Hot off the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Sean Gregory argues for more “stats geeks” on the sidelines and in the huddle during the game.
[S]itting next to your team’s manager, a scruffy baseball lifer, in the dugout is not just another scruffy baseball lifer, spitting tobacco. Instead, by his side is a guy with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, a beautiful mind who can calculate complex probabilities, in real time, in his head. He can tell you the odds of so-and-so throwing such-and-such a pitch to so-and-so on such-and-such a count.
It’s a fluffy article with not much on what the stat person would actually do, so you’ll have to imagine. Honestly, I hope sports statistics doesn’t come to that though. Unpredictability is what makes games so fun to watch.
[Time via @amstatnews]
If that would be the case. I could say playing baseball isn’t that easy. :D
By the way thanks for sharing this article.