EPTThis started out as a stat analysis in the PR thread, until I finished up and realized... it's not actually relevant to the argument of who's the better player. In fact, it proves nothing. In fact, I ended up ignoring the only factors that do prove anything. So it's mainly a post about proleague rankings, with focus on, "Look, KT's coaching is stupid, and I have the stats to prove it."
Anyway, onwards:
On June 26 2009 16:30 Rostam wrote:
Throw in WL, including the playoffs where Jaedong obviously performed much better than Flash and you still get:
Jaedong: 58-20
Oz other than Jaedong: 72-81
Flash: 51-18
KT other than Flash: 71-97
You can argue all you want about who contributed more to their team, but I think it's pretty apparent that the difference between KT and Oz is not equal to the difference between Flash and Jaedong. People who think Jaedong is the only reason Oz is in first should take a trip back in time to round 1 and 2.
Throw in WL, including the playoffs where Jaedong obviously performed much better than Flash and you still get:
Jaedong: 58-20
Oz other than Jaedong: 72-81
Flash: 51-18
KT other than Flash: 71-97
You can argue all you want about who contributed more to their team, but I think it's pretty apparent that the difference between KT and Oz is not equal to the difference between Flash and Jaedong. People who think Jaedong is the only reason Oz is in first should take a trip back in time to round 1 and 2.
When comparing proleague records I'm inclined to discount those playoffs, not because I think it's irrelevant to the question of who's a better player, but because of the particular games. JD went 7-1 losing a cheese game. Flash went 0-2, losing a cheese game and to Jaedong. He basically didn't get a chance to show off. Tell me with a straight face that Flash, had he beaten Jaedong (which I am aware he didn't), would not have put an amount of pounding on JD's teammates at least equal to that handed out by skyhigh (although less spectacular because Flash is the ultimate turtle-and-push Terran)... yeah.
I'm also discounting those games for the far more important reason that they don't count towards regular season standings.
After doing that discount, the results look like this:
Jaedong: 51-19
Oz other than Jaedong: 72-78
Flash: 51-16
KT other than Flash: 67-92
One thing stands way out: KT's backups play - and lose - more games than OZ's. Now look at ace games:
OZ: 14 (10-4)
Jaedong: 13 (9-4)
KT: 15 (7-8)
Flash: 9 (5-4)
That's a 3.5-game difference right there for the teams. If you want to check out the non-ace record, we have:
OZ: 113-93
Jaedong: 42-15
OZ other than Jaedong: 71-78
----------------------------
KT: 111-100
Flash: 46-12
KT other than Flash: 65-88
KT has five extra games (and seven losses) in there, which account for: 1) the extra 1.5 behind OZ that aren't attributable to ace games, and 2) the lower seed into the WL playoffs where they lost an extra match.
The teams have been hot at at different times, but they're essentially identical: They're both 1 1/2 man teams: JD backed up by HiyA (or is it Lomo/BackHo now?) and Flash backed up by
What does all that say to who's the better player? Well, nothing, actually... which is why this is now a blog post.
