#108 Modeling Sports & Extracting Player Values, with Paul Sabin

Learning Bayesian Statistics

Proudly sponsored by PyMC Labs, the Bayesian Consultancy. Book a call, or get in touch!

• My Intuitive Bayes Online Courses
• 1:1 Mentorship with me

Folks, you may know it by now: I’m a huge sports fan! So needless to say that this episode was like being in a candy store for me. Paul Sabin is so knowledgeable that this conversation was an absolute blast for me!

In it, Paul discusses his experience with non-stats stakeholders in sports analytics and the challenges of convincing them to adopt evidence-based decisions. He also explains his soccer power ratings and projections model, which uses a Bayesian approach and expected goals, as well as the importance of understanding player value in difficult-to-measure positions, and the need for more accessible and digestible sports analytics for fans.

We also touch on the impact of budget on team performance in American sports and the use of plus-minus models in basketball and American football.

Paul is a Senior Fellow at The Wharton Sports Analytics & Business Initiative and a Lecturer in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. He has spent his entire career as a sports analytics professional, teaching and leading sports analytics research projects.

Our theme music is « Good Bayesian », by Baba Brinkman (feat MC Lars and Mega Ran). Check out his awesome work at https://bababrinkman.com/ !

Thank you to my Patrons for making this episode possible!

Yusuke Saito, Avi Bryant, Ero Carrera, Giuliano Cruz, Tim Gasser, James Wade, Tradd Salvo, William Benton, James Ahloy, Robin Taylor,, Chad Scherrer, Zwelithini Tunyiswa, Bertrand Wilden, James Thompson, Stephen Oates, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Jack Wells, Matthew Maldonado, Ian Costley, Ally Salim, Larry Gill, Ian Moran, Paul Oreto, Colin Caprani, Colin Carroll, Nathaniel Burbank, Michael Osthege, Rémi Louf, Clive Edelsten, Henri Wallen, Hugo Botha, Vinh Nguyen, Marcin Elantkowski, Adam C. Smith, Will Kurt, Andrew Moskowitz, Hector Munoz, Marco Gorelli, Simon Kessell, Bradley Rode, Patrick Kelley, Rick Anderson, Casper de Bruin, Philippe Labonde, Michael Hankin, Cameron Smith, Tomáš Frýda, Ryan Wesslen, Andreas Netti, Riley King, Yoshiyuki Hamajima, Sven De Maeyer, Michael DeCrescenzo, Fergal M, Mason Yahr, Naoya Kanai, Steven Rowland, Aubrey Clayton, Jeannine Sue, Omri Har Shemesh, Scott Anthony Robson, Robert Yolken, Or Duek, Pavel Dusek, Paul Cox, Andreas Kröpelin, Raphaël R, Nicolas Rode, Gabriel Stechschulte, Arkady, Kurt TeKolste, Gergely Juhasz, Marcus Nölke, Maggi Mackintosh, Grant Pezzolesi, Avram Aelony, Joshua Meehl, Javier Sabio, Kristian Higgins, Alex Jones, Gregorio Aguilar, Matt Rosinski, Bart Trudeau, Luis Fonseca, Dante Gates, Matt Niccolls, Maksim Kuznecov, Michael Thomas, Luke Gorrie, Cory Kiser, Julio, Edvin Saveljev, Frederick Ayala, Jeffrey Powell, Gal Kampel, Adan Romero, Will Geary and Blake Walters.

Visit https://www.patreon.com/learnbayesstats to unlock exclusive Bayesian swag ;)

Takeaways:

• Convincing non-stats stakeholders in sports analytics can be challenging, but building trust and confirming their prior beliefs can help in gaining acceptance.
• Combining subjective beliefs with objective data in Bayesian analysis leads to more accurate forecasts.
• The availability of massive data sets has revolutionized sports analytics, allowing for more complex and accurate models.
• Sports analytics models should consider factors like rest, travel, and altitude to capture the full picture of team performance.
• The impact of budget on team performance in American sports and the use of plus-minus models in basketball and American football are important considerations in sports analytics.
• The future of sports analytics lies in making analysis more accessible and digestible for everyday fans.
• There is a need for more focus on estimating distributions and variance around estimates in sports analytics.
• AI tools can empower analysts to do their own analysis and make better decisions, but it's important to ensure they understand the assumptions and structure of the data.
• Measuring the value of certain positions, such as midfielders in soccer, is a challenging problem in sports analytics.
• Game theory plays a significant role in sports strategies, and optimal strategies can change over time as the game evolves.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Overview

09:27 The Power of Bayesian Analysis in Sports Modeling

16:28 The Revolution of Massive Data Sets in Sports Analytics

31:03 The Impact of Budget in Sports Analytics

39:35 Introduction to Sports Analytics

52:22 Plus-Minus Models in American Football

01:04:11 The Future of Sports Analytics

Links from the show:

• LBS Sports Analytics playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7RjIaSLWh5kDiPVMUSyhvFaXL3NoXOe4
• Paul’s website: https://sabinanalytics.com/
• Paul on GitHub: https://github.com/sabinanalytics
• Paul on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpaulsabin/
• Paul on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SabinAnalytics
• Paul on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wAezxZ4AAAAJ&hl=en
• Soccer Power Ratings & Projections: https://sabinanalytics.com/ratings/soccer/
• Estimating player value in American football using plus–minus models: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jqas-2020-0033/html
• World Football R Package: https://github.com/JaseZiv/worldfootballR

Transcript

This is an automatic transcript and may therefore contain errors. Please get in touch if you're willing to correct them.