Have you ever thought about empirical analysis of pickleball? I mean like Moneyball but applied towards Pickleball. Statistics and sports seem to go hand-in-hand now days and I’ve often wondered if their are certain metrics that could be collected and applied to improve your odds of winning. Am I crazy here? Is it even possible or applicable?
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t tried to record stats from pickleball matches before but it seems kind of overwhelming just to do one match. I also always questioned if I was seeking the right information at the same time.
I wanted to throw this out there because maybe this has been done before and I just don’t know about it? It seems like I’ve heard pickleball statistics thrown out by people before. The only one that I can specifically recall is in a Joe Baker video when he said if you don’t defeat the reaction time of your opponent when attacking your odds of winning the point are only 28%. That’s a pretty specific number and made me wonder where this statistic came from?
I guess it’s possible if someone has done all this work and they are keeping it to themselves? Maybe when Ben Johns is studying “Materials Engineering” he’s actually studying Pickleball Statistics? Probably Not
Anyway, I’d love to have a discussion about this. Let me know what you think?
@Landon Oh I have had those same thoughts. I want to dive into the numbers of this game. I would really like to know what stats are the most valuable. Also it would be cool to see shot preferences for the players. I agree it feels like so much to try and figure it out yourself. I would love to see more information on this.
There would definitely need to be some advance metrics being looked at in each match. It’s just not like baseball where baseball is an all numbers game, but maybe could be if people during matches started to take advance stats…
Kyle, I’ve thought the same thing. So if I was going to start I could go with basic categories (third-shot drop success) and then break that down (top-spin vs backspin/cut) then again (straight ahead vs cross-court) etc. Possibly if I wanted to test the statistics of a specific shot I wouldn’t have to do so much but I’d have to know exactly what I was after to begin with.
@kselinko I’m curious though, especially given how freaking good you are at this game and your experience, how advanced or in depth do you think the stats would need to be before you started to find trends?
Probably Not