When Moneyball first entered the public conversation, the baseball community largely met it with skepticism. The concepts that drove Moneyball have been documented for some time but didn’t get put to the test until recently. Scouts had been using the same processes since these sports began. No one understood these new methods, and many felt threatened by them. Expected goals (xG) in soccer was another metric people didn’t understand at first but that is now widely embraced.
Today, advanced analytics are widely embraced. Journalists share insights around exit velocity and curvature of pitches. Soccer broadcasts can measure momentum swings and their impact on matches.
