MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference 2013- Day 2

A quick update before I get started (because no one reads them when I put them at the end of entries):

I did a couple of videos on my YouTube page in the time since the last entry, if you want to check them out. They haven’t been embedding well as of late, so I’ll first try to embed them and link them if the embed doesn’t work once I publish the entry. Anyway, the first video is one I did for a public speaking class entitled: “How to do a last-minute speech.” And yes, it is what it sounds like:

The second is me saluting the fact that Opening Day is almost here while taking a subtle jab at Spring Training games:

If you liked those and would like to find out about them not weeks after they were uploaded, feel free to subscribe to the channel. I don’t have a regular posting schedule (we all know how well that has worked out for the blog these past few months), but I do plan on uploading videos and making them public there before they ever get on a published blog entry. For example, I may or may not have uploaded the video later on in this entry publicly before I published this entry

Apparently one day of sports analytics wasn’t enough, so I came back for some more in a second day:

And I got to begin it with this beautiful panel of people:

That would be the “Staying on the Field: Injury Analytics” panel. It was compromised of the following panelists:

Stephania Bell (moderator):

Senior Writer, ESPN.

Stan Conte:

Vice President of Medical Services (whatever that means), Los Angeles Dodgers.

Peter Wehlig:

Director of Center for Molecular Medicine and Orthopaedics, Düsseldorf, Germany. You may recognize him better as the surgeon who performed the blood-spinning operation (I think that’s right.) on Kobe Bryant and a couple athletes.

John Brenkus:

Founder, BASE Productions. Or perhaps known better as the host of Sports Science (is that one word like Sportscenter?) on ESPN.

This was really interesting once it got started, but there were technical difficulties with the Stan Conte’s slides–which while we’re listing off things I didn’t like about the panel, slides don’t integrate well into almost any panel. Probably the one thing I will always take with me from the panel was Conte’s story about Mike Matheny and what eventually convinced him to retire. If you don’t know the gist of the story, Matheny retired due to excess concussions from taking foul  tips to the head. Apparently what happened was Matheny was talking to whoever the Cardinals back-up catcher was at the time and telling him that he blacked-out for a second every time a ball hits his mask, which he described as being perfectly normal. It was upon the back-up catcher telling him that it wasn’t perfectly normal that he black out every time a ball hit his mask that Matheny reconsidered that, shall we say, “sanity,” of him continuing his career any longer.

After that it was back up the Grand Ballroom for Monday Morning Quarterback. This was one of the more entertaining and by far the most engaging panel. It was compromised  of the following panelists:

Tony Reali (moderator):

Host, Around The Horn (ESPN).

Herm Edwards:

Former Head Coach and NFL Analyst, ESPN.

Thomas Dimirtoff:

General Manager, Atlanta Falcons.

Jack Del Rio:

Defensive Coordinator, Denver Broncos.

Brian Burke (no not that one):

Founder, Advanced NFL Stats.

Like I said, this was the most interactive and fun of the panels. What it was is we watched videos of different scenarios of plays (mostly involving the people on the panel) and then the audience voted on what they though the coach should do on that particular play. We then got to see what the statistics dictated the coach should have done. It was a fun time.

Then I went ahead and filmed a mini-tour of the conference grounds. So here that is:

After that I went ahead to the Stying Relevant: Social Media Analytics panel. That was these people:

Gary Belsky (moderator):

Columnist, Time.com.

Jayne Bussman-Wise:

Digital Director, Brooklyn Nets & Barclays Center.

Gary Vaynerchuk:

CEO, VaynerMedia, who for both better and worse completely dominated the speaking time by the panelists.

Omid Ashtari:

Head of Sports and Entertainment, Twitter.

Chad Finocchio:

Co-Founder, Bleacher Report.

This was interesting insofar as how it may pertain to this blog and social media outlets thereof. I may change my New Year’s goals because of it eventually. Like I mentioned, Vaynerchuk completely took over the panel, which was not necessarily a bad thing, because he had knowledge of the subject some good things to say, but also it was a brilliant overall panel and not just him, so I would have liked to hear a lot less of him and a lot more of the other panelists.

Then, for my final panel of the conference, I headed over to Hall of Fame Analytics, which was these people:

Chad Millman:

Editor in Cheif, ESPN the Magazine.

Buster Olney:

Senior Writer/Baseball Analyst, ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com.

Peter King:

Senior Writer, Sports Illustrated.

Dean Oliver:

Director of Production Analytics, ESPN Stats & Information.

And sadly, although he was initially slated to be a part of it, John Thorn could not make it to the panel. Thorn, if you did not know, is a fellow MLBlogger. Besides this, the panel was really great. While he may not have been viewed the same way to other people in the audience, Buster Olney stole the show in this panel for me. I’ve disagreed with many of the positions Olney has taken when it comes to Hall of Fame voting in the past, but I realize that this was the case in many scenarios because he was confined by the schmushed time slots ESPN has given him. It was in this panel  where he got to fully explain his point and develop his argument that it became clear he was the baseball writer of decades and I was the jerk at home who thought he was an idiot who I knew more about baseball than. I mean he didn’t convince me that Jack Morris belongs in the Hall over  Bert Blyleven (though he did argue that) but he did get me on his side of the fence on a couple other points  and helped me beter see his perspective on a couple others.

After that it was off to the closing ceremonies and the Alpha Awards for exceptional performances in the field of sports analytics. Whatever that means. I actually don’t have my program with me since I left it in New York, so I can’t tell you what any of the awards were, so I’ll just end this entry with a series of pictures and you can create your own storyline to accompany them.

And thus, the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference came to a close. I hope you guys enjoyed that entry. Thank you for reading. And considering I am going to Opening Day in less than 24 hours, be on the lookout for the entry from that game.  While I will miss the free time I have during the offseason, I’ll say it’s about time baseball got here.