Feels Like Analytics

  I'm considering trying to go for the Fastest Known Time at a 60 mile route in South Florida near me. Here is a link to the route I've been looking at. The idea is simple: no official race course, no guides, water stations, aid stations, race fees or any structure - just go run as fast as you can! The current FKT is just under 10 hours...so we'll see. From the site:  " A near perfect 100 kilometer loop along an Everglades boundary levee in South Florida...Big challenges due to heat, humidity, sun exposure, and effectively no access to drinkable water. Gator sightings are near guaranteed." I've decided to keep a closer eye on my eye running data to make sure I'm training effectively to run the 60 miles and to identify any potential health concerns before they become serious. Fortunately, by wearing a Garmin watch during all of my training, this data is cleaned and aggregated already - with a significant amount of interesting data points (cadence, distance

Every golfer wants to shoot a better score. Every golfer also thinks they know what they're bad at or need to improve. What if you could challenge those assumptions? Instead of saying "I always slice the ball and miss the fairway right" - you should be saying I miss the fairway right 27% of the time, hit the fairway 40% of the time and miss the fairway left 33% of the time. This data is more actionable. Instead of focusing on "missed fairways", now you are focusing on why you miss left 33% of the time. Instead of saying "I'm not any good at putting" - you should be saying I 3 putt 10% of the time, 2 putt 60% of the time and 1 putt 30% of the time. Now instead of generally being bad at putting, you know that in order to get better at golf, the first focus is on the 10% of holes you 3 putt on. This data can be measured and tracked over time, so you know if you are getting better. Once this is in a comfortable range, you can focus on decreasing

What Every Opening Day Starter should Throw:   Baseball is finally back! Tonight the Giants, Dodgers, Yankees and Nationals will usher in the first of games of the 2020 MLB regular season. Being named the opening day starter is always a nerve-racking experience, but 2020 will come with a new set of challenges. Normally, fans in the stands are loud, proud and hopeful for the upcoming season. In 2020, fans will be hopeful not only to make the playoffs, but hopeful that the pandemic ends or does not impact the 60 game sprint.   Onto the pitches... I took the last 2 years worth of regular season baseball, broke it down pitch by pitch for every single pitcher in the game. Then, I aggregated each pitchers result by pitch: the number of hits allowed, home runs allowed, times the pitcher allowed a baserunner, number of walks, strikeouts...etc. Basically every single result aggregated up by each pitch type in every possible scenario: home, road, against RH, LH, the first pitch of the bat, any p

Cubs Twitter: A Winter Meetings summary I used R to scrape thousands of tweets from Twitter to understand how Cubs fans are feeling these days and it looks...bad. Takes: 1) TRADE: Everyone is convinced that both Willson and KB are gone this winter. Is it likely? Sure, Theo says that everyone is fair game to go. EVEN THE BREWERS ARE TRYING TO TALK SOME SENSE INTO THE CUBS. From a Brewers fan, Kris Bryant is underrated and the Cubs would be stupid to trade him. — Noah (@HoodieYeli) December 15, 2019 2) BRYANT: Not surprising since trade was #1. Thank god I don't have to decide between keeping the greatest player of all time (hey KB) or saving a few dollars (cc: Ricketts). Nationals "love" Kris Bryant but potential holdup could stymie trade talks. https://t.co/M8WdPiaLHa — Cubs Talk (@NBCSCubs) December 14, 2019 I don’t think it’s being talked about enough how the Cubs, who play in Chicago, and make a ton of revenue, are probably going to trade awa

It's the 7th inning. Your team is winning 5-3. Your top bullpen arm is on the mound. Their top of the order is up. How confident are you? This is a very weighted question. Your team is up 2 runs with 9 outs to go, so you probably like your chances, but how much do you like your chances? In reality, the answer is...it depends. What if the top of their order is in a combined 5-50 slump? Then you love your chances! What if the guy leading off always kills your team? Then you get incredibly worried if he gets on base! What if your top bullpen arm lost the strike zone 2 weeks ago and can't find it (Carl Edwards Jr....)? I'll let the Cubs fans answer that one. I've spent some time working on quantifying the answer to these questions. Thanks to MLB Advanced Media and Baseball Reference it is incredibly easy to scrape their websites and mine data. To start answering the confidence question I pulled data every at bat of the 2016 and 2017 MLB season into R

Summary It’s a Tuesday night, the Cubs game is postponed, and I should either be working or doing homework. Instead, here I am exploring homeruns in baseball because it is way more fun. I’d argue that aside from seeing something historical (no hitter/perfect game), most fans want to see home runs when they go to games. In this analysis, I perform some data cleanup to calculate raw numbers from the %’s that fangraphs provides and shift around some data to build a predictive model to predict homerun totals. The inputs to this model will be the players previous season statistics. Homeruns are becoming increasingly important in baseball, and if you read my analysis on walks, you’d remember that they are being hit at an alarming rate. Teams are building their teams around power hitters, but want to be fiscally conscious. So if a team can identify a future homerun hero and save some cash, it’s a major win. Data Support To begin, let’s take a look at the league leader and league aver