Let's talk about... Bailey Smith

[Deadly Darcy]

When I read this thread I miss the good old days of Mattdoogie and the Proff

 

[BrisDog]

When I read this thread I miss the good old days of Mattdoogie and the Proff

Did you like commentary about the queues at Bunnings…..ah the Halcyon days and MD with people getting trade equipment

 

[Hoges64]

I suspect his defensive spirit was probably impacted by a few suspensions he attracted a little while back.

His defensive shortcomings are less my concern right now though than his terrible kicking. He is currently responsible for the worst kicking inside 50 from an established midfield star that i can ever recall. He's in such terrible form. I hope he can pull his way out of it.

His two suspensions were for headbutting someone and for coke use. Not sure that's "defensive spirit" related.

But his kicking, which was absolutely piss poor last year, seems to have somehow gotten worse. I don't want the ball in his hands at any point any more.

He's not soft. My concern is his disposal efficiency is way down. I hope he and the club can turn that around.

Very poor in 2022 and now this season. Not looking good for improvement...

He’s not soft. He is a poor decision maker though, and his skills by foot are so far off AFL level it’s not funny.

This. I was really hoping that would be the main thing he worked on over the summer. I can cop a little bit of defensive liability if he's an offensive weapon, but his delivery of the ball and general decision making in doing so seem to have gone backwards.

Pretty sure there was a kick in the middle of the ground which he could have intercepted but he went up with a pretty disappointing one handed effort rather than attacking it

I know the one, and the Mrs and I both screamed at him when it happened. I know sometimes on TV the ball is further away from the player than it looks, but this one had to be within reach, and yes, a pissy little one handed effort over his head, when he could likely have taken the mark with two hands, or at least knocked it down.

Yes, he's a soft player who has been severely overrated. I just don't think he's particularly good at anything, as the Champion data blokes pointed out. Too soft to be a ball winner but doesn't have the skills to be an outside player. I think he's destined to be a B-grader. I don't think it has anything to do with where he went to school though.

I have that fear too. Not good enough at any one thing to be an out and out star, and I can't see where the improvement comes from. I dread to say it but if a juicy trade came up for him, I'd SERIOUSLY consider it.

Bailey Smith was running very hard in the last qtr. That gut-busting running is another type of bravery.

I'll definitely pay this. Bloke runs all day, and is more team-oriented than given credit for. Had a great last quarter. Just needs 2 more of them, every game please. (I'll tolerate a quiet quarter every game... )

I've met plenty of stupid scientists and engineers btw, they're more common than you think. I'm probably one myself.

I have a couple of mates who are engineers, and they say the dumb ones stick out like absolute dogs balls. Like you could take one look at their work and instantly know.

 

[dogwatch]

...

But his kicking, which was absolutely piss poor last year, seems to have somehow gotten worse. I don't want the ball in his hands at any point any more.

He seems to record a lot of metres gained so he can certainly kick it a long way when he's on the move. The problem seems to be he doesn't seem to know how to kick to advantage when going inside 50. Most of the time he seems to be in space so it's not like a Libba or English snap kick downfield out of congestion. Or perhaps he just doesn't have that upfield vision that blokes like Bont and Caleb have.

I think there's a stat that shows how many kicks result in a positive outcome for the side (kicks that result in a score or another kick dwnfield, or something like that). It would be interesting to tabulate those against MG for the whole team. It might confirm our perceptions. Or it might surprise us.

Oliver Gigacz can you enlighten me what that stat is? And do we have that plus MG for each player this year? I don't mind doing the cross tabulation if I can get hold of the raw stats.

Very poor in 2022 and now this season. Not looking good for improvement...

Disagree in part. He was brilliant for the first 10 rounds in 2022, averaging about one Brownlow vote a game (almost Brownlow medallist pace) but hasn't been the same since he returned from his dual suspensions. Whether that's the cause or not I don't know.

