Those stats you hate

On Saturday, I wrote about the most overrated sports stats. The column ended with a call to all, to which you responded enthusiastically.

Two observations.

First, you love stats – especially the ones that make you look good in your garage league. Got it, skip the second help. “Even in the 1930s, the NHL was awarding up to three assists per goal,” a kind reader reminded me.

Second, you love stats – but not all of them. You sent me grievances against forty different stats. Your pleas were convincing. Your arguments are solid. A lot of grain to grind in your proposals. Here are seven.

The victories (bis)

On Saturday, I explained why pitching wins in baseball are overrated. Several readers have pointed out to me that the same logic applies to wins for goaltenders and quarterbacks.

Pierre Allard: “We count the wins and losses for the goalkeepers. How is this data relevant? Why is the goalkeeper the only player for whom these statistics are available? The goalkeeper is no more responsible for a defeat (or a victory) than another player. In hockey, you win as a team, you lose as a team. »

“If the team in front of the goalie doesn’t perform,” adds Martin St-Georges, “it will definitely be difficult for him to get good results. »

Guess what ? There is a statistic to measure this. Offensive support.

Consider two comparable goaltenders, Jack Campbell (3.41/.888) and Petr Mrazek (3.66/.894). When Campbell was in action, his Edmonton Oilers teammates averaged 4.20 goals per game. Conversely, Mrazek’s teammates, with the Chicago Blackhawks, scored 2 fewer goals per game (2.24). Unsurprisingly, Campbell finished the season with a winning record (21-9-4) and Mrazek with a losing record (10-22-3).

The stakes

All hockey coaches look at face-off statistics. This is a crucial phase of the action, which decides whether a team will own the puck – or chase it. “Yes, it’s very important to win face-offs, agrees Sébastien Guilbault. But the statistic itself is impertinent, because it diverges very little from the 50%. »

Verification made: Mr. Guilbault is right. Three-quarters of NHL centers have a success rate between 45% and 55%. And if we focus on the extremes, there are only four players over 60%, and two centers under 40% (500 face-offs minimum). “We’re talking about a swing of one or two face-offs per game at most. This statistic is mentioned ad nauseam by analysts. It is binary, so easy to understand and analyze. But a real statistician would probably tell us that the result is essentially random. […] for the very, very large majority of players. »

Points produced

A controversial statistic within the community of statisticians. “It can demonstrate a player’s ability to produce when there are runners on base,” writes Alexis Desrosiers-Michaud. But this stat mostly depends on the ability of previous hitters to get to said bases. To evaluate a player in this situation, I prefer to look at the average with runners in scoring position, and in general, the average presence on bases or the average power. »

Another option is the OBI %, for “Others Batted In”. The concept is super simple: you take the runs batted in by a batter and divide them by the total number of runners who were on the trails when he was at bat. So if Mike Trout brings in 30 of the 100 runners he inherited, his OBI % will be 30%.

The shots on goal

“I’m not a big fan of hockey shots,” writes Vincent Poirier. They are displayed on the screen all the time, as if the first team to reach 30 shots will win the game. However, the quality of shots is more important than their number. ” It’s true. This is why we increasingly use anticipated goals (expected goals) in our analyses. It’s a formula that assigns a value to each shot on goal, based on the historical success rate of all shots taken from the same spot on the ice.

Concretely, for the last season of the Canadian, it gives this.

Translation: Anderson got a lot of quality shots, but he converted fewer goals than expected. For Suzuki and Caufield, it’s the opposite. They scored more often than the average player who shot from the same places as them.

Shots blocked

Former Dallas Stars head coach Ken Hitchcock hated the blocked shots stat. “It’s the most useless statistic. If you block shots, it means the puck is often in your zone. A reasoning shared by François Bélanger. “With a team like the Canadiens, whose infirmary is busier than the players’ bench, I don’t understand how people praise players who systematically target themselves, even when it’s 7-2 with two minutes to go. play. »

A quick observation on this subject: the Canadiens, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Columbus Blue Jackets ended the season in the top 5 for blocked shots AND games missed by their players due to injury.

golf putts

“The result depends a lot more on the quality of the approach shots to the green than on the performance on the greens”, underlines Guy Régnier aptly. “A player can miss all 18 greens, make an approach shot two feet from the hole each time, and take a single putt to complete the hole. That would give him a round of just 18 putts! »

Mr. Régnier proposes a more relevant statistic: strokes gained (strokes gained). This formula is similar to expected goals in hockey. It makes it possible to compare the performance of a golfer compared to all the other players who found themselves in the same situation, on the same hole.

The number of spectators

A little last before moving on to the next article? Suggested by Serge Leblanc. “The number of spectators in the stands. [Surtout] when we are told 10,000 spectators and we wonder, to see the crowd, if there are 3000.

There is an explanation. The teams announce the number of tickets sold and not the number of spectators who have passed through the counters. I can confirm that some evenings, in the last years of the Expos, there were a lot less than the 5000 spectators announced in the Stadium. The margin of error had to be 3,000 tickets, 19 times out of 20.