The Saberprose Of Any Sport.

December 8, 2011 3:20 AM

Who are the writers who take the statistics of sports and look at them in new interesting ways and can write a bit, too?

Sabermetricians of the Bill James camp are famous for this, and a lot of baseball fans fancy their sport as being the most...interestingly study-able. But there must be more.

I'm familiar with several such baseball sites, forums, and blogs, and for NFL football, there is Football Outsiders. For college basketball, there's Ken Pomeroy's blog.

Who/what am I missing? For any sport, including even baseball? I just love to think about sports in new ways, and for me it seems to take a combination of numbers-crunching and clever writing (the latter is slightly more important than the former, I'd say).

posted by mreleganza to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (12 answers total)

If you're interested in cricket, The List does exactly this.
posted by bardophile at 3:38 AM on December 8, 2011

There's been a lot of talk about using moneyball-style analysis in the Premier League and other euro football... I think Arsenal or someone even hired Bill James as an analyst... but I don't know a good go-to website or blog for it.

Something to search for, maybe.
posted by rokusan at 3:57 AM on December 8, 2011

Basketball Prospectus and Advanced NFL Stats are two more sites that come to mind off the top of my head. KenPom went pay. I'm still dealing with it emotionally.
posted by JPD at 4:29 AM on December 8, 2011 [2 favorites]

Best answer: ZonalMarkings.net for soccer, mostly European focused, although I'd characterize the writing as more straight informative than clever, so it might not be exactly what you're after, but take a look.
posted by Edogy at 5:36 AM on December 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Jayson Stark used to have a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer that used to analyze the previous week of baseball in offbeat ways. I always used to look forward to it.

He's got a blog now that seems like it still devotes a section to crunching some numbers.
posted by cali59 at 6:47 AM on December 8, 2011

I assume you've read Joe Posnanski (now with SI). If not, check him out. No one writes with a better combination of head and heart.
posted by griseus at 7:10 AM on December 8, 2011

“Like Moneyball and Soccernomics before it, Scorecasting crunches the numbers to challenge notions that have been codified into conventional sports wisdom.”
posted by canoehead at 7:35 AM on December 8, 2011

Another one: Jonah Keri usually writes about baseball, but is very good. His latest piece at Grantland is typical. Check out his occasional podcast, too.
posted by griseus at 9:42 AM on December 8, 2011

I assume you're already reading Fangraphs for baseball, but if you're not you should be.

Tom Ziller at SBNation does a good job of combining numbers and analysis in the NBA.
posted by auto-correct at 9:52 AM on December 8, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks guys, keep 'em coming.

JPD, I feel your pain, but at least his blog is still free.

Edogy, that's absolutely perfect.
posted by mreleganza at 3:44 PM on December 8, 2011

Check out Bill Burke's Advanced NFL Stats. He's completely transformed how I view the game.
posted by screamingnotlaughing at 10:39 AM on December 28, 2011

ahhh...missed that JPD already mentioned this upthread.
posted by screamingnotlaughing at 10:44 AM on December 28, 2011