THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

It’s a great article. Tango, this is the second article in row that you’ve really liked by this guy- you should learn his name (Sunny Mehta), so you can give him credit when the next opportunity rolls around.

The article supports my intuition that hockey is the opposite of baseball, in that watching the games will give you a better idea of how good teams (and, to a lesser degree, players) are relative to looking at the stats. eg, The casual baseball fan watches a pitcher throw nine innings of 2 hit ball with 0k and 4bb’s, and is misled into thinking the pitcher is highly skilled. Whereas, in hockey I think it’s easir to tell when a team outplayed another team, and not be misled by the goal totals in the game.

is this the same sunny mehta the poker author?

"is this the same sunny mehta the poker author?”

Yes.

It’s even worse than a quality issue.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the NHL pxp for a game in progress. A goal had been scored, but upon review it was disallowed. The ruling was that the scorer had intentionally kicked it in.

So, what does the NHL pxp do? Changes the data entry from a goal to a shot on goal. Sheesh.

For NHL purposes, a shot on goal is either a goal or a save by the goalie.  It’s considered a save by the goalie if, had the goalie not been there, it would have been a goal. 

So, “saving” an illegal kick is no save, and therefore, no shot.