Stat of the Day, Pierre Pierce Edition
Today I want to look at the players who miss a lot of shots, stay in the lineup for one reason or another, and continue to miss a lot more shots. It'll be very similar to the Hacking Mass contest that Baseball Prospectus runs every year. Funny quote from their contest guidelines for choosing a team:

In each case, it isn't enough for a player to simply suck; somehow the Stiffest
of the Stiff must find a way to remain in the lineup or rotation. Possession of
incriminating photos of managers and GMs, telekinesis of ink onto lineup cards,
large contracts that need justification, and ties to the underworld can all be
important attributes of your players besides their lack of hitting and pitching
talent.

This shouldn't require too many underlying stats to calculate. We're looking for guys that miss at a high rate (a FG% of some type) and who shoot a lot (FGA or misses). I used the following formula:

[(1.5 - adjFG%) * (FGA -FG)] / games

New to adjFG%? (Otherwise, skip ahead)
*************************************************
adjFG% gives a little extra credit to 3-pt shooters to make up for the fact that they can shoot a lower FG% and still be as effective as a higher FG% post player. In other words, a guy shooting only threes and making 33% of his shots will score as often as a guy shooting only twos who makes 50% of them. adjFG% gives us a number to more accurately compare how efficient different types of players are from the field.

ajdFG% = (FG + 0.5*3PM) / FGA
*************************************************

At first I wasn't sure if I should multiply by field goal attempts or by misses. If you use attempts, a guy who makes a shot could still see his score go up (higher is worse) because it would add to his attempts total (although it would increase his adjFG% and offset some of the increase). I chose to multiply by misses to avoid some of what I just mentioned. This way, a player increases his rating whenver he misses and decreases whenever he makes a shot. In either case, the results aren't very different.

On this site, today's fun number will be called the Pierre Pierce Rating (PPR), in deference to his willingness to lead his team in shots while trailing at least 5 teammates in shooting effectiveness. (Could be more, could be less, depending on how far down the roster you want to go. I stopped at guys with 15+ mpg.) By the way, field goal attempts aren't even close on this team. Pierce has 52% more of them than Horner, the second highest (131 to 86).

Side note - I wanted to name this after a former Hawkeye, but my memory doesn't have too many years to span, and I don't really remember shooting percentages of guys who I watched growing up, so if anyone has a suggestion for a different namesake, please drop me a line.

Here we go.

Big Ten Leaders, PPR (thru Tues)

Player, Team	GP	adjFG%	FGA-FG	PPR
David Teague, PUR	5	0.319	61	14.41
Dion Harris, MICH	10	0.380	95	10.62
Brandon McKnight, PUR	7	0.450	61	9.15
Pierre Pierce, IOWA	9	0.477	75	8.52
Vedran Vukusic, NW	6	0.494	50	8.38
Bracey Wright, IND	6	0.517	51	8.35
Robert Vaden, IND	6	0.431	44	7.84
Daniel Horton, MICH	7	0.466	46	6.80
Deron Williams, ILL	9	0.505	54	5.97
Dan Coleman, MIN	8	0.469	46	5.93

PermaLink |