Saturday, October 3, 2009

My Fellow Nerds and I Will Retire to the Nerdery With Our Calculators


It was a rough morning around my house.

Last night started at the Sox game and ended at a law student kegger in Allston, MA. There were a lot of things that took place in between but lets just say drinking was a focal point.

For whatever reason, this hangover got me thinking about statistics. Maybe it was the Beer-aide served out of a plastic bag lined cardboard box, maybe it was how I angry I got about the guy with dual-popped polo collars (Duke colors, too - this was no accident), I don't know.

In any case I went over to Puck Prospectus and started checking out some of their predictions for the year. They just came out with the season previews for all 30 teams - including, of course, your Bruins.

Take a look at the defense:
2009-2010 VUKOTA Projections

Name Age GP G A Pts GVT

Dennis Wideman 26 77.0 10.9 34.4 45.2 12.7
Zdeno Chara 32 73.8 12.2 33.8 46.1 12.6
Matt Hunwick 24 57.2 6.3 19.9 26.2 7.2
Derek Morris 31 64.7 4.5 15.5 20.0 4.8
Mark Stuart 25 66.6 3.4 10.6 14.0 3.9
Andrew Ference 30 51.4 2.5 12.9 15.5 3.2
Johnny Boychuk 25 27.9 1.6 5.3 6.9 1.4


I've altered the table slightly to fit in this space, but the last stat on the right is Goals Versus Threshold (explained here). It's similar to VORP in baseball and attempts to put a number on how much better any given player is than a replacement.

So Wide-Man projects to be just as valuable as Chara in 2009, at least according to this metric. We'll certainly see how the whole thing shakes out. He's got the talent and if he can stay consistent and healthy then I don't see why he can't build on last year's success.

Like all projections, it's just that, an educated guess. Perhaps the nerds won't win. Perhaps I won't drink Beer-aide out of a garbage bag lined box. It's really all up in the air at this point.

Check out the season preview and projection article on the Bruins, lot's of great stuff in there, as usual. In any case, we've got a big revenge game against the Canes tonight. Remember Scott Walker?

1 comment:

  1. What's beer-aide?
    Is it vodka in beer?
    or Whiskey in beer?

    Either way... wine em dine em... uh how does that finish? Kick dere ass Sea Bass?

    That doesn't sound right.
    What?

    ReplyDelete