I reckon things will fall into place for him at some stage and it will pay off big time. He could yet become a top 20 player, maybe even top 10. It may just come with maturity but he might also need to be taken aside (perhaps in an off season) and given some intensive 1-on-1 tactical & skills coaching for it to happen. I just hope it's with us. You could put money on it happening if he switched clubs.

 

[Hoges64]

He seems to record a lot of metres gained so he can certainly kick it a long way when he's on the move. The problem seems to be he doesn't seem to know how to kick to advantage when going inside 50. Most of the time he seems to be in space so it's not like a Libba or English snap kick downfield out of congestion. Or perhaps he just doesn't have that upfield vision that blokes like Bont and Caleb have.

I think there's a stat that shows how many kicks result in a positive outcome for the side (kicks that result in a score or another kick dwnfield, or something like that). It would be interesting to tabulate those against MG for the whole team. It might confirm our perceptions. Or it might surprise us.

Oliver Gigacz can you enlighten me what that stat is? And do we have that plus MG for each player this year? I don't mind doing the cross tabulation if I can get hold of the raw stats.

Disagree in part. He was brilliant for the first 10 rounds in 2022, averaging about one Brownlow vote a game (almost Brownlow medallist pace) but hasn't been the same since he returned from his dual suspensions. Whether that's the cause or not I don't know.

I reckon things will fall into place for him at some stage and it will pay off big time. He could yet become a top 20 player, maybe even top 10. It may just come with maturity but he might also need to be taken aside (perhaps in an off season) and given some intensive 1-on-1 tactical & skills coaching for it to happen. I just hope it's with us. You could put money on it happening if he switched clubs.

I find Metres Gained as a metric rather flawed, because you can bomb it 55m to a contest, but if it's to the oppositions advantage (like all his Inside 50 entries) that still counts towards your total, yet you've basically contributed SFA, and sometimes it's actually negative as the ball is now in the opposition hands from a position we could / should likely have scored from and rebounds down the other end. Well done on your 55m gained though...

I do like your MG : next kick / scores from ratio though, I feel that would highlight some things.

However I must disagree with your Brownlow votes / brilliant in first 10 rounds opinion. He got plenty of the ball and did a metric shittonne of running. That I certainly won't deny. These things also tend to stand out to umpires, hence the votes. But his disposal and decision making were still suspect at best, and his defensive pressure was wanting for sure.

Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, I love the potential that he has, and if it all comes together can definitely be a top 20 player in the league, and I for damn sure hope its with us, but after starting his career really well, I'm not seeing any marked improvement from the base level in what is now his 5th year. That concerns me.

 

[doggies ftw]

Oliver Gigacz can you enlighten me what that stat is? And do we have that plus MG for each player this year? I don't mind doing the cross tabulation if I can get hold of the raw stats.

Champion Data also do some kind of reference to difficulty of kicks attempted, in that King article they mentioned last week that he attempts the 3rd hardest kicks out of any midfielder in the comp behind Petracca & someone else (can’t remember)

Not sure what the stat is but would also be good to reference this in your table if possible to give the full picture. Ie MG (MG per possession would be even better if available) x difficulty of kick % x positive outcome % and that’d give you a pretty thorough overview on his effectiveness in comparison to his teammates.

I agree that MG in itself can be very flawed but not necessarily useless in a low MG midfield - which we have right now with Bont & Treloar playing more inside than they have in the past. I think the club is happy to trade off disposal to an extent for someone who can transition the ball from inside to outside and gain territory, of course there’s a tipping point but not sure which side of that line Baz is currently on.

One other thing I will point out is a lot of people use his low contested possession rate as a huge knock compared to his effectiveness, but again that doesn’t tell the full picture. He’s not floating around the wings picking up uncontested marks and turning it over. He’s an outside leaning midfielder whose roll is to receive the handoff inside the contest and transition the ball outside, so whilst he’s not kicking under immense pressure like a Libba his uncontested possessions aren’t necessarily unpressured disposals, receiving a Libba handball in close and bursting forward to dispose of the footy is still an uncontested possession and it’s not necessarily an easy thing to pinpoint accurately.

