“Marchand goes shelf on a one-timer from the high slot,”* may not mean something to you but I grew up in Canada. And, even though, I don’t say, “Eh,” — unless I’m trying to fit in while I use my American AMEX card to get a maple dip and double-double at a Tim’s in Penetanguishene — I know what that means. The Leafs [sic] lost to the Bruins in the playoffs. Again. Which means I also know that Leafs fans [again, sic] will say, “We should have won.”
+++
“We should have won.” The lament of every fan in every sport whose team took more shots, threw for more yards, dominated time of possession, or got more hits. And, lost.
Instinctively, the followers of the church of the “we shoulda” statistical truths believed it to be true that if you do more right things than the other side, you should win. Sadly, for years, the best they could muster was this anecdotal apocryphal attributed to Canadian sports icon, Wayne Gretzky, “You miss a 100% of the shots you don't take.”
If their church allows dancing, it’s on the heads of pins. The most common score in major league baseball is 3-2. The third most common outcome is 2-1. Nearly 30% of all MLB games are decided by one run.
So, it’s a good thing that Bill James showed up. He didn’t look at the scores. Those tiny numbers can’t be analyzed. He looked at bigger numbers. Forget runs. Look at hits. Last year, the average number of hits in a major league game was 17. That’s 3x more data to work with than scores.
Expanding the scope of numbers is step one for sports stats. Hockey numerologists don’t look at the paltry number of goals. They look at shots. In a league where the average goalie stops 90% of shots, an NHL scorecard has 10x more shots than goals. Hockey’s number nerds who analyze relative shot counts for insights call their shot stat Corsi.
They posit that teams that with better Corsis should win more games. So, managers assemble a team that shoots more. Coaches tell players to get shots on net. They produce more shots and they still lose. Because the NHL only picks winners based on goals. A lucky bounce. More high percentage shots. Getting a player who just has a knack for putting a shot in the net. The intangibles that defy statistics.
Until now, it would have been reasonable to think this is a story about sports. It’s not. It’s a story about ads. Of course.
There are two parts to an ad. Impressions and, what I’ll call impact. Impressions happen first. You see it. Impact happens downstream. When people who see an ad take some action because of the ad.
The impact is the goal. The impression is watered down advanced stat. A lot of folks I work with in advertising’s version of the matrix love impressions. There’s lots to analyze. And, because it lets them say things like, “We bought a lot more impressions than our competitors, so we should win more brand loyalty.” Or, “We dominated share of voice.” They are true believers. Their number nerds peruse the data from millions of ads for insights.
Last week, a group of marketing nerds for a $20B brand invited me to their staff meeting. A conference room of maybe 30 people plus an additional online cadre of 40 people from the company and their various agencies ooh-ed and aah-ed over dashboards that presented an impressive array of bar charts, pie charts, and, in one meeting-stopping moment, a histogram. The data, of course, all derived from nothing burgers ad impressions.
For me, the high point was when they pivoted to performance. The vendor that had enjoyed the lion’s share of their budget for each of the past eight years had, “Just entered the top-10 in terms of actual performance for the first time last December.”
It didn’t matter that the vendor they picked to win had lost every year for eight years. The advanced stats metrics told them, “We should have won.” And, that’s what they went with.
Quantificators won’t like this quote from Hall of Fame football coach, Bill Parcells, “You are what your record says you are.” But hey, “That’s why they play the game.”
+++
*That was after game 4. The Leafs won game 5. Worry has ebbed. Hope has returned. At least that’s my impression.