When people like Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s began employing the use of advanced statistics in constructing winning sports teams, they were considered visionaries. No one had used analytics and complicated math to discover trends, advantages, strategy emphases, and undervalued players until then. And it changed the game.
Nowadays, if a team at the professional or even college level isn’t using advanced statistics, they are behind the times and likely not very successful. Stat geeks and whiz kids have come up with the most telling and elaborate measures of performance in their respective sports, and it would seem, at this point, that there is little left to be unearthed through statistical analysis.