I’m not making excuses for him and he’s been lacking this year in some key parts of the game with the eye test but I think sometimes stats don’t tell the full picture with a player like him. Admittedly his scoreboard impact stats are very low though and that’s something he needs to improve (ie SI, GAs, goals

 

[dogwatch]

Champion Data also do some kind of reference to difficulty of kicks attempted, in that King article they mentioned last week that he attempts the 3rd hardest kicks out of any midfielder in the comp behind Petracca & someone else (can’t remember)

Not sure what the stat is but would also be good to reference this in your table if possible to give the full picture. Ie MG (MG per possession would be even better if available) x difficulty of kick % x positive outcome % and that’d give you a pretty thorough overview on his effectiveness in comparison to his teammates.

I agree that MG in itself can be very flawed but not necessarily useless in a low MG midfield - which we have right now with Bont & Treloar playing more inside than they have in the past. I think the club is happy to trade off disposal to an extent for someone who can transition the ball from inside to outside and gain territory, of course there’s a tipping point but not sure which side of that line Baz is currently on.

One other thing I will point out is a lot of people use his low contested possession rate as a huge knock compared to his effectiveness, but again that doesn’t tell the full picture. He’s not floating around the wings picking up uncontested marks and turning it over. He’s an outside leaning midfielder whose roll is to receive the handoff inside the contest and transition the ball outside, so whilst he’s not kicking under immense pressure like a Libba his uncontested possessions aren’t necessarily unpressured disposals, receiving a Libba handball in close and bursting forward to dispose of the footy is still an uncontested possession and it’s not necessarily an easy thing to pinpoint accurately.

I’m not making excuses for him and he’s been lacking this year in some key parts of the game with the eye test but I think sometimes stats don’t tell the full picture with a player like him. Admittedly his scoreboard impact stats are very low though and that’s something he needs to improve (ie SI, GAs, goals

Agree with most of your post. While I do agree that he is under some pressure when he receives and runs forward he really does need to nail more of those kicks. You might be being a bit lenient on him there. It would be interesting to compare him to Bont and Treloar on those sorts of deliveries - they frequently wheel out of a pack and into space too. None of them are perfect.

I reckon he should take an extra half second to look upfield and as a consequence occasionally lower his eyes a bit, targetting the leading forward. This applies to all our midfielders, but especially Bailey.

There's a concurrent discussion in another thread about our poor i50 conversion rate and the consensus seems to be that it's an intertwined problem. If our midfielders were more precise and had more vision our forwards would lead more often. If our forwards were better at leading (or did it more often) our midfielders would get better at finding them, even if it means they are marking it out near the arc. I'd rather have more set shots from 45-50m out (even if the conversion rate is only 40-50%) than long bombs to 20m out that are too often just killed by the KPDs and swept away by their running half backs.

 

[doggies ftw]

Agree with most of your post. While I do agree that he is under some pressure when he receives and runs forward he really does need to nail more of those kicks. You might be being a bit lenient on him there. It would be interesting to compare him to Bont and Treloar on those sorts of deliveries - they frequently wheel out of a pack and into space too. None of them are perfect.

I reckon he should take an extra half second to look upfield and as a consequence occasionally lower his eyes a bit, targetting the leading forward. This applies to all our midfielders, but especially Bailey.

There's a concurrent discussion in another thread about our poor i50 conversion rate and the consensus seems to be that it's an intertwined problem. If our midfielders were more precise and had more vision our forwards would lead more often. If our forwards were better at leading (or did it more often) our midfielders would get better at finding them, even if it means they are marking it out near the arc. I'd rather have more set shots from 45-50m out (even if the conversion rate is only 40-50%) than long bombs to 20m out that are too often just killed by the KPDs and swept away by their running half backs.

Yeah I don’t disagree with any of that, I think Baz is just a frantic footballer out on the ground and hopefully will find some composure as he matures - just needs to take a breath sometimes and compose himself and lower the eyes, technically he’s sound so I’m hopeful it’s fixable whereas a Dunkley for example just has a shoddy ball drop and will never be a good user.

