The Forest from the Trees: A post for the stats nerds

Thanks.

A bit bizarre that is available in the app but not on the website.

I wrote this as a reply to @ivan in the Hind thread, but itā€™s really nothing to do with Hind, so Iā€™m putting it here.

Some stats which back you up re the change of balance from the freo game onwards, because I wanted to have a look. How many points we scored/conceded against a teamā€™s average. Iā€™ve also removed their game(s) against us, so e.g. port averaged 84 points per game in their 21 games that didnā€™t include us, and scored 119 against us, so we get a -35. So basically, negative bad, positive good.

Before the freo game we were -16.6 for defense, +14.2 for offense. After the freo game we were +5.6 for defense, +4.2 for offense. So our defense improved by a ā€œsort of normalisedā€ +21 points, and our offense declined by a ā€œsort of normalisedā€ -10 points. Which is a net change from -2.4 to +9.8. Which Iā€™d have to agree is a better balance.

Thereā€™s probably some rolling average or something that would be a more accurate picture to reflect form (e.g. we got +18.7 against the demons, but they had two even lower scores either side of us, including a loss to the pies, so they probably werenā€™t peaking when we faced them), but I ainā€™t doing that.

Hereā€™s the table of those numbers per team, split into the chunks of the year you suggested.

Team Def 1-8 Def 9-23 Off 1-8 Off 9-23
Melbourne 18.7 -9
Port Adelaide -35 -3
Geelong -14.8 -9.6
Brisbane Lions -5.4 -29
Western Bulldogs 7 30.1
Sydney 6.7 -19.3 6.3 28.3
Greater Western Sydney -27.3 13.8 24.3 -27.8
West Coast 9 1.6
St Kilda 7 64.3
Fremantle 11.2 -15.7
Richmond -45.9 3.2
Carlton -45.7 18.2
Hawthorn -18.8 0.2 4.3 -0.8
Adelaide 55 -5.9
Gold Coast 36.7 14
Collingwood -14.6 6.4 28.7 21.7
North Melbourne -3.3 -8.3 48.9 24.4

By those numbers, our worst lost was to the tigers and our best win was against the saints. Our normalest (definitely a word) game was when we won 86-73 against the hawks, whose average score was 86.8-73.2.

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dense, but interesting

Which Blitz poster are you describing with that choice of words?

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From a spreadsheet of mineā€¦

Centre Clearance Success Rate
(Personal centre clearance/CBA)
Stringer = 16%
Shiel = 15%
Parish = 14%
Caldwell = 10%
Merrett = 8%
Perkins = 8%
Bryan = 8%
McGrath = 6%
Draper = 5%
Hobbs = 5%
Phillips = 4%

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Anyone else listening to this pod?

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Essendon are good at RED TIME games.

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Just found a great stats website I havenā€™t seen around before, seems a lot better then the AFL one and even compiles stats like the player ratings and clearances per centre bounce that the AFL has access to but doesnt publish. I will be using this a lot!

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On that subject, heres Essendons player ratings so far this year.

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Well whaddya know?
Ridley ā€¦andā€¦Laverde & Kelly top our list for Dis/Eff.

Is that surprising?

some great stuff to drill down into there.

His 10 minutes worth

Iā€™ve got some different numbers to the end of Rd 3 - (EDIT: No, my bad, same numbers - just averages vs aggregates):

2022: 65 def 1v1, 26 losses (40% loss rate)
2023: 47 def 1v1, 13 losses (28% loss rate)

Jake Kelly is yet to lose a def 1v1 in 2023 (5 contests), compared to having lost 54% of def 1v1 contests (7/13) to the end of Rd 3 in 2022.

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Thatā€™s a pretty big improvement

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Doesnā€™t look good for Hep. Worst of anyone who has played three games. {And Just better than Tippa who played only one quarter).

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our ground ball gets are up from 81 last year to 91 this year (which is about average for both years)

last year we gave our opponents a shot on goal from 50% of their inside 50s, 3 worst in the comp. So far this season weā€™re running at 46% (6th best)

our opponents accuracy in front of goal last year was 51.9%. thatā€™s also down to 46.6% this year. indicative of few shots from the goal square i suspect (2023 sample size caveat blah blah blah)

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Imagine if Mason stopped giving away 50s!

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