the game.

He bought Henderson, Adam and Downing because they all were in the top 10 of "chances created" last year. But from his outlay, you can see that he only regards 1/2 of moneyball as interesting :lol:

Levy uses the money part of money ball, which is why we have Niko, VDV, Parker, Friedel, Sandro, Ade, and Walker* for an average of about four million in transfer fees per head. Or to put it in a different way, 7 players that are instrumental in our greatest season in a long time cost less than James Milner


* that assumes Sandro at six, Ade at 3 million to offset wages and Walker as half of the 8 million for the two kyles.

The guys who own Liverpool tried, with some success, a similar approach with the Boston Red Sox. There are some who believe they are doing something akin to Moneyball with Liverpool but I'm not sure.

The beauty of applying the Moneyball metrics to baseball is that the game lends itself to statistical analysis a lot more than football does. Basically for each pitch there is an outcome that can be recorded with no room for interpretation. These can be recorded and individual players' performance analysed over time. This cannot be said for football.

In baseball the problem was that 'old fashioned' scouting had decreed over the course of a century or so of actual play, that certain outcomes were important and so teams would buy up players they believed to exhibit those attributes required to bring about those outcomes.

Sabremetrics revolutionised this by going back to first principles and re-evaluating every outcome. It devised a new set of criteria that were previously frowned upon, such as buying walks, that enabled the Oakland A's to win matches by buying players on the cheap.

My view is that this cannot easily be transferred to a football club, but I could easily be wrong. Perhaps Jordan Henderson is £20m.

Firstly Moneyball is not just about stats, it's about blending people with the right attributes to make wins. Much easier in games such as baseball and in my opinion a potentially workable model for football. However, if you look at the players highlighted, creating chances to score is not a bad place to start. Liverpool have one of the highest stats this season for chances created, their downfall has been that they are bottom of the league in terms of chance conversion %. The theory would be they should purchase strikers with the highest chances to goals ratio in the major leagues and they would win more games. If you couple that with defenders that have the most blocks and clean sheets you could have a winning team. BUT and here is where i think it falls down, in baseball you have set roles, positions on a field, limitations to what your job will entail and to a degree a window of talent you will be facing e.g. any pitcher will throw the ball into a set area around the batter, anywhere else and it's a foul ball, also the pitcher will either specialise in a slider, fast, curve etc. but most do all to a similar degree. basically in the major leages there isn't a great difference in tallent. In football however you can quite clearly see that some players are much better than others, teams even. Gareth Bale vs the wigan right back?! teams with a poor midfield are likely to have a reasonable defence rate when measuring goals prevented vs chances simply because they are under more pressure. Equally you could argue that when Ronaldo was scoring 40 goals for Utd he was creating space all over the pitch and therefore all the Utd stats for creating chances would have gone up but i think the defensive stats are the ones that hurts the Moneyball principle. Scott Dann and Rogers had increadible stats for birmingham a few years back but would you put either in a top 4 team. No.

Anyway the other point was the remark about the red sox using the model to some success - within a few years of adopting this style they won the world series! That for them was the ultimate in success so some was a little flippant. Also most baseball teams now run this system so it must have credability.

 

[stemark44]

downing, henderson, adam are all living proof that sabermetrics don't work in football

I think I read somewhere that Liverpool are second in the list of teams that create the most chances.

Creating chances isn't their problem...............it's scoring from them.

 

[SNAFU_Clarke]

Anyway the other point was the remark about the red sox using the model to some success - within a few years of adopting this style they won the world series! That for them was the ultimate in success so some was a little flippant. Also most baseball teams now run this system so it must have credability.

Perhaps the use of the word 'some' was a little flippant. Although the Red Sox are one fo the biggest teams in baseball and have yet to replicate this success. Also the metric for success using moneyball techniques in the MLB is not winning the world series but qualifying for the post season as the play off games are too small a smaple, 5 games, 7 games, for the applied mathematics to be able to 'guarantee' success, whereas the whole season in baseball is over 100 games allowing plenty of time for statistical blips to work their way through the system.

 

[ShelfSide18]

I've just finished a book called 'Why England Lose' which goes into this kind of stuff in detail, one of the co writers is a sports economist and mentions sabermetrics and Beane quite a lot.

Interesting book.

 

[HappySpur]

but i thought sabermetrics is primarily used to scout players who are not known and not highly rated, or even very underrated players. Modric does not fall into that category as he was one of the highest rated players around.

Sabremetrics isn't about who you scout. It's about how you scout.

In the old days, a stat like RBI was the most important in evaluating a hitter. Sabrmetricians contended that it wasn't as it was too reliant on what other people did. Whereas on-base percentage isn't reliant on anything. It just states how often a batter gets on base. But if they aren't on base, they can't score (depending on how you define solo HR's). If you get a few players that have high on base percentage, then you create more chances to score.

That's just one example. And trust me, I find it as boring as you do. But that's how Bill James started using statistics to reshape the evaluation of players. Beane was the first to implement it.

