Applied Sports Science newsletter – October 2, 2018

Davis, who has struck out 178 times through Sept. 13, knows baseball’s walk of shame better than just about everyone else in the majors. But he forces himself to keep his head up, so pitchers can’t see how demoralized he is. In doing so, he stares into a sea of fans at Camden Yards who tell him something he already knows, something that brings him to tears at his kitchen table: He sucks.

The degree to which he has sucked this season is almost without precedent. He has MLB’s worst batting average (.174) and second-worst slugging percentage (.306). The fearsome lefthanded swing that mashed 53 homers in 2013 and 47 two years later has produced just 16 home runs. He has struck out at a 35.8% clip, fourth worst in history, behind ’13 Chris Carter (36.2%), ’17 Joey Gallo (36.8%) and ’17 Chris Davis (37.2%). According to FanGraphs, his -2.8 WAR gives him an outside shot at unseating Jim Levey’s -4.0 in 1933 for the worst season of all time. (Baseball Reference is slightly more charitable, giving Davis -2.3 WAR.)

“I have no clue what I’m doing at the plate,” says the 32-year-old Davis, who is in the third season of a seven-year, $161 million contract—the most the Orioles have ever committed to one player, and the 22nd-most-lucrative deal ever.

… as far down the path as Andersen’s come, Babcock spoke about what more lays out there for him on the horizon. He’s already proven beyond doubt that he’s a bonafide NHL starter over his first two years in Toronto and made big strides in conditioning, but still has another level to reach inside the team.

“You’ve got to lead in all areas,” said Babcock. “In fitness, in mental toughness, in practice habits and everything you do, and I think Freddie’s committed to that. When I met with him and his family this summer in his home it was very impressive, to say the least, just how badly he wants to have success and how hard he’s willing to work.”

… The NFL has a real problem here. Thomas is just one, brutal example of what this game asks of players, and how little they get in return. In recent years, the league has made a big show of making the game safer for players. As it looks to pivot from decades of denial regarding the danger of head injuries, the NFL has dived into the rule book to at the very least give the appearance of caring about player safety.

The funny part is, most players either don’t care, or actively hate the way these rules have been enforced. There is no way to make football “safe” without drastically changing the DNA of the game. Players know this. And as we so often hear, they “sign up for it.” While that is true, when it is time to “sign up” they often have little leverage to protect themselves financially, while that is literally the only thing teams are doing during the negotiation. This is a sport where gigantic men in armor hurl themselves at each other for three hours each week and most are playing on non-guaranteed contracts. If you asked any player whether he wanted the NFL to make the game safer, or guarantee his entire contract both in terms of length and value, he would take the guarantee every day of the week.

The Seahawks and Earl Thomas III drama have not been “water over the bridge” just yet. Even though Earl has been reinstated to play football with the Seahawks’ organization after holding out during training camp, he has not been happy and has asked to be traded.

During his holdout, the Dallas Cowboys was intrigued with giving up some picks for Earl but backed out of the conversation. However this past weekend the Seahawks had told different teams that if they wanted Earl, they had to give away two-second rounders. The Chiefs were interested at first but told the Seahawks that they would continue negotiations if they wanted less for Earl.

Game-day lifting had enough buzz around it that I felt it necessary to write an article on the topic. Knowing what I know, my thoughts couldn’t be punctuated unless I could get some science behind it… or, at least, scientists. And there aren’t many better than Andy Fry, PhD, and David Szymanski, PhD. These two have been around and performed a ton of research on the effects of resistance training, and are able to confidently comment on this topic.

In terms of game-day lifting, we primarily look at the issue in the context of a pre-game lift at some point prior to competition, but our inquiry does not exclude post-game training. It’s certainly something to consider, and I’m sure all of us also know that it could backfire if done incorrectly. Undoubtedly, the group and level of chronological training age must be considered, the same as when we program regular training. With the increase in practice sessions, factoring in the toll on the body from games and then adding one more training session, the results could be disastrous with younger, less-resilient athletes.

And what would be the key markers to look for that would inform the coach that too much has been done? Or that perhaps just the right programming is in place? Or the unlikely, but possible, chance that there isn’t enough being done to elicit a response? I truly feel it’s not as easy as just seeing if lifting fits into the schedule.

One week into training camp and the general consensus from Milwaukee Bucks players has been positive regarding the shift to new coach Mike Budenholzer’s system.

Everything about practices is regimented down to the smallest detail. The work on the court, in the film room, training room and weight room is pointed, purposeful, slotted and efficient. And, of course, there’s the “daily vitamin” system that Budenholzer is known for.

While proper nutrition is important, a vitamin in Budenholzer’s lexicon is an analogy for getting specific, tailored work sessions in with assistants coaches.

“It’s just for guys to come in, obviously you want to take your vitamins every day, keep improving, getting better,” center Brook Lopez said Monday at the Sports Science Center when asked to explain what Budenholzer means when he talks about vitamins.

