Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

On the soccer question, if you had the discussion among the world's most knowledgeable fans, players, coaches, writers, etc., you might not get to a complete consensus, but the same few names would be in the discussion -- all without the benefit of statistics. The "witness of the eyes" as I think John Updike called it.

The same could be said of any sport though. Just because a player's contributions aren't currently being tracked or valued by the mainstream doesn't mean that those contributions can't be measured. The fact of the matter is that when teams look to gain an advantage over their competition, in any sport, they turn to statisticians/data scientists to tell them how they can improve. Everyone knows the Moneyball story. This is precisely how baseball changed. Some don't like the changes for various reasons, but each change that has happened was the result of someone figuring out a way to gain an edge, however small or might be, over their competition through statistical analysis. Same thing with football and when to go for it on 4th down or when to kick a field goal. And basketball as well. Watching an NBA game today is almost like watching an entirely different game than even just 20 years ago. People who don't know any better often say that "Steph Curry changed the way the game is played", but of course that's not true. It was statistical analysis that changed the way the game is played. The MIT Sloan Sports Conference, which is where most of this transformative work comes from and gets presented prior to the changes being implemented by owners, coaches, and GMs, had several talks about how the three point shot was severely under utilized in the NBA and how any team could gain a significant advantage by stocking up on 3 point shooters. It is no accident that the first team to buy into the analytics was the team from Silicon Valley, whose ownership believes in science. It's no accident that they assembled a team of multiple strong 3 point shooters and hired Steve Kerr to coach it. Steph Curry didn't change the way the game was played, data scientists did. Curry was the beneficiary. Most people think Curry is the best shooter of all time, but they aren't even aware that Steve Kerr actually had a better 3 point shooting percentage than Curry did during his playing years.

Soccer is no exception. Just because you can identify talent without statistics doesn't mean that you can't better identify talent WITH statistics. Many of the things a midfielder does to help his team win doesn't get tracked, or at least hasn't been historically. But that's changing and will continue to change in the future as more and more data savvy owners recognize the value that statistical analysis adds to their organization.