APBRmetrics

ampersand5 wrote: Can someone who knows more about baseball than me tell me about how the Houston Astros have fared. Not just their record, but the fan response (in houston and across the league), and their likelihood of future success? Thanks!

The Astros have become the bee's knees in everyone's minds in terms of how to turn a baseball franchise around.

A follow up on Sam: http://www.si.com/nba/2016/11/30/sam-hi ... twitter_si

More follow-up:

Embid finally plays deep into his rookie contract. Hot start but shooting 40% in last ten games. DRPM estimates a very modest to date defensive impact. Okafor, Noel and Saric all disappointing imo. Probably should try to trade at least 2 but won't get a lot.

Unless he barely slipped in front of somebody, Hinkie's head coach continues to have the worst record of any coach in NBA history with more than 1 year experience. This year isn't much better. Defense is now average but 75% of the gap between AVERAGE overall team performance and last season's -10 SRS Sixers remains. 3.5 years after the process started the team's current SRS remains more than twice as negative as the bad team he inherited. Maybe they get back to where they started in year 4 or 5, if things improve at same rate or faster. Just in time to overpay to retain players or replace them.

Parts of the legacy of Hinkie and his process.

The hope is that Colangelo's use of the rest of Hinkie draft pick haul is better or much better than Hinkie's previous use of them overall.

Sixers are on pace for 4th straight season with an SRS of -7 or worse. In last 20 years only the post Jordan Bulls "organization" did that. They only got back to playoffs after season 7. And are 0-18 on "winning championships" since Jordan moved on. Will "the process" treated Sixers beat either of these marks?

Brett Brown update: Progress. Slight. Now in a tie for last in NBA history for win% of more than 82 games with Brian Winters. Up to .196. 20% win rate within reach. What a coaching selection.

The big Hinkie picks on ws/48 this season:

Embid .085
Okafor .064
Saric -.005

Noel .080 career

3 below average marks and one abysmal. It is early but this isn't good for top picks you stake tour future on.

But at least you can only put 2 on court at a time.

Probably should be just one. May be eventually as they unprocess the early process.

Embid, now, is probably the best single positive on the Hinkie scorecard right now. So it matters how you evaluate him and whether you go with best case metric that greatly rewards prominent role (offense and defense) or go with any or all of the rest. Where he is 3-5 years now matters a lot more of course but how elite will that be? Will he win over some or all of the other metrics? How far?

And for those insiders who poo poo all player metric comparisons, on what basis do you decide to give him $125 to 200 million? Even if you don't think you need them to do the deal, how to evaluate the quality of the deal for him or anybody without them? Is your argument that a lot of ad-hoc subject to error mental judging and leaping without accounting, without the formal rules and checks for completeness or balance is a better process with better outcomes than metric calculation? Do you really believe that and think it is a convincing argument? If you go to the store and buy stuff do you want the clerk to carefully and transparently compile the items into a final bill or just sit back and guess about how much it is based on his experience & opinion? The best clerks probably could do it well but not everyone is good and you wouldn't have much of a case for saying either way at the time without A CROSS-CHECK THE LONG, DISCIPLINED WAY.

Distrust the drafter

Noel gone. Saric 76th rated PF on RPM, Okafor worst center.

Too many bigs, too few with positive impact. More process to undo.

Sam Hinkie‏Verified account @samhinkie Jan 31

[re SI article]

"Great article, but I'd change the title -- Meet Sachin Gupta, The Driving Force Behind *All* of Sam Hinkie's Trades"


It is nice when bosses acknowledge and promote their staff. But at face value does Hinkie's statement diminish the share of the credit that should go to him? Is he responsible though for all the shortcomings? Ultimately yes, but they are probably fairly shared too.

Why even have an RPM if Saric (legitimately 1st or 2nd in upcoming ROY voting) is "ranked" so low? Re-name it UPM. How about a requirement that any inventor of a statistical ranking system has to have seen at least one NBA game before his/her system enters the public domain? Many of the names above Dario don't even come close to passing the giggle test.

rlee wrote:Why even have an RPM if Saric (legitimately 1st or 2nd in upcoming ROY voting) is "ranked" so low? Re-name it UPM. How about a requirement that any inventor of a statistical ranking system has to have seen at least one NBA game before his/her system enters the public domain? Many of the names above Dario don't even come close to passing the giggle test.

Saric's stats aren't that good in other ways than RPM. .501 TS%, 96 ORTG. Even in PER he is only 53rd for PFs. He's been solid for the last month but for the 3.5 months before that he was probably closer to being one of the worst rotation players in the league than his counting stats indicated.

Subjectively I have the feeling Saric is going to be good, but there have been examples of guys with good counting stats where the advanced ones where more predictive. I remember when Trey Burke had a "good" rookie season, he put up 12.8 pts/5.7 ast with low turnovers, I think he would have won ROY over this field. But the advanced stats were still indicative of a bad player, cause of .47 TS%/101 ORTG and poor defense, like Saric even PER didn't like him that much.

Just 10 players are averaging, per 100 possessions, at least 22 points, 12 boards, and 4 assists.
http://bkref.com/tiny/aaY2D
Four of the 10 names end in -ic !

Versatility tends to keep a player on the floor and has somewhat inestimable value.

And yet there is a supposed "advanced" stat the "ranks" him at #80 among PFs.

arbitrary endpoints are arbitrary

a bottom-5 team has been slightly worse in net rating this season with him on the floor compared to when he's not... why wouldn't he have a bad rpm (or other metric) when you mix that with his mediocre to poor box stats?

there's ~20 pfs listed above him who don't play real minutes, so let's say he's about 60 on rpm. are you thinking he should be 40? 20?
he looks like he has a chance to become a good player, but he hasn't been one for the majority of this season. one month of playing decently and one of the worst roy races ever doesn't change that.

rlee wrote:Why even have an RPM if Saric (legitimately 1st or 2nd in upcoming ROY voting) is "ranked" so low? Re-name it UPM. How about a requirement that any inventor of a statistical ranking system has to have seen at least one NBA game before his/her system enters the public domain? Many of the names above Dario don't even come close to passing the giggle test.

JE worked for the Suns I believe, I'd guess he has maybe watched an NBA game before

While I will agree RPM is by no means perfect, it holds up pretty well for a catch all metric. Related: Since when is ROY voting even relevant? Let's look at the 2013 draft and see how many player are "better" than ROY winner MCW...