Barnwell, My Least Favorite Sports Writer

"Bridging the analytics gap."

Barnwell goes on the "managers/coaches are stupid for ignoring analytics warpath."  He takes the perspective of an idiotic teenage programmer who thinks playing Madden football gives him coaching experience.  It strikes me the analytics people, rather than assuming managers and coaches are idiots, might better prove their points by demonstrating how their principles would work better in practice.  Now, I'm not saying it is reasonable for Barnwell to become an NFL football coach.  But perhaps he might try managing a Little League baseball team or a coaching a high school football team and use his analytical genius to win.  If analytics were to provide the "answers" so to speak, it would seem rather simple to dominate against all these heathens using traditional coaching methods.

The analytics people think the coaches ought to see the game from their distanced, mathematical perspective, but the analytics people don't seem willing to get into the trenches and see the game from the sideline.  Or try to put their ideas into real-time practice.

Let me talk about one broad example of analytical failure -- in the past two seasons, Barnwell picked 1 team to "regress" from the previous year in the NFL.  This is actually a REALLY easy prediction to make.  Think about if you were to pick how 1 state would vote in the next presidential election.  It would be pretty easy to say California will vote Democrat.  See, you don't even need to make a hard prediction, which would be:  Do you think the Raiders will improve or decline?  Something specific is hard, but when you get to make a broad pick, you get to take the low hanging fruit.  So what does Barnwell's analytical genius come up with?

In 2012, the 2011 13-3 Niners, NFC Championship game losers will regress.  What happened?  The Niners were 12-4-1 and went to the Super Bowl.  Even Barnwell admits he was wrong, but cites the Kaepernick factor as unpredictable.  Unpredictable?  Guess what, dude?  You are making a FUCKING PREDICTION.  Everything is goddamn unpredictable.  It was unpredictable that Russia was going to invade the Ukraine.  It was unpredictable the Colts would come back from 28 points down to beat the Chiefs in the playoffs.  How can one make a prediction and when the prediction turns out wrong, cite an unpredictable factor.  Pure foolishness.

Next year Barnwell picks the 2013 Colts to regress from 11-5 and losing in the Wild Card round.  What happens?  The Colts go 11-5 and lose in the Divisional Round.

Now, I'm no genius, and didn't have the advantage of all these advanced stats, but it strikes me that both these predictions were completely and utter foolish because Barnwell didn't understand why the 2012 Colts went 11-5 or why the 2011 Niners went 13-3.  He looked at history when teams had rapid swings in W-L from the prior year and argued they regressed back to the mean the following year.  The factors he decided to ignore were Jim Harbaugh and Andrew Luck.  The Niners went 13-3 because Harbaugh turned the team around.  That didn't change the following year.  The Colts were good because they got an excellent young quarterback.  That didn't change either.  That's why neither team regressed.

Here was a much easier prediction and one I would have made:  the Super Bowl winning Ravens would regress.  First of all, it would be incredibly hard to repeat and you just set yourself up for success by making such an easy prediction.  But further, they overpaid Joe Flacco, lost Anquan Boldin and Ray Lewis.  Simple.  But you can know this simply by watching the games.  No need for advanced stats.