[BostonCard]

And lex and BC, I love how you guys embrace the eye test and the need to play entertaining ball in the Farhan/Giants discussion, but seem to downplay it when it comes to Stanford football.

In the other thread, I noted that the following two things can be true:
1) Analytics can maximize an individual team's win potential.
2) Analytics applied league-wide can make the games boring.

In other words, one can support it on a team level, after all, one might want to win ugly above losing pretty, but lament its application league-wide.

Now that being said, a lot of the stuff I enjoy most people would find boring.  I prefer pitching duels over slugfests and would favor rules that would encourage those types of games (fences back, enlarge the strike zone, etc.), and in football I prefer well executed plays and defensive performances over razzle dazzle, so I tend to favor rule changes that encourage that (for example, enforcing illegal downfield blocks, offensive holding and allowing more aggressive defensive back coverage).  But regardless, as a Stanford football fan, I would support a win-maximizing strategy, even if it wasn't my preferred offensive or defensive strategy, and I have no problem with turtling as a strategy when it makes sense.

BC

[BostonCard]

And lex and BC, I love how you guys embrace the eye test and the need to play entertaining ball in the Farhan/Giants discussion, but seem to downplay it when it comes to Stanford football.

In the other thread, I noted that the following two things can be true:
1) Analytics can maximize an individual team's win potential.
2) Analytics applied league-wide can make the games boring.

In other words, one can support it on a team level, after all, one might want to win ugly above losing pretty, but lament its application league-wide.

Now that being said, a lot of the stuff I enjoy most people would find boring.  I prefer pitching duels over slugfests and would favor rules that would encourage those types of games (fences back, enlarge the strike zone, etc.), and in football I prefer well executed plays and defensive performances over razzle dazzle, so I tend to favor rule changes that encourage that (for example, enforcing illegal downfield blocks, offensive holding and allowing more aggressive defensive back coverage).  But regardless, as a Stanford football fan, I would support a win-maximizing strategy, even if it wasn't my preferred offensive or defensive strategy, and I have no problem with turtling as a strategy when it makes sense.

BC