However I will contend that the Red Sox, under Henry, didn't use sabrmetrics that much at all. The 2004 team was predominated by players that had been there before Henry/Epstein took charge. Then they added players, not who had these quirky numbers, but who had been winners like Schilling (who they bought because of his record against the Yankees) and Timlin. Ortiz was their best pickup, but he was a known talent that had been plagued by injuries. The fact that he was a clutch hitter was just luck as no number can tell you about reaction to pressure situations. So that's not sabrmetrics, that's 'Arrymetrics.

By 2007, the new additions since '04 were the best foreign and in-league pitchers available and both were really expensive. And the fielders that came through were all from their youth setup and are still there (Youk, Ellseberry and Pedroia). None of them were bought.

But don't worry, it's a fairly un-bunked myth that Epstein used sabrmetrics here in the states too. On the plus side, I would rather eat my own feces than talk about baseball, which I loathe.....but you guys have made it fun in this once instance. Thanks :grin:

 

[Grey Fox]

I've just finished a book called 'Why England Lose' which goes into this kind of stuff in detail, one of the co writers is a sports economist and mentions sabermetrics and Beane quite a lot.

Interesting book.

cos Harry ain't manager yet :bang:

 

[Stavrogin]

However I will contend that the Red Sox, under Henry, didn't use sabrmetrics that much at all. The 2004 team was predominated by players that had been there before Henry/Epstein took charge. Then they added players, not who had these quirky numbers, but who had been winners like Schilling (who they bought because of his record against the Yankees) and Timlin. Ortiz was their best pickup, but he was a known talent that had been plagued by injuries. The fact that he was a clutch hitter was just luck as no number can tell you about reaction to pressure situations. So that's not sabrmetrics, that's 'Arrymetrics.

Yah - I read an article talking to someone at Redsox who said that whilst they implemented these systems they didn't actually use them and that no one truly did.

And if they can't properly buy into them for a modular sport like baseball - how can it work in the dynamic and fluid art like football?

 

[HappySpur]

Yah - I read an article talking to someone at Redsox who said that whilst they implemented these systems they didn't actually use them and that no one truly did.

And if they can't properly buy into them for a modular sport like baseball - how can it work in the dynamic and fluid art like football?

And to be perfectly frank, when you're as old as I am, and you hear people claim that Beane perfect cheap buys via his methods, it's actually quite offensive.

This is exactly what Clough and Taylor did at Forest in the late 70's and early 80's

At that exact same time, the Oakland Raiders did the same thing in the NFL.

He wasn't even born when the method of finding cheap damaged players and fixing them was sussed out to perfection by greater men than he. They were just smart enough to NOT write a book about it and give away their edge.

 

[sloth]

Can't believe people are only just picking up on this subject, I'm sure there have been a gazillion conversations on the subject on this forum and elsewhere in the last few years.

Anyway Commolli and Beane are famously best mates, and we definitely all talked about this when Commolli was our DoF. Since then it's pretty common knowledge that Fenway Sports Group recruited Commolli on the recommendation of Beane. So yes, LFC are trying a kind of Money-balls approach to football, as did we.

Personally I don't think it applies to a team game like football.

Baseball is very much about a personal duel between batter and pitcher and stats seem far more relevant. There's also the same basic scenario repeated over and over in a game: pitcher on mound, fielders on bases and in the outfield, batter at the plate etc. Again you can see how stats can be easily applied.

Football is a more fluid team game, there are relatively few set-pieces, and far far fewer scoring events or opportunities. I simply can't see how the money-ball approach can work in the same way. Perhaps it can add value to the experts opinion, or mean you look twice or whatever... Commolli, for instance, bought Henderson and Downing on the strength of the number of assists etc they got for their respective clubs last year. That seems such a narrow way to look at a players worth, for this reason I don't actually think he's much good at his job.

 

[SNAFU_Clarke]

I've just finished a book called 'Why England Lose' which goes into this kind of stuff in detail, one of the co writers is a sports economist and mentions sabermetrics and Beane quite a lot.

Interesting book.

yes it is a very interesting book. simon kuper co-authored it didn't he? some very interesting things to say about finances in football - i.e 92% of variance in final league position can be explained by total spend on players wages. which should be quite obvious to more or less anyone. what motivates players after all? in pretty much every case, it's money they receive. their wages. hardly a massive surprise.

 

[ethanedwards]

And to be perfectly frank, when you're as old as I am, and you hear people claim that Beane perfect cheap buys via his methods, it's actually quite offensive.

This is exactly what Clough and Taylor did at Forest in the late 70's and early 80's

At that exact same time, the Oakland Raiders did the same thing in the NFL.

He wasn't even born when the method of finding cheap damaged players and fixing them was sussed out to perfection by greater men than he. They were just smart enough to NOT write a book about it and give away their edge.

Dave Mackay and Kenny Burns would be a good example.

 

[animalmom]

It would work Better in football all because the analysis is harder than in baseball. If you get it right.