I wish our conversion rate from 45-50m was 40-50% gut feel but I reckon ours would be a lot lot lower. It’s been an issue for us that we just don’t have many guys in our forward line capable of kicking those goals like other clubs do and I think it hurts us in the way that other clubs know this and it helps them defend inside 30m when they can be confident we’re very unlikely to trouble them outside 40m

Naughty is an almost certainty to miss anything outside 40m due to his action, Marra whilst he has a huge kick and should be capable we haven’t seen this transfer to his set shots at AFL level yet. Cody’s a dead eye in close but I don’t see him as a particularly strong long distance set shot although we don’t really see it too often anyway as he’s closer to goal.

The Garcias, Wests, McCombs that rotate through are no hope. Hannan is capable but not reliable, From the midfield Bont and Libba are capable but Bonts even fallen off there, Libba just about our most reliable from range. Macrae no hope and Baz doesn’t get many looks. Williams and Scott are capable too but don’t get too many looks.

It’s a big issue for us IMO, I think if we were going at a league average from that distance it’d have a massive affect on our scoring, hopefully Lobb goes someway to rectify this as we know he’s capable and I believe Darcy will be too.

 

[Snarls Barkley]

Yeah I don’t disagree with any of that, I think Baz is just a frantic footballer out on the ground and hopefully will find some composure as he matures - just needs to take a breath sometimes and compose himself and lower the eyes, technically he’s sound so I’m hopeful it’s fixable whereas a Dunkley for example just has a shoddy ball drop and will never be a good user.

His first season he was very composed with the ball. Nothing flashy or spectacular but took smart, easy options and was running at a very solid kicking efficiency. Since he has really upped his running power, it seems he is being trained to be that 70m player who can get it, burst 20m on the run and then kick it long like Griffen was in the early part of his career, but Smith has become an absolute butcher and its getting worse if anything.

As you said, technically he is sound and it should be fixable but it is a bit concerning that its into the third year of this sort of stuff and it doesn't look to be improving. Thought that would've been his main objective over the offseason to work on his ball use. He is just down on form at the moment, so hopefully when he gets out of the rut, his ball use will improve with confidence but I think it is still the most concerning part of his game.

 

[dogwatch]

I reckon disposal retention is what you're thinking of, unlike effective disposals which can be skewed by 40+ metre kicks that are always graded as effective (unless it's a direct turnover) disposal retention is defined as a disposal where the team retains possession...

Disposal Retention (R1-R4)
Treloar: 72%
Liberatore: 72%
Bontempelli: 71%
Macrae: 70%
B. Smith: 58%

Essentially Treloar, Libba, Bont and Macrae are all pretty much the same but Baz is significantly lower in terms of his disposal retention.

Average Metres Gained for these five this year (source FootyWire.com):

269 - Treloar: 72%
302 - Liberatore: 72%
371 - Bontempelli: 71%
359 - Macrae: 70%
501 - B. Smith: 58%

So I'm not quite sure what it all tells us. You can't just multiply the two numbers together for a whole lot of reasons. For instance it could be that they get more Disposal Retention on their short kicks and not much on their long ones. In Smith's case that would devalue his MG advantage quite significantly.

I guess it just confirms that Bailey sprays them more which is what we had all thought anyway.

Or to put it another way Smith has 50% more of his kicks rebounded than Libba/Treloar (42% to 28%). Given our woeful record in conceding scores from play originating in our F50 that's quite a worry because it means there's roughly a 50% greater chance that they will score on the rebound from a Smith kick than from a Libba or Treloar kick (I'm making quite a few assumptions there so it might not be entirely valid, but you get the general idea).

Bailey is in fact the WB leader for MG, even ahead of the two I'd have thought were leading, Dale (476) and Richards (474).

One more question OG: does DR% include scoring shots? Or are they deemed to be loss of possession?
Oh, another question come to think of it: What's the DR% for Dale and Richards?

Many thanks.

 

[Deadly Darcy]

Injured. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[Hoges64]

I guess it just confirms that Bailey sprays them more which is what we had all thought anyway.

Not everyone. I was howled down by quite a few members here who seemed to think there was nothing wrong with Smith's disposal.

Im not even gonna hide it, **** it feels good to be right AND backed up by the statistics.

Sent from my CPH2305 using Tapatalk

 

[stefoid]

Average Metres Gained for these five this year (source FootyWire.com):

269 - Treloar: 72%
302 - Liberatore: 72%
371 - Bontempelli: 71%
359 - Macrae: 70%
501 - B. Smith: 58%

So I'm not quite sure what it all tells us. You can't just multiply the two numbers together for a whole lot of reasons. For instance it could be that they get more Disposal Retention on their short kicks and not much on their long ones. In Smith's case that would devalue his MG advantage quite significantly.

I guess it just confirms that Bailey sprays them more which is what we had all thought anyway.

Or to put it another way Smith has 50% more of his kicks rebounded than Libba/Treloar (42% to 28%). Given our woeful record in conceding scores from play originating in our F50 that's quite a worry because it means there's roughly a 50% greater chance that they will score on the rebound from a Smith kick than from a Libba or Treloar kick (I'm making quite a few assumptions there so it might not be entirely valid, but you get the general idea).

Bailey is in fact the WB leader for MG, even ahead of the two I'd have thought were leading, Dale (476) and Richards (474).

One more question OG: does DR% include scoring shots? Or are they deemed to be loss of possession?
Oh, another question come to think of it: What's the DR% for Dale and Richards?

Many thanks.

big difference between how libba and smith kick the ball though. Libba is deadly if he has some time and space, but in congestion, smith is run and carry while libba, if he cant find a handball target, throws a 'clearing kick' onto his boot - i.e. completely blind. Macrae something similar to libba.

Treloar is playing more of a contesed role this year. (no dunks)

 

[ScragCity]

Hes soft

 

[weltschmerz]

With Treloar injured and centre bounces available, Baz is performing heaps better.

 

[brmi]

Just heard the same...

 

[ossie_21]

If any Collingwood nuff comes to our board suggesting this injury means he will/should cost less for a trade, they should be permabanned

 

[jakson68]

If any Collingwood nuff comes to our board suggesting this injury means he will/should cost less for a trade, they should be permabanned

After the disappointment we felt with the Mcstay injury news, it would be sad if we then came and made light of a similar injury.

Feel for the kid, the club and all involved.

An ACL is such a shitty wasteful injury, especially at this time of year, as the player knows next year just doesn't exist for them.

 

[TiAn_]

That’s a particularly unfortunate injury for a player with his strengths. Will make his contract situation no less interesting.

 

[DognBones]

Have just received the news. This is devastating on all fronts. I think we would have been very confident of a much improved season from Bailey and his presence around our midfield will be sorely missed. Some might believe that we have adequate cover for his position but it is still one talented player who will make no contribution next season. Rotten luck.

 

[El Rancho]

I feel so sorry for the kid. What a sh!thouse injury to have at any time but during pre-season is possibly the worst.

Who knows how his contract plays out, but I hope for his sake he can get himself sorted with whatever issues he has off field. I don't care who you are, dealing with mental health issues will never be anything other that demoralising and soul destroying.

Good luck Baz

 

[House_of_Dahl]

Faaaark poor Baz. The only positive is this probably helps us retain him (if he was considering leaving).

 

[hatescaptcha]

Shattered. Was really looking forward to having him firing in 2024. Big blow for us.

Hopefully see him back to his best in the Red,white and blue soon.



Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com

 

[Barking Mad]

Pretty sure we’re now guaranteed to be non the wiser about contract until late in the year and any chance of resigning is out the window until then.

 

[BulldogMuscle]

Pretty sure we’re now guaranteed to be non the wiser about contract until late in the year and any chance of resigning is out the window until then.

Other way around I'd think. Clear up the contract shit now so he can focus on rehab