Point Blank – October 1
Some Truths about Trends - I
Many of you are not going to enjoy reading this one, but please keep on anyway. Today it will be the first part about what matters, and what just doesn’t matter (that will connect in a bit), when it comes to the world of Trends. Part II will follow with more on the theme next Wednesday.
To set up the topic yesterday, Trends were referred to as “the crack cocaine of sports betting. They take your money, create an artificial high that does not last very long, and far too often will have you looking into a mirror or a scoreboard regretting what you see.” If you do not believe in them, good for you. If you do, this will be among the more important reads you will have this season. Trends may help you to feel more confident when making bets, but ultimately far too many are thin blankets that provide mild comfort when things are stable, but will not keep you at all warm when the cold winds of the sporting world blow.
Yes, there are some performance patterns that matter, and they will be detailed on this page consistently over time. There is one at the bottom of today's sermon that carries significance. But every week there are reams of Trends spouted across the Sports Mediaverse that mean absolutely nothing, in terms of helping you to project the winner of a game. Absolutely Nothing. The task becomes one of knowing what has merit, and finding the logic behind the patterns, which takes time and experience. There is an easy first step, however - shit-canning the stuff that is irrelevant. You can start that process right now. It only takes a moment or two, by following this model -
In team sports, the scoreboard comes down to this – one coach and his players vs. another coach and his players.
That is all. The job for the handicapper is to find the most pertinent information to help to forecast what that result will be. That means individual and team statistics, the science of game matchups, relevant injuries, and those various patterns that can be called Trends. And in trying to utilize the latter as a tool, we can begin sorting through the nonsense immediately.
First, the Constant Reminder – A Losing Ticket eliminated is worth more than a Winning Ticket earned. It takes 11 winning tickets to offset 10 losers. Far too many in this game focus on finding winners instead of eliminating losers; if you take the other path you will have less company, but ultimately more money. Now on to the National Football League, circa 2014, and how to make a lot of foolishness go away.
Let’s start with a list of teams that have had changes in at least three of the four major building blocks, Head Coach – Offensive Coordinator (O) – Defensive Coordinator (D) – QB, since the beginning of the 2013 season:
ARIZONA – Bruce Arians / Harold Goodwin (O) / Todd Bowles (D) / Carson Palmer
BUFFALO – Doug Marrone / Jim Schwartz (D) / EJ Manual-Kyle Orton
CHICAGO – Marc Trestman / Aaron Kromer (O)/ Mel Tucker (D)
CLEVELAND – Mike Pettine / Kyle Shanahan (O) / Jim O’Neil (D) / Brian Hoyer
DETROIT – Jim Caldwell / Joe Lombardi (O) / Teryl Austin (D)
HOUSTON – Bill O’Brien / Romeo Crennel (D) / Ryan Fitzpatrick
JACKSONVILLE – Gus Bradley / Jeff Fisch (O) / Bob Babich (D) / Blake Bortles
KANSAS CITY – Andy Reid / Doug Pederson (O) / Bob Sutton (D) / Alex Smith
MINNESOTA – Mike Zimmer / Norv Turner (O) / George Edwards (D) / Teddy Bridgewater
OAKLAND - *** / *** / *** / *** (no one really in charge, QB TBD)
PHILADELPHIA – Chip Kelly / Bill Davis (DC) / Nick Foles
TAMPA BAY – Lovie Smith / Jeff Tedford (O) / Leslie Frazier (D) / Josh McCown-Mike Glennon
TENNESSEE – Ken Whisenhunt / Jason Mitchell (O) / Ray Horton (D)
WASHINGTON – Jay Gruden / Sean McVay (OC) / Kirk Cousins
When there are changes at three of those spots, and especially when it is all four, it is a major paradigm shift. Let that sink in. The Chargers, with Mike McCoy as HC and a new OC in Frank Reich, have shown how dramatic a change in two of the four can be. For each of these teams, Time began on Week #1 of the 2013 season, or Week #1 of 2014. Nothing before that matters, in terms of being classified as a “Trend”. Not a game result, not a series of downs, not a single play.
So what is the bottom line for this NFL season? Nearly half of the 32 teams have undergone change dramatic enough that results prior to 2013 are largely immaterial. Want a more direct way of phrasing it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMHvrfsx0HU .
For these teams, it truly “Just doesn’t matter”. Yet what will you read this week, and throughout the season, even in professional newsletters published by folks that should know better? References to all sorts of numbers from the past that are irrelevant. They may read well, or sound good if the info comes from an audio medium, but they are utterly useless. Useless, at 11-10, is expensive.
A concrete example was given in yesterday’s column, focusing on so much of the anti-Detroit info that was presented last week (/pregame-forums/f/14/t/1052316.aspx). Things like “3-12-1 ATS the week after facing Green Bay”. But patterns that the Lions had under Jim Schwartz or Rod Marinelli should be shredded, deleted, painted over or whatever method makes them go away for you. As for immediacy in terms of going forward, when you begin to break down the Vikings/Packers for Thursday night, do not even think about the historical logs – these coaches have never met before, and the Green Bay record vs. Bridgewater is 0-0. Neither Matt Asiata nor Jerick McKinnon have ever carried the ball vs. the Packer defense.
Losing the crutch of these “quick fixes” may sting a bit, and perhaps it should. Trends often seem to be that magical path to success, in an endeavor in which there simply are not any shortcuts. They also lead to a dangerous mind-set, which we see in play repeatedly – the fact that something showing momentum in a particular direction will continue. That is a treacherous fallacy for a Sports Bettor. Over time, the bounces of the sport balance out fairly well. If a bad team has issues, they work to fix them. If a good team has particular strengths, opponents look for ways to work around them. The very job of the oddsmakers is to ensure that pointspread runs, whether positive or negative, are short-lived, to avoid facing the madness of crowds. The very notion of betting on some pattern because it has gone 16-4 over the last 20 situations does not even hold up on the surface – unless there is extreme merit lurking behind the sequence, you are often asking a pendulum to stretch further than logic dictates. You are late to a party that wasn’t really worth being at in the first place.
Want to have some fun? Or if you are a college student, and need a topic for a paper, how about some easy research? Check out one of those football yearbooks that list a lot of team trends, and find a copy about 10 years old or so. Take a look at the recommended Trends, and chart how they did going forward. Then notice how a current issue of the same publication might be telling you to even play the opposite of what was called for a decade ago. Meaningless patterns correct, over time, and the bushels of short-term anomalies allowed for by small samples end up tipping the scales near 50-50 as more results are added.
Yes, eliminating those seeming “shortcuts to success” that Trends provide takes a comfort away. But it is a false comfort; they are a bad girlfriend that you should have broken up with long ago. You will miss her for a short while, before soon becoming glad that she is gone, and later wondering how the hell you ever got involved with her in the first place.
Next week in Part II will be the notion that many of the Trends you will read actually have a lot to do with people who have never been on a playing field in their lives, instead of being measurements of a team’s performance. But that can hold until then; tomorrow we need to get back to this week’s board, and the opportunities that it brings.
Survivor Week #5
The ticket here was boring last week, but the Pools were not, with Pittsburgh’s loss to Tampa Bay helping to thin the ranks. This week it will be boring again – we need to put the NEW ORLEANS SAINTS into play at some point this season, and this is their best week. No discussion needed.
Out of Play:
PITTSBURGH
GREEN BAY
NEW ENGLAND
SAN DIEGO
In the Sights…
Let’s talk some MLB. In a column focusing on Trends, the notion of finding a genuine performance pattern that brings logic can be introduced by looking at a little Adam Wainwright history. Wainwright is just about as consistent as they come, a battler that keeps the Cardinals in the hunt in games. So with runs being excruciatingly precious in the late afternoon start at Chavez Ravine on Friday, when he and Clayton Kershaw almost unfairly get the shadows on their side as an edge over the hitters, the Run Line of +1.5 that is available at -140 (and a little less in a couple of key precincts) is an intriguing value. It is also a number that will likely get worse, not better.
What does a +1.5 mean when Wainwright takes the mound? Over the past two seasons the Cardinals have only lost by two or more 14 times over his 71 starts. Since 2008, Wainwright’s games are 148-46 with a +1.5 attached. In 17 of his 32 outings this season he allowed one run or none, which seriously curtails the chances of losing by two or more. That is valuable. There is logic to the pattern, and yet it is one that can also be put into play, because the market respect for Kershaw forces a high price on the Dodger side, and hence the formula that adjusts for the Run Line as well.