Loved the podcast w/ Nate Silver. He can do no wrong, really. Yes, his mannerisms/speech are annoying, but content-wise he's untouchable

Don't forget Al Michaels

silver punctuated almost everything he said with "right?", seems like such a math guy thing. i've seen that same quirk from various other nerds / hedge fund / quant types. was a really good podcast though, silver had something pretty interesting to say about pretty much every topic covered

It's what people who don't speak for a living do.

actually simmons was 1st.

Down Goes Brown maybe? he's a contributor on Grantland...

or more likely, some poker player?

thoughts on BS (wow just realized double meaning of BS report) as the DN of sports-writing? negreanus said a few times that he views himself as a bridge between "old school" and "new school", but im pretty sure most online poker players completely roll their eyes at this sentiment.

simmons brings in these quant guys, but i cringe at some of his questions/comments during his interviews (and i dont really know much about sports quant, just common sense stuff). think he should just stick to ewing theory/tyson zone/"chris paul is doing chris paul things", and let jacoby or someone else from grantland (zach lowe?) do the sabermetrics interviews

Simmons is doing more for analytics in sports as a sportswriter than anyone else.

Even if he doesn't grasp everything or says some dumb stuff he is still putting these guys on a mic in front of a HUGE audience.

I completely disagree.

If your goal is to reach out to the general public and expose them to advanced stats, the worst way to accomplish that is by putting two sabremetric guys on there and let them go back and forth. You need the casual fan in there trying to explain things or not getting things in the right context.

Agree with both of these things.

I think the point he's making is that it's just Lol to hear him & Jack-O make fun of BAPIP while talking clutchness one week & then turn around and say to Silver "ya know there were a lot of blowhards who questioned you and Billy Beane" the next.

But yah whatever, gotta start somewhere.

I would bet Simmons knows way more about advanced stats than he lets on, he just chooses to not always use it because it would alienate his fan base.

He might, I think he knows enough to be dangerous but still not enough to satisfy anyone with a strong interest in analytics.

I just don't think Simmons is very smart. I saw him talk at the MIT conference last year, nearly ruined it for me.

I wish I could be not very smart like him.

Moneyball made $100 million in box office. David Cone talks about WAR and BABIP on Yankees broadcasts. Let's not pretend like analytics in sports are some totally underground thing.

I doubt this. One thing people forget about most advanced stats is that they presuppose probabalistic thinking, which many people, even really smart people, are not capable of.

Simmons still clings to his ******ed theories (see Ewing Theory) over actual statistical data.

He wants to make something up and be right about it. I get it.

i was just disappointed w/ the voulgaris and silver cast. i sort of knew most of the things they talked about before going into it.

i guess a big part of that could just be the fact that bob and nate are only willing to give off so much information

The latest podcast with Lombardi was difficult to listen to. Constant interruptions followed by awkward pauses with neither knowing who to talk (it was usually caused by Simmons).

I didn't say it was underground. It isn't mainstream because Brad Pitt made a movie that was successful though.

Also, Miggy Cabrera.

Did anyone see the Klosterman article on Grantland today?

This chunk of it definitely made me say "wtf are you talking about?"

I happen to be very passionate about football and get tons of enjoyment and entertainment from it. That being said kicking a FG when it's 4th and goal at the 2 yard line at any point other than to tie the game or go ahead when there is virtually no time on the clock is LOL bad. You can be entertained and love the sport but still want to see it played optimally. And sorry to break it to you , winning matters. What kind of pussification of america BS is this guy spewing? smmfh.

He's getting bogged down with what down it is. It has nothing to do with success of people in the past trying to go for it on 4th down it's all about the distance you have to cover and what part of the field you are on. It's the percent chance you are to pick up x amount of yards in one play that you are looking at not what the success rate of attempts in the past on 4th down and x amount of yards from the same spot on the field.

Yah I imagine there's enough of a sample size of 3rd&4's from midfield in the history of football to guess a reasonably accurate success rate.

I believe his argument, although weakly made, is that once you abandon the notion that coaches should go by their gut, you've lost something essential about sports. There's no question that if SE were around during some of the greatest sporting events of all time that the forest would be missed through the trees.

Just finished the Nate Silver podcast. I really liked it. Simmons jumps around a lot covering a wide range of topics from politics to football to baseball, and I thought Silver did a real good job of keeping up and saying interesting things.

i do not follow politics, read newspapers, and of all the major sports baseball is the one I follow least so i do not really know who Nate Silver is or what he did that was so significant (from the podcast I guess he does a column for one of the New York newspapers and predicted Obama would win, and he also made some sort of fantasy baseball model?). I kinda wish they had spelled out his bio more for those of us who don't know his background at all.

Also, from all the poker talk I am guessing this is the old 2+2 user Nate the Great (this is not my first SN, I have been around for awhile), who I remember used to do a lot of baseball modelling stuff.

Just buy Nate Silver's book and read it. Everyone itt, right now. It's for my money the best book in the Freakonomics/Gladwell vein and it is catnip for the 2p2 demo.

It's good, right?

Yeah I'm like 90% through with it. Def recommend.