Trying to get all Bill James on the Bulldogs

As you well know, this past week was fairly rough as far as blog postings. Work really picked up and I got a little snuck up on with the whole three games/three days thing. It's a good learning experience for the blog -- I'll have to proactively plan a little bit better last time.

Today I'd like to get my Bill James on and attempt to apply a sabermetrics concept to Drake basketball this season. Specifically VORP, or Value over Replacement Player. The idea is that it measures how much more productive a player is than someone at "replacement" level (essentially a AAA callup).

I'll freely admit that I wanted to come up with something that could be estimated purely from box score statistics, so to say that this possesses anywhere near the refinement of VORP is a flat out lie. Other than the idea behind it, we should really stop the comparisons there. As a result, I'll call it BSRVE (Box Score Replacement Value Exceeded).

My methodology was to consider the possessions "used" by a player (shots and turnovers). From there, I would apply average turnover rates and shooting percentages to determine how many points a "replacement player" would have generated with the same possessions. I then subtracted that value from the actual points generated from each player to get a base result.

Value was then added for rebounds (offensive = +0.7, defensive = +0.3), for assists (+1.0) and steals (+1.0), and then reduced for turnovers (-1.0). I made the simplifying assumption that a replacement player would commit enough turnovers to offset the value added from whatever steals/assists/rebounds they committed (a convienient, but likely less accurate assumption).

Why these figures? Well, on average, getting rebounds helps prevent opposing possessions or generate new offensive possessions. Assisting other players gives them easier scoring opportunities, and creating steals reduces the possessions of the opponent. These generate points on average for the team, or on average reduce points for the other team. Committing turnovers essentially reduces points for the team since you can't get any points out of the possession.

So, I applied my methodology to each player's game and summed up the overall results. Here are our players, sorted by "AVERAGE BSRVE":

I have made anything between 5-10 green, anything above that tan, and anything below 0 as red. Few thoughts:

• Early on, Ben Simons really shot the ball exceptionally well and pulled down rebounds while really limiting turnovers. Overall, he's been extremely productive so far, although with a few recent poor shooting days he has slowed. (By the way, forgive that I have "Simmons" in here, as that is how they have the detail at the stat source I pulled these from).
• Wedel generates some high values from his ridiculous 66.3% EFG% on the season. That said, his AST/TO for the season is 5/12. That's not so hot, and suggests to me that he might be better suited for the 2.
• Despite the fact he is only averaging 4.6 PPG, Wiseler is an extremely valuable player. Consider that, as a point guard, he has a ridiculous 16/3 AST/TO ratio for the season. 8-17 is an admittedly small sample size, but if Frank keeps shooting well enough to make people respect him, he continues to be extremely dangerous as he has shown he can set up his teammates. His ballhandling has been exceptional so far, and I'd really like to see him get more time. He doesn't need to start, but he should be playing 20+MPG because we couldn't ask anything more out of a 1.
• JY needs to get it going. We need more out of him than 1-8 days like today for us to be a good basketball team. I realize he's likely playing hurt and is critical as a vocal leader, but we need production as well. He needs to be in that top three.
• After being somewhat invisible early on, David Smith did make some plays this weekend. He obviously needs to do better at the line, but I was glad to see him make plays and get in the open floor. He has the potential (which is my buzz word for this team) to really be a great player in some time.
• Shouldn't be a surprise that we had such low returns vs. UCF. Simons essentially shot a bit below average but managed some assists to get positive. Wedel & JY were fairly invisible. Other than some Templeton treys early on, it was quite the poor showing for our offense.

Initial results seem fine enough to show, so that is the reason for this post. Using 68 possessions (national average) and applying the same formulas, we'd get roughly 40 something points if "replacement players" played all 200 minutes of a game. If you sum up the "AVG BSRVE" and add it to that value, we get 68.0 PPG using this metric. This is just slightly over our actual PPG of 65.2. But, this includes some defensive metrics and is admittedly rough, so it should really just be in the vicinity.

So, it's not busted yet, but it is admittedly a work in progress. Bucky would have annihilated this thing with his combination of rebounds and shooting, but I think we all thought he was an extremely valuable player so maybe that doesn't break this thing just yet. That said, there's more work to be done here. It would be nice to look at more games to get a better fit on my calculations. Also, I need to think about adjusting this for pace and for the strength of teams we're playing.

Some final random thoughts on a Sunday Night:

Templeton has really turned into a true 4 for us. He's our best screener and has 25 boards through five games. Couldn't ask anything more, especially when he's coming off of a 15 points, 6 boards performance against UCF.

I was able to sneak in the video streams on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, the package included audio from the Akron announcer, who was absolutely horrendous with Drake's roster. Don't get me wrong, there are some tough names on Drake's roster. I don't have a problem with an opposing broadcaster breaking out "WEH-del" as I made that same mistake myself. But here were the top three Bulldogs Name Butchers I heard on Saturday (counted down, Letterman style):

• #3: "Seth VON Deest". Apparently Count Bettendorf was alive and well in Daytona Beach on Saturday as I heard this one numerous times.


• #2: "Ray" Eaddy. Big Nasty earned yet another hilarious nickname as their broadcaster felt like pulling out a name nowhere present on our roster to make things interesting.


• #1: Frank "VICE-ler". Apparently we had Dirk Nowitzki running the point on Saturday, because their announcer sure had the love for subbing in the "V" for the "W". I got a good kick out of this one, if you don't know the guys name, at least try to sound it out and use the letters that appear on the roster! If this game had taken place just a few hundred miles south, Frank would have been Miami Vice for the day.

Was that really a neutral site on Sunday? Apparently the horrendous coverage of Drake's roster on Saturday forced the streaming carrier to nix the audio feed. As a result, we only heard the PA and what went on in the gym -- essentially being present a the game. Between the "airball" chants for Templeton (who still was fantastic) and the clear moans/groans at the officials (who struggled on Sunday), it sure sounded like we were playing at UCF. Just something to keep in mind as we break this one down.

I liked seeing Ben Simons take the ball to the rim after he was struggling behind the three. While he ended up a rather pedestrian 4-11 from the field, he was 1-6 from the three. He pulled out some nifty floaters and drives and ended up 3-5 from inside the arc. As he continues to learn how to use that 6-8 frame at the college level, he's truly has the potential to develop into an elite scorer.