Welcome
The eighth issue of Unexpected Points Added. This one teaches us how to map NBA shot charts in ArcGIS, learn what Bad Outs are in baseball, visualize baseball's outfield, understand when to pull a goalie, and review how 538's predictions fared.
Please share your favorite sports analytics source I should review, and I'll come up with a sports analytics acronym based on your name
This Week's Lineup
Mapping NBA Shot Charts in ArcGIS
A step-by-step guide about how to push and plot NBA shot chart data into ArcGIS. Can even import team court designs to sit behind all the charted datapoints.
Bad Outs in Baseball
GIDP's plus caught stealing equals a bad out. Who owns the record for bad outs in a year? A certain Hall of Famer, of course. The author even flips it to see who is the best at avoiding these bad outs. Fun read.
Visualizing Irregular Outfields of Baseball
I'm not even sure this one belongs here, but I was cleaning out my bookmarks and noticed I saved this one, and it's time to use it. A visualization gif that overlays each of the 30 MLB ballparks outlines on top of each other to easily see the differences.
When to Pull the Goalie?
A submitted research paper built a model for identifying when a hockey coach should pull the goalie. Maybe we need to create a bot like the popular fourth-down-bot on Twitter. The paper also touches on risk assessment and reluctance in relying on the data for pulling goalies.
538 Sports Predictions Review
Yeah, another 538 link. They checked their work to see how their predictions fared during 2020 and the COVID chaos. Performed for NFL, MLB, NBA, Club Soccer, and March Madness, it checks Brier scores for how accurate their predictions were. Insert BartSimpsonGulp.gif.
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Unexpected Points Added is curated and maintained by Patrick Hayes. If you have questions or suggestions for the newsletter, just reply to this email. I answer every single one.