There are two kinds of great defenders: quiet ones and loud ones. Quiet defenders anticipate the play, always throw to the right base, always make the right read, and rarely make mistakes. In coaching parlance, they make the routine play routinely. Sometimes they’ll uncork a ridiculous throw or make a diving stop, but most often they just materialize under a fly ball or in front of a line drive. Boston’s Jackie Bradley Jr. is like this, as were young Adrián Beltré and Chase Utley. In his New Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James wrote about how Jackie Robinson’s defensive numbers exceeded his reputation because of exceptional positioning, which is often how these guys get noticed: by making plays that only show up in advanced stats.
Loud defenders, however, stab at fly balls at a dead run, come out of their shoes trying to throw out base runners. They might also make good reads and minimize mistakes—take Angels shortstop Andrelton Simmons, for example—but they’re defined by a physicality that seemingly allows them to touch every part of the field no matter where they are when the ball is hit.
Nobody has louder defense than Twins center fielder Byron Buxton.
… her dreams of linking up with Seattle Reign were thrown into disarray when she was told that she had already been ‘discovered’ by North Carolina.
Unbeknown to Kellond-Knight and most of Australia’s other top-line talent, America’s professional soccer league uses a :discovery” system that allows clubs to spot talent and effectively ‘dibs’ them.
This can happen with the player having no idea they have been “discovered”.
… The loss is also a blow to the U.S. Soccer Federation, an organization that’s reeling from the immense failure to reach the 2018 World Cup, an acrimonious presidential race and growing dissatisfaction from some sections of the grassroots fan base. Gonzalez choosing El Tri has become a symbol, both correctly and incorrectly, of all the problems with the organization that resulted in the bitter disappointment of not reaching Russia.
“It feels like it’s a culmination of everything that every Mexican-American fan has been saying about why they support the Mexican national team,” Sergio Tristan, founder of the U.S.-based Mexican national team supporter group, Pancho Villa’s Army, says. “Where are the opportunities for us? Where are the opportunities at these American clubs?”
University of Oregon, Daily Emerald student newspaper, Gus Morris from
… When Willie Taggart inherited this roster a little over a year ago now, he said the roster was weaker than he wanted, what kind of roster in terms of strength and conditioning do you think you inherited?
Dude, the players we have here are unbelievable. They’re fast. We had 25 guys hit over 20 miles per hour when we did speed testing. We had 11 guys hit 20 miles an hour on Monday. We had four guys go over 21 miles per hour. That’s unbelievable. We have a fast team. In terms of size and strength, their as big and strong as they can be right now and they’re going to get bigger and stronger.
You hear the term SEC strong a lot, is that real and is that something you’re trying to bring to the Pac-12?
I can’t really speak to the difference between SEC strong and Pac-12 strong, but I can tell you that the strength and conditioning program that we’re implementing here under the direction of coach Cristobal, we’re trying to create players who are big and can move. I don’t know if that’s limited to just the SEC, I think you see that in a lot of conferences and a lot of teams.
This season has taken its toll on Rafael Benitez. The strain of a relegation haunted campaign is chiselled into his face, the emotion that comes with carrying the hopes of a football-centric city has weighed heavily on his shoulders, the stress of dealing with an owner like Mike Ashley has drained him of the enthusiasm he had when he first become Newcastle United manager.
Yet, still the eyes sparkle when he talks about football, players and what needs to be done to improve. Benitez’s mind is constantly buzzing with ideas and thoughts in the quest to return Newcastle to the upper reaches of the Premier League.
The fire still burns. Football management was once described as a drug by one of his predecessors at St James’ Park, Sir Bobby Robson. Benitez is an addict with no interest in booking into rehab.
Rather than create new neural activity patterns, the brain repurposes old ones, suggesting that short-term learning is more constrained than previously thought.
This study examined the effects of induced mental and muscular fatigue on soccer players’ physical activity profile and collective behavior during small-sided games (SSG). Ten youth soccer players performed a 5vs5 SSG under three conditions: a) control, playing without any previous activity; b) muscular fatigue, playing after performing a repeated change-of-direction task; c) mental fatigue, playing after completing a 30 min Stroop color-word task. Players’ positional data was used to compute time-motion and tactical-related variables. The muscular fatigue condition resulted in lower distances covered in high speeds (∼27%, 0.3; ±0.5) than the control condition. From the tactical perspective, the muscular fatigue condition resulted in lower distance between dyads and players spent ∼7% more time synchronized in longitudinal displacements than the control condition (0.3; ±0.3). Additionally, players spent ∼14% more time synchronized with muscular fatigue than with mental fatigue (0.7; ±0.3). The mental fatigue condition resulted in a very likely more predictable pattern in the distance between dyads than in muscular fatigue condition (0.4; ±0.2). Also, the mental fatigue possibly decreased the teams’ stretch index when compared with control (0.2; ±0.3) and likely increased compared with muscular fatigue (0.5; ±0.5). The better levels of longitudinal synchronization after muscular fatigue, might suggest the usage of tactical-related tasks after intense exercise bouts. The lower physical performance and time spent longitudinally synchronized after mental fatigue, should alert to consider this variable before matches or training activities that aim to improve collective behavior.
… The lawsuit begs the question: Are high school coaches liable for sports-related concussions?
Our conclusion: Yes, to an extent.
According to the Michigan High School Athletic Association, it’s up to each individual school to determine liability.
However, all coaches are required to be trained and versed in how to recognize a concussion, but that training is only required to happen every three years, per Michigan law. Schools are also required to provide information to students and parents on signs and symptoms of a concussion.
Before students can participate in sports each year, they are required to get a physical in which students are given a brief check-up. The MHSAA provides this form to schools and physicians, but it is not required that they fill out that specific form.
… Including De Leon (who hasn’t actually undergone the procedure yet), the Rays’ total of 10 surgeries in that span is the majors’ lowest, less than one-third that of the MLB-leading Mets — who, to be fair, haven’t had a pitcher above A-ball suffer that fate since 2015. Even so, using the start of 2016 as a cutoff, the Mets organization’s six TJs, though all from the low minors, place them third among the 30 teams, behind the Giants’ eight and the Reds’ seven. No other team has more than three, which is where the Rays will sit once De Leon goes under the knife.
Returning to the larger data set, one finds this: of the eight other pitchers in the Rays organization who’ve undergone TJ since the start of 2010, four have never reached the majors.
Luke’s presentation was the third guest talk the Forum has seen, following Dean Oliver in 2016 and Dennis Lock in 2017.
Formerly of AS Roma, Luke delivered an engaging session that focused on not only the application of analytics within elite sport, but also shared his own experiences from working in the industry, with a particular focus on his current role at the Kings.
Following his presentation, Luke also joined the OptaPro Three At The Back podcast with Toronto FC’s Devin Pleuler to discuss the event as well as the wider sports analytics industry.
A majority of NFL players are obese. Of 64 players on the 2017 Dolphins roster, for example, 35 (55 percent) were technically obese using a common measure called body mass index (BMI). All but one would be considered overweight. Quarterback Matt Moore — at 6-foot-3 and a svelte 192 pounds — was the lone player to fall into the normal range.
Of course these guys have to be huge to play in the NFL, and BMI does not account for weight from muscle versus fat. NFL players are some of the world’s most elite athletes, and their bodies have to strike a delicate balance – too big and they might be too slow to make that tackle; too small and they might be too fragile to survive it. The right balance requires weighing a lot of factors, but I was curious about one in particular: are heavier players any more or less likely to get injured?
It’s possible that injuries could be more frequent in heavier players due to the greater impact forces they suffer.
The national spending bill that’s expected to pass later Congress this week includes a provision exempting minor-league baseball players from labor standards—meaning that paying players paltry wages would go from being an incredibly stupid tradition to being codified in federal law.
This isn’t the first time that Major League Baseball has tried to secure additional legal backing to continue its practice of underpaying minor-leaguers, but this attempt is by far the most likely to succeed—pushed into a massive spending bill, rather than standing on its own as an independent piece of legislation as it was before. MLB’s parent clubs are responsible for minor-league wages, not the MiLB teams themselves, and the league has previously defended the fact that they do not comply with federal labor standards by claiming that players are only seasonal apprentices, rather than regular full-time employees. With this proposal, they wouldn’t have to rely on that excuse any longer.
… With player development at the forefront of conversations surrounding MLS these days, and given that kind of production witnessed in New York, one would expect every other MLS team to follow the same development blueprint in terms of how to utilize its reserve team.
But looking around the league, it’s clear that not every team is following suit, and some are moving in a wildly different direction. In the past two years, three MLS teams — the Vancouver Whitecaps, the Montreal Impact, and Orlando City — have done away with their standalone reserve teams in the USL. At this stage, Orlando doesn’t even have a USL affiliate where it can send younger players needing first-team minutes. Columbus Crew SC and the New England Revolution are in the same boat after previously having affiliate agreements with USL teams. They’ve opted instead to loan players out on a case-by-case basis.
“I think what you see happening is the shakeout of every club analyzing what their strengths and weaknesses are, and making a decision that best suits them,” said Orlando City GM Niki Budalic. “I don’t think that there should be a league-wide model where everyone does the exact same thing.”
… “We certainly won’t do everything the same, but we’re not going to try to reinvent a wheel, either, because I think what we’ve done has been pretty successful over the years,” DeCosta told the Ravens’ website. “You have your ups and downs but in general people would look at Ozzie’s regime and his tenure and say it’s been a smashing success. So, anybody coming into a situation like that would be foolish to try and just blow everything up and make tremendous change. That would be foolhardy. We’re not going to do that.”
DeCosta, 46, indicated that Newsome is probably the better evaluator, and that DeCosta has the advantage when it comes to utilizing analytics. He remembers reading “Moneyball” in 2003 while sitting in the waiting room while his daughter was born.
So, the Ravens will lean more on analytics with DeCosta in charge.