2017 World Series - Dodgers VS Astros

[Josh]

Game 5 live stream:

http://www.sportshd.me/mlb/526515/h

[Jasmine]

Dodgers just won, sending this to a game 7 in LA tomorrow night.

[thedaigle1]

One of the wildest world series you'll ever see.

A thing hockey fans should take note of from this world series:

Anyone who watched Moneyball or who has the basic background information on sabermetrics will know that advanced stats crept into baseball as a means for low budget teams to gain whatever edge they could on the big budget teams. And while the influence of advanced stats in hockey is still marginal at best, numbers are having their effect. Baseball, by virtue of having a major head start, has now reached something of a logical conclusion where all teams (prosperous and struggling alike) have adopted sabermetrics across the board and, like everything else in life, those with financial resources are pulling away from the pack. This world series featured two teams with healthy budgets who are also masters of sabermetrics. Look for this to become the new standard. There's an anecdote about a pitcher who was traded from the Pirates to the Dodgers this year who remarked something to the effect of "the research going on in Pittsburgh is nothing compared to what's going on in Los Angeles." The Pirates, a small market team, were frontrunners in the advanced stats movement as a means of gaining a competitive edge. Now they again find themselves in the shadows of baseball's most lucrative organization. I guess if there's one point I would like to make here it's that smaller market hockey teams probably have a small window to work with if they want to use advanced stats to close the gaps on the major markets. Money always comes out on top eventually.

EDIT: Great quote I came across on fangraphs that sort of sums it up: "when you raise the floor, you narrow the distribution." I like it.

[Josh]

Great post Owen. I still wonder how much of sabermetrics can be applied to a game as volatile as hockey, but some teams certainly do seem to be finding success with it. Moneyball was a great film, and this World Series really did pique my interest.

[thedaigle1]

I still wonder how much of sabermetrics can be applied to a game as volatile as hockey, but some teams certainly do seem to be finding success with it.

I think this will always be the main limitation with advanced stats in hockey. Performance will always be influenced by quality of teammates and quality of competition. A lot of work has been done to try to cut through the noise and it looks promising. I just think there are way too many moving parts to ever isolate individual player performance the way baseball analysts have. I'd like to hear input from those who disagree.