Moneyball in Other Sports?

Two worship songs everyone should listen to: Jesus’ Generation on United Live, and Blessed Be Your Name on some Matt Redman CD. Good times. Deep lyrics, but would take too long to explain.

Question about sports. Women and children, go away.

Dunno if you read Moneyball, I haven’t, but some of the ideas in the book is that you can tell more about a baseball player and how successful they will be from careful statistical analysis than from traditional scouting, by looking at the player and their physical build, drills, and such. Basically, statistics tell a lot. And so, there’s been somewhat of a sabermetric revolution in baseball, starting with Bill James and working it’s way around. One of my favorite writers from this camp is Rob Neyer on ESPN.com.

My question is, so it’s happening in baseball, why is it not happening in other sports? Will there be like a basketball sabermetric revolution? Where people start poring over basketball stats to get a better sense of a player’s skill and potential? Rather than vague physical assessments, drills, and notions of upside? Or in football?

Because it doesn’t happen right now. Especially with basketball. Everyone is drafted on vague notions of potential, nothing quantifiable, definitely not statistically. So my question is, is this something that will happen eventually with basketball, as it has with baseball? Or is there something special about baseball that lends it uniquely to statistical analysis?

I think it’s the latter. And I think that’s one thing I don’t like about baseball. This caller recently called Rick Barry and was accusing a baseball player of padding his stats. Barry rightly called him out because there’s really no such thing as padding your stats in baseball. The better your personal stats are, necessarily the better it is for the team. And that sucks, to me. It removes a lot of the team element. Baseball more than almost any other team sport is largely one on one, pitcher vs. batter. And it’s this aspect of baseball I think that makes it so amenable to statistical analysis.

And I dunno, I like it better when you have to emphasize the team. Maybe sacrifice personal gain for the sake of the team. But anyway.