Part of the strength of the widely endorsed Big Five model of personality is its efficient explanatory power – in the traits of Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, it removes the redundancy of more fine-grained approaches and manages to capture the most meaningful variance in our habits of thought and behaviour.

So what to make then of the popular proposal that what marks out high achievers from the rest is that they rank highly on another trait labelled as “Grit”?

Is the recognition of Grit, and the development of a scale to measure it, a breakthrough in our understanding of the psychology of success? Or is it a reinvention of the wheel, a redundant addition to the taxonomy of personality psychology?

A self-powered sensor developed at the University of Waterloo could allow doctors to remotely monitor the recovery of surgical patients.

The small, tube-like device is designed to be fitted to braces after joint surgery to wirelessly send information to computers, smartphones or smartwatches to track range of motion and other indicators of improvement.

“That data would be continuously collected, so it would be as though the physician or physiotherapist was always there, always observing the patient,” said Hassan Askari, an engineering doctoral candidate at Waterloo.

Proponents of wearables that track the links between brain activity and bodily well-being tout their potential in helping improve overall health. At the recent Brain Health and Performance Summit, presented by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Neuroscience Research Institute and The Stanley D. and Joan H. Ross Center for Brain Health and Performance, experts discussed how wearables are currently being used for health and performance monitoring.

Devices that monitor basic health indicators are widely available—most smartphones can track the number of daily steps taken and estimate caloric burn with surprising accuracy. “We’re now used to measuring ourselves and monitoring ourselves,” Josh Hagen, Ph.D., MS, the director of the Human Performance Innovation Center at West Virginia University explained. “Now we can actually measure physiology in real time, and we can get a lot more insights from day to day.”

The black fabric strapped to each member of the Loyola Maryland men’s soccer team is a dead ringer for a sports bra, but it’s not.

The Greyhounds are part of a growing number of college, high school and professional teams using GPS and/or heart-monitoring systems to protect their players. For Loyola, that protection comes in the form of a chip on the back of the “vest,” which follows the players’ every move and will spew fountains of data for coaches to parse through.

Loyola employs the GPS monitoring system from VX Sport to track five main variables — total distance, high-speed running (above 17 kilometers per hour), number of sprints (above 25 km/hr), acceleration and deceleration, using players’ coordinates. If a forward is running but isn’t sprinting where he needs to be in the zone, the coaches know. If a midfielder is decelerating on the wrong spot on the pitch, the coaches know.

“You can tell who put the work in and who didn’t,” coach Steve Nichols said. “You can tell if something’s going on. It helps with a lot of little things you never would have known and, more importantly, health.”

In a time where ephemeral diet advice bombards us from every Instagrammer and morning show, it’s tempting to ignore the latest scientific report claiming to have a helpful idea about obesity.

In a new review, researchers suggest that the consumption of ultra-processed foods could cause obesity and related health problems because of the way the foods feed our gut microbes.

Stakeholders in the sports betting industry have discussed the creation of an integrity monitor association that would share betting information in an effort to identify suspicious activity aimed at compromising sporting events.

The American Gaming Association, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents the casino industry, said it is collaborating on a “robust suspicious information sharing repository.”

“The AGA has had productive discussions with our members and the leagues about the formation of an integrity monitoring association, which would provide an enhanced reporting system,” wrote AGA senior vice president Sara Slane.

Jason Botterill has experienced both sides of the spectrum in confronting the challenges of building a competitive NHL team versus trying to sustain one.

In Buffalo, the Sabres’ second-year general manager is attempting to rebuild from scratch a team in the midst of a franchise-worst, seven-year playoff drought. In his previous job as assistant GM in Pittsburgh, the test was keeping together a Sidney Crosby-led core of a team that became the first in nearly 20 years to repeat as Stanley Cup champions in 2016-17.

Botterill noted the common denominator for both comes down to scouting.

“You’re always searching for talent,” Botterill said. “So it gets back to the importance of finding players that are going to join your system.”

We normally take an interest in teams with young squads for the purposes of player recruitment. Clubs like FC Nordsjaelland, for example, have gained reputations for being hotspots for young talents in mid-tier leagues.

It can also be interesting to look at the coaches of these teams – managing a young team requires different skills to managing an experienced squad, and if our strategy is to develop young players, hiring a coach with this background is logical and sensible.

There is another dimension that we can analyse too – whether a coach has helped a club reduce the age of its squad. Every team reaches the end of its life cycle at some point, and needs refreshing, but not all coaches can ease a team through this phase. The chart below highlights some clubs who are going through this transition at the moment.

… Per sports contract tracker Spotrac, when sorting contracts by guaranteed money — the best measure of how much an NFL player truly earns — eight NFC players come out on top: Matt Ryan, Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, Mack, Donald, Kirk Cousins, Jimmy Garoppolo and Alex Smith. The two AFC players, Andrew Luck and Derek Carr, come in at No. 5 and No. 10, respectively.

Why is this, when the salary cap for all players in the league is the same? And where exactly is the AFC